What did you do in KSP1 today?

[TheLiquor]

I am currently in my first ever play through of ksp career mode and have been designing a rocket for my first ever Duna trip!  It’s a cluster of 3 large liquid fuel ssto busters that I can separately land back on Kerbal after I get a 115 ton payload in to orbit so I can save some bucks.

The payload is a nuclear transfer stage that will take my lander, rover and relay sat to Duna, the lander has space for 3 Kerbals and all the juicy science, the rover also has all the science and the large scanner arm so I can drive around to different biomes, and the relay sat has a relay and a survey scanner on it.

I successfully landed last night and today I’m hoping I can make it back to Kerban.  As I said this was my first ever trip leaving Kerban’s  sphere of influence to go to another planet so I’m very happy with how it has so far turned out and that I was able to get all those things there in one trip.

Ksp is now one of my favourite games and I can’t wait till 1.8 comes out, and of course ksp2. 

Thanks for reading.

[AHHans]

1 hour ago, MiscelanousItem said:

Will adding intakes help with that?

I don't think so. AFAIK the jet engines now have a fixed "loose that % of thrust at this height" curve.

47 minutes ago, TheLiquor said:

liquid fuel ssto busters

LOL. Sorry, but that typo brought the image of small jet-fighters that shoot down big SSTOs to my mind.

[Guest]

Wooh, poor planning makes for lots of flying. 

Assembling the Jool mission assets. Problem is that because of my no probe cores rule, I need a lot of pilots. Once again I ended up in a situation with only one pilot at KSC, everybody else out there somewhere, mostly on Bill Kerman. So I sent up the last pilot with a crew rotation shuttle to fetch a couple of them back down for the next launches. 

Problem is I got distracted and kind of muffed the launch. The upshot was that I did make orbit but without enough dV to get to the Mun to do that crew rotation I wanted -- after a very tedious job of getting an encounter and docking with the tug module. 

So I ended up sending the extra pilots down from the Mun in the Orca. And of course I forgot to bring oxidiser. So once Orca docked with CRS-3, all it had to give was some RCS propellant. Transferred the extra pilots to CRS-3, then met up and docked with the SSTO module, and did another incredibly tedious RCS burn to re-enter. 

At least this time I didn't miss KSC. 

So once again no damage done, just a lot of pointless manoeuvring. I should have simply flown down from the Mun in the Orca, got an RV with the shuttle, transferred the crew over, and flown right back. Would have avoided all those tedious RCS burns and the entirely pointless docking manoeuvres with the nuclear tug. I could even have done that with the Laythe plane which has the crew capacity and is a quite a lot nicer to fly.

[TheKSPBeginner]

Found a decoupler on the beach. Tested max payload capacity of multiple rockets via NRAP.

[PT]

Yet again I continued my misadventures with Extraplanetary Launchpads...

Turns out distance of building site from yard is limited by skill level of Pilot. At first I thought something was broken, but then I noticed I simply had no Pilot in new Aptur Yard. Which was weird, as I transferred whole crew from old yard... Turns out Jeb forgot his favorite snacks and ran back to old base just as new one was taking off. Thankfully HEV was still there and Jeb always wanted to drive it.

Of course, given Jeb at the wheel, ride simply has to be fun.

Considering I got a half of ugly "planet" to cross I guess its gonna be all for today

Edited October 13, 2019 by PT

[Cavscout74]

Yesterday, I got three launches in for the Jool window, which were more than expected as the Duna window a few days later was my big mission.   First up was the Val Lander/Relay, launching from the Desert launch pad.  It is based on the idea of my usual combined orbital relay & lander, but has been completely redesigned and reduced in size & mass.

Lifting off from the desert pad, using just a single Mastodon with Cub verniers.  The first stage is enough to get an Ap between 90-100 km before burning out

After separation, the Poodle-powered second stage raises Ap the rest of the way and circularizes the orbit - I park most of my interplanetary flights between 130 & 139km orbits just to keep them out of the way until they depart.

At that point, the second stage still has about 1900 m/s dV remaining - enough for most of the transfer to Jool.  Once the poodle-stage was exhausted & staged away, the relay stage has a FTmN-40 nuclear rocket with ~2800 m/s dV for course corrections & entering orbit at the destination. 

Finally, once the Jool window arrived, the Vall Lander/Relay performed its transfer & is pictured here leaving Kerbin behind.  The front section is the lander, and will be staged off to land once a stable orbit has been established around Vall.

I also squeezed in two more of these - for Bop & Pol.  The lander isn't Tylo-capable, and I didn't have time to build another one before the window anyway.  Next up will be the career-first Duna mission departing for the red planet.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2019 by Cavscout74

[Commodore_32]

Today i installed KSC Extended and saw what huge my facility is!!

[Kchinger]

No cool pictures like the rest of you since I'm on my phone now, and not nearly as interesting as what most of you are up to, but here's what a newer player a couple weeks in is up to:

Got a probe docked with a stranded MPL that I didn't realize needed a command. Only getting about 5 science/day from Munar orbit, and I need to fix the capacitors, more on that in a moment.

Returned a rescued contract from the Munar orbit, plus a tourist. Need to figure out how to direct return without orbit and still get close to KSP when landing. 

Built, launched, and circularized (sort of, overshot the AP to like 175km due to boosters, a common problem for me, so only brought PE to 75km since I'm heading to Mun, no need to waste more dv) a new ship. Payload is two relay satellites heading to Mun eccentric polar orbits (I've never done this, we'll see how it goes) plus a command module and 2 2 person passenger modules full of tourists who want to do suborbital, orbit Kerbin, fly by Mun, orbit Mun. I think that all can happen in one launch even though it doesn't seem to be exactly the intent. 

The pilot is carrying a KIS wrench and 2 Smart Part electric charge modules to attempt to fix the MPL. Probably should have taken more batteries and capacitors too, now that I think of it. I've never used the KIS or KAS stuff, so I'm excited to try that tomorrow once they reach the Mun. 

I also have 12 more tourists waiting to follow the same path. I'm hoping to do that in 2 launches since I won't have the satellites (unless I want to send two to Minmus orbit to prepare for exploring that). 

[Zedwardson]

I know it not nearly as neat as some of the stuff being posted, but I made a spy sat for classified missions in my campaign.   I used a launcher that might of been too strong as I still have 3000 deltav for orbital changing fun.   The camera and the "Film Capsule" detach for return for analysis.  I might use that bus design for some Communication sats that I will be tossing in orbit soon^tm as in this campaign/Career I will also be simulating the idea that I am launching various commercial (mostly com sats) and have companies be formed and merge with each other and simulate failures over time and so on.   

[Guest]

@Zedwardson Making a spy sat for classified missions sounds very very neat to me

[Guest]

16 hours ago, TheLiquor said:

I successfully landed last night and today I’m hoping I can make it back to Kerban.  As I said this was my first ever trip leaving Kerban’s  sphere of influence to go to another planet so I’m very happy with how it has so far turned out and that I was able to get all those things there in one trip.

Sounds awesome!

For a first interplanetary mission that's remarkably sophisticated too. Mine was sending Jeb in a command module to visit Ike. I muffed my transfers and he didn't have the fuel to make it back.

[PT]

6 hours ago, Kchinger said:

... 

Got a probe docked with a stranded MPL that I didn't realize needed a command. Only getting about 5 science/day from Munar orbit, and I need to fix the capacitors, more on that in a moment.

... 

At the start of career yoy can get 3-star Kerbs by landing them on both Mun and Minmus, followed by brief visit in sun SoI. Anything more will require interplanetary flight. 

That should boost your science output greatly.

 

And yes, orbit will accomplish flyby requirement. A bit weird, but thats just how contracts works. 

Edited October 14, 2019 by PT

[Kchinger]

1 hour ago, PT said:

At the start of career yoy can get 3-star Kerbs by landing them on both Mun and Minmus, followed by brief visit in sun SoI. Anything more will require interplanetary flight. 

That should boost your science output greatly.

 

And yes, orbit will accomplish flyby requirement. A bit weird, but thats just how contracts works. 

Good idea, thanks. I also didn't realize 2 scientists stacked, I was probably thinking of mining that I read about where more engineers doesn't help maybe? I dunno, I've read about a lot more than I've actually played so far. I need to get another scientist on there though. 

Landing on Mun is the next big goal after I ferry all these tourists around (maybe I'll even double up goals again next time, take a craft with a bunch of tourists, then detach a lander with a few kerbals to go down and back up).

I hate launching ships for just one contract or purpose. I really like trying to double up at least. 

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Had a relatively busy weekend, and though I didn't really get as much done as I'd wanted to, I at least figured out how to hack my persistence file so I could actually get credit for doing all the drilling I was actually doing...

Started my day off on Friday with the landing of the Crater Maker 7 15-passenger lander at the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus.

Again, I had to take the screenie while there was still some light; night had already fallen like a bad PowerPoint presentation by the time the lander arrived at DH.

After conducting a quick burn that aligned the orbital planes of Next Objective with House Atreides to within 0.01°, I returned to DH and had engineer Nelrie Kerman EVA to hook the lander up to the outpost. Once connected, colonists Kathgar, Ludbert, Jeblock, Gilsen, Giley, Claumin, Nedwell, Irford, Loddred, Santrey, Lasey, Eridas, Anfred, Seedous and Anford Kerman disembarked to one of DH's three Castillo domes for a 54-day stay (the last three are only there for 42-days, which is still a fair chunk of time, IMHO). While they were disembarking, the outpost refueled the lander's fuel stores, and once everyone was off and the lander was refueled, Nelrie disconnected the lander and returned to her post. The Crater Maker launched to orbit at that point, making an alignment burn and setting an intercept with space station Minmusport with a flight time of 24 minutes. While still en route to intercept, both Necessary Evil and Next Objective conducted burns to take them to rendezvous with LSV House Atreides in high retrograde orbit over Minmus; time to rendezvous for the two ships averaged out at about eight hours and fifty minutes apiece.The Crater Maker burned for rendezvous with Minmusport and the intercept point and came to rendezvous 68 minutes later, docking safely at the space station. DH shot up replacement fuel supplies to the space station via mass driver, securing all landing ops at Minmus for the time being.

Ended my day on Friday with a seismic survey on Eve using the Echo 3 quadcopter.

Echo 3 flying over the Alexander L. Kielland outpost en route to the first waypoint.

Echo 3 wound up hitting just three waypoints before finding the source of the seismic anomalies on Eve, taking the craft only about fourteen kilometers away from the Alexander L. Kielland outpost. Went ahead and left the craft out there; things are a bit laggy right now around ALK largely owing to the size of the base at the present time...

Friday also saw the design of the final landing stage for the TBD 7e base-seeding rover (which was built in anticipation of creating an outpost on Tylo) and a pair of mass driver shots to LSV House Harkonnen in high Kerbin orbit - one from SL Shai Hulud to send over replacement Xenon Gas and Exotic Matter for Harkonnen's Alcubierre Drive, the other from the South Base outpost to send up conventional fuel supplies.

 

Saturday saw me picking off a bunch of the more mundane contracts I'd picked up on Thursday. I started my day at the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe, beginning by clearing the clamps from Thursday's launch of the Tradidit Lestum Yards from the base's launchpad. I then busied myself with the printing of another Pathfinder Casa module (an OPAL), a Chuckwagon (set to Xenon Gas - why not) and two Haciendas (both set up as drill units). Outpost engineer Monty Kerman went ahead and attached these modules and inflated them. The two Haciendas improved ore production at the base, but the real point of the exercise was to add a Casa and Chuckwagon to the base for a successful base extension contract. Ended my activities at Baker by shooting up fuel supplies, Rocket Parts and Ore to Tradidit Lestum; sufficient ore was dug up to clear a Laythe ore-drilling contract in the process. That done, I went up to Tradidit Lestum and had engineer Jubald Kerman begin printing up a Da Luv Boht 7 for assignment to space station Laytheport. Construction there is expected to take 23.5 hours, give or take.

Next I went to the Enchova Central outpost on Duna and the Bohai 2 base on Bop, in both cases drilling up sufficient ore to cover delivery contracts. I then went to the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun and had scientist Dilbur Kerman take an EVA report for transmission to KSC for contract, drilling up close to 3000 units of ore while I was still out there. A quick visit to the Nostromo 7 resource hauling craft orbiting Jool was sufficient to clear a delivery contract from Pol to Jool orbit (still willing to be cheatsy on that score), and a subsequent visit to the Infans Calcitrant Yards did the same for a Duna to Ike orbit delivery contract. Ended my day by ordering up the print of a Boop-Boop 7x probe at the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna and a Pink Noise 7 communications satellite carrier aboard LSV House Corrino in high Kerbin orbit for delivery to Tylo. The print of the Boop-Boop was expected to take three hours to finish, while the crew aboard Corrino had the Pink Noise built and ready to deploy after a mere twelve minutes. I attempted to clear a third ore delivery contract on Saturday with a visit to the Dystopia Planitia shipyards over Kerbin, but to my dismay I discovered that the amount of ore already there was insufficient to cover the contract and by then the game was so laggy that I had no choice but to shut it down; didn't wind up firing the game back up on Saturday.

So Sunday began with a mass driver shot between South Base and Dystopia Planitia, with 600 units of ore transferred up. This was sufficient to cover the rest of the ore delivery contract. Next on my to-do list were a pair of satellite launches at Laythe and Vall. The Vermilion Block 380 outpost on Vall is currently building the Vall-orbiting shipyard unfortunately, but I nevertheless designed a booster for ground satellite launch. Likewise, Tradidit Lestum was still building the Da Luv Boht, but Baker on the other hand was available, so I also designed a booster for ground launch from Laythe and ordered up a Boop-Boop 7 there, with construction estimated at 3.5 hours. With some time to kill before anything else was happening, I next loaded up tourists Mitney, Hilny, Carfurt and Joedo Kerman aboard an Auk IX 4-passenger spaceplane and launched it to space station Kerbinport. Flight time from takeoff to rendezvous and docking at the station was just over one hour all told.

Another day, another bunch of damn tourists going to see the sites...

Once docked, the four tourists embarked aboard Roy Hinkley docked at the station with pilot Gregeny Kerman at the stick. Hinkley departed Kerbinport and burned for an intersect point with House Corrino, arriving there thirty minutes later; at intersect she burned to take her to rendezvous, which occurred just over two hours later; Hinkley docked to Corrino without incident. While that was ongoing, the Boop-Boop at Duna was completed, fueled and launched from Bi-La Kaifa.

I'm starting to pay attention to the date at this point...getting awfully close to the new year. Still considering if/how I want to celebrate it when it arrives.

The new probe burned to a 14,333 kilometer apoapsis (out past Ike's orbit, barely still within Duna's SOI), and is scheduled to arrive there in 32 hours and 46 minutes. When it gets there, plans are to circularize and flip its orbit around. 

Baker also completed its probe before Hinkley got to Corrino. 

First launch I've had from Baker where the game decided to let the craft have all the fuel I'd already transferred aboard upon release. I was happy about that.

The Laythe probe burned to a 194.4 x 45.1 kilometer, 174.37° inclined (i.e. retrograde) sub-orbital trajectory. After Hinkley docked at Corrino, the probe was put into a final 195.8 x 193.6 orbit, which was apparently good enough to complete the satellite contract I had for Laythe despite still being six degrees off the contractual plane...

 

So my first order of business today is to check contracts - I tried to pick one up after finishing up at Laythe but my game crashed on me as I was exiting Mission Control; I don't know if I actually picked up the replacement or not. Having had time to sleep, I'm certain I didn't really want to get that new contract, which would've seen me picking up two tonnes of litter from the surface of Eve and returning it to Kerbin. While that would certainly be a challenging mission, the problem is that it'd be a challenging mission. Tough part would be getting that off the surface of Eve intact, I think; I'd need two kerbals to haul that much weight, get it loaded aboard Echo 3 without unbalancing the copter in the process, get it unloaded and then mount it on a booster rated for that much mass - which I'd have to design. Now, the Beer Can 7 launched four tonnes to orbit, so that two tonnes is no issue. Getting it up to the top of the booster stack might be fun though (fun in the Dwarf Fortress sense, I mean), and even then, I'd have to launch the thing without a fairing...

Next Objective and Necessary Evil are close to arriving (finally) at Atreides, so I will probably be bringing them home today. I also want to get that Vall satellite launched and get House Corrino out to Tylo. The tourists aboard will be heading to Bop and to Gilly, so those two destinations will also be on Corrino's itinerary. It may be that while running folks out to Gilly, Corrino will be working on the TBD for Tylo. I can hope as much; I really do enjoy base-building for some reason. Only going to get to do it four more times though...

 

[TheLiquor]

Well my first Duna mission was a success! I got back to Kerban in one piece and had just enough fuel to make it, I had to do a large burn at Kerban and 3 airobrakes to slow down enough, My heat shield had 23/800 ablator left afterword.

 

The trip got me about 6k science and I only have 3 nodes in the tech tree left to go so I my try a Dres trip next, which will hopefully be easier now that I have the largest fuel tanks unlocked. 

 

So far I have had a blast in my career mode and hopefully I will be able to visit all the planets and moons.

[Cavscout74]

14 hours ago, Kchinger said:

The pilot is carrying a KIS wrench and 2 Smart Part electric charge modules to attempt to fix the MPL

You may have found this out already, but you need an engineer to install stuff with KIS/KAS.

I got my career first manned Duna mission on the way yesterday, along with all the infrastructure.   I started with the launch of my crew from KSC.   Starting with an early morning launch, they made orbit easily and set up to rendezvous with the Duna lander for a quick adjustment before docking with the Duna transfer vehicle.

Kelrik the engineer testing out his new suit on an EVA and swapping out the surface experiment load on the Duna lander.  A sharp eyed accountant at KSC noticed an error on the Duna lander - instead of a weather monitor, it was loaded with an ionographer surface experiment just like the Ike lander.  The Duna crew vehicle was fitted with a small experiment container & carried up a weather monitor for use on Duna in place of the Ionographer. 

Duna crew vehicle with transfer stage preparing to make an inclination adjustment to rendezvous with the Duna transfer vehicle

Docking the crew & transfer vehicles for the trip to Duna:

Once docked, a transfer maneuver was plotted & executed

Next up was a small probe designed to complete two fly-by contracts, named the Duna Rally Probe

Then came all the rest - Duna lander, Ike lander, Duna outpost, Ike mining base, Duna rover, Ike rover, Duna crew station (almost forgotten as I hadn't saved its maneuver on Kerbal Alarm Clock), and two tankers that will dock with & expand the station

Ike Lander performing transfer burn as Kerbol sets

Ike Miner coasting out of Kerbin's SoI

Duna tanker leaving Kerbin's SoI

 

[Kchinger]

12 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

You may have found this out already, but you need an engineer to install stuff with KIS/KAS.

I had not gotten far enough to figure that out yet, but thank you. That's going to be an issue I suppose. That launch didn't have an engineer, just pilot and bunch of tourists. Maybe I'll just skip visiting the MPL station with that trip and send an engineer next time with the parts an an extra scientist to man the station. 

[meeware]

Very much feeling the pain @TheLiquorexpressed above.I had my 3 part Eve Klipper all assembled and fuelled up in orbit. 1 pilot, 1 engineer, 2 scientists. It’s got a lander, a lab, accom unit, and centrifuge and has about 7k dV waiting to push it out in the window which closes in 10 days. And I realise that I need a second engineer to inflate the centrifuge. And my only spare engineer is on Minimus. 

Currently weighing up what the fastest way to get that extra eng into LKO to rendezvous and send the clipper on it’s way is. Probably a shuttle back (but that is contrary to policy of ‘always have enough ships and dV to get you home’ for the min base. I’m gonna have to bring them all home. And I only just flew them up there as replacement for the previous Min base crew who I rotated back to crew the Eve Klipper! Dammit I’m just gonna have to fly them all home, rendezvous, inflate the donut, land, send the Klipper on it’s way, then get everyone all suited and booted and back onto another min lander shuttle and fly them back up. Lose about 250 scien points from shutting down the min lab for a 20 days.

Dammit this game gets more like a job every day!

Love it.

[PT]

I mostly designed stuff. And I even managed to launch some of it.

Today in Aptur Yard Misadventures...

As I unlocked mighty aerospike engine I crashed my first attempt at reusable crew shuttle to lift crew from KSC to my nuclear runabouts \. At first I tried to make it fully reusable, but added cost in fuel and complexity was accumulating fast so I just slapped two Thumpers on it.

Turns it could use a chute and more delicate throttle on landing.

Then I returned to second revision of Behemoth Autonomous Booster, this time without capability to obliterate everything in vicinity upon launch.

And attached it in... uhm... retrograde slot in Apollo B to assist with its upcoming dive deep into gravity well of sun.

Major update from first Apollo is usage of large docking port, which taught me I should use multi-docking-port trick (or EVA struts if crew is available) as it is a bit wobbly in combined configuration.

I had to order MechJeb to remove HEV from vicinity of Aptur Yard because its presence halved FPS >.<

And in meantime in Aptur Yard its commander, Jebediah, designed himself a space liner. Because he forgot to include probe core decision has been made to exile Jeb from Aptur. But first Bill had to add few EVA Struts because EL is not deploying standard struts.

After five days of refueling, and a month of assembly, Jeb git the button.

Lf/Ox boosters had to be dropped early due to classic problem of "not enough struts", but they were meant only to clear ship of building site to prevent collateral damage. Ship itself still have TwR > 1 on just nukes in meager 0.1g.

After a bit of stress on early ascent Jeb got to space again.

Current mission: gather some scientists, find co-pilot crazy enough to join him, and visit all moons in Sonnah system to finish bunch of old contracts. A bit of science will be done in meantime, but it will require addition of some cargo.

Meet newest addition to Kerbal Space Navy, a scientific long endurance space liner... Triginta Duo! A result of my yesterdays blood alcohol level.

After that Bill attempted to commission new intermoon runabout to replace aging Boat. Large docking port was mounted, for compatibility with my autonomous booster/tanker monstrosities.

Vacuum VTOL capability rated for 0.1g was desired, build and tested successfully.

Despite bug in action groups it managed to switch to standard flight with minimal manual input.

Sadly CoM/CoT misalignment was too high for even RCS to compensate. A slight revision will be required.

 

Edited October 14, 2019 by PT

[Guest]

Preparations for the mission to Jool continue. Crew has been assembled, station has been assembled, station has been transferred to Munar orbit. Next phase is fueling her up.

Final crew transfer operations have been completed. GILLIAN-K25 will shortly return to KSC. Orca will re-dock with JST-1 for the transfer to Munar orbit.

On our way on the first leg of the long journey: to Munar orbit. Once there, TANTOR-V will resupply JST-1, and TANTOR-M will top up the stores and eventually launch the station back down towards Kerbin, from where it will slingshot towards Jool. TANTOR-M will return to Bill Kerman.

[McFarnsworth]

After having quit for well over a year I fired up KSP again a few weeks ago. For the past few weeks I've been playing through career mode again. Now that I've unlocked everything again, I had some useless ... interesting hardware in Kerbin/Mun/Minmus orbit left over from various contracts.

 

So today I tied pretty much everything that can hold fuel together and fashioned a ... well, this:

One lander is still hidden behind the orange tanks, and another is still on its way to join this mess. Once complete I'm not sure where I'll send this heap to.

[TheKSPBeginner]

That’s one heck of a mess. As for me, I replaced my keostationary Sat with a new one.

[Zeiss Ikon]

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1)

I spent a lot of time trying to design a rocket that could put a minimum payload into orbit with the available and affordable hardware.

Please note that I do not yet have any kerosene engines except the s2.253 (Russian copy of the Wasserfall missile engine, kerosene/nitric acid) and a number of vastly overpriced kerosene/HTP procedural engines (I still don't fully understand the procedural engines, but I know overpriced when I see it).  As things stand now, Little Moon (I told you, my program can't spare brain power to name routine contract mission rocket, but manned craft and the first orbital launcher get names) has been as high as 9400 m/s vacuum dV in the VAB -- which would almost do the job -- but with no guidance after booster MECO (too high for the fins to do much by then), and a coast phase before second stage ignition, getting anything like a horizontal start for the second and third stages is more a matter of luck than planning.  The backflip during coast phase of simulations is interesting, but not really desirable.

I did fly a crewed suborbital contract with Tricycle Blk. 2 (all crewed suborbital rockets are Tricycles).

On the pad (a simulation, hence the different lighting from the next shot).

Launching south to try to fly Jeb over some biomes he and Val haven't already reported from on Blk. 1 flights.

After stage separation, there's a lengthy coast phase, during which the decoupler impulse has time to produce some separation.  The booster and second stage can push the vessel well above 4000 m/s, more than 3000 m/s horizontal component.  Unfortunately, simulations showed that the capsule will burn up completely at that speed (so much for the sacrificial heat sink ballast), so Jeb was convinced (after seeing the simulations burn up four times) to use the second stage to slow down.

The second stage has almost enough dV to bring the vessel to a dead stop in space -- horizontal velocity here was below 100 m/s, despite being above 1500 at booster MECO.  The vehicle is oriented to "SVEL-" using Smart A.S.S. guidance, and is near vertical, almost a minute past apogee.

There are a dozen 90 N peroxide thrusters on the base of that cockpit, plus four RCS quads at 19 N each.  As I figure it, that's 1156 N of thrust on less than half a tonne of capsule -- but the game reports it as .01 G acceleration.  Ought to be about ten times that, by my math.  None the less, it does nothing to slow the capsule down, just reduces the rate at which it acclerates as it falls.  Nor does it keep the base tank (containing that 170 kg of lead ballast plus 134 L of HTP additional to the cockpit's 100 L internal tankage) from coming apart under aero loads near max-Q, allowing the capsule to reorient to its unballasted nose-first stable position, where Jeb gets to watch to ocean come at his face while he hangs from the harness straps at 10+ G.

Fortunately, the parachutes held.  Deployment is set low to allow maximum deceleration of the capsule (below about 20 km, the capsule decelerates as it falls due to the air getting thicker -- the lower you can open the 'chutes, the better chance they have of staying attached).

Here's an early concept for Little Moon.  This is the one that does a backflip during its coast phase (because fins aren't much good above 60 km, just about enough to lift the nose after spending the last fifteen seconds before MECO boosting horizontal to avoid raising apogee further).  No doubt MechJeb could do it better, but MechJeb doesn't handle coast phases, last I looked.

 

[Lisias]

MDK-11 Mk0 Maiden Flight

Today is a very special day for L/Aerospace! Our first Regional Jet Airliner, able to transport 18 Kerbals and ~3 tons of cargo, had her maiden flight with crew and some happy and kourageous tourists, winners of the MDK-11 Maiden Flight Promotion (Life Insurance included!).

Flight with us for a trip of luxury and jet fighter performance!

This luxurious and expensive aircraft is targeted to the emergent élitized adventure tourism market, in expansion in the last years thanks to economical growth and the scientific advances pioneered by Kerbal Space Program, now made available for the free Entrepreneurs willing to venture into niche markets while the technologies are still too expensive for the mass market.

The vessel specifications are still undisclosed, to be available on the end of the Promotional Flight (hey, we need to test the thing first, right?).

Economical versions with cheaper and/or fewer engines will be available soon.

 

Our first destination, Kerman Lake!

Home of some of the best private researches of the Space Industry, are also available for visiting by a few, selected tourists willing to know, in situ and in advance, some of the most important scientific breaktroughs from the private sector.

Located on the bottom of a crater, the airstrip is ideal for small aircrafts and is a bit challenging for bigger, faster jets as the MDK-11 .

 

After an uneventful landing, as expected from a exquisitely crafted aircraft - already an characteristic of the L/Aerospace products, our guests line up for a promotional picture!

The kourageous tourists will spend the rest of the day and the night - waiting for the morning and the new adventures that wait them in our next destination!

Where? It's still a secret. More to come!

 

We are the L Aerospace KSP Division - a new small company trying to venture into the Aerospace business without being blown up in the process.

We came from nowhere and we don't know where we're going - but we know how to fly to there. We still have some landing surviving issues (we are working on that), but we offer an excellent life insurance for our workers and clients!

Join us. We're (mysteriously) always hiring.

[Zedwardson]

5 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1)

What is RP-1?