What did you do in KSP1 today?

ClintKenway · October 20, 2019

Playing with the new boosters

Full album

Edited October 20, 2019 by ClintKenway

Pipcard · October 20, 2019

Y55, D270 - Nebeth, Tedbus, Sonzor, Ludly, Merlin, and Tanlotte become the final crew to land at Akagi Base on Duna

Triop · October 21, 2019

Today I got a new ride.

SlinkyMcman · October 21, 2019

Daph sets up Duna outpost. 8.7km rover to the habitat.

Kchinger · October 21, 2019

Did an annoying satellite contract, 90 degrees and way out there. Then rescue contract in another strange orbit, like 6Mm and 180 inclination. No idea how they got there. Perhaps a botched Mun return.

Still not as weird as the Kerbal I rescued from a biplane cockpit orbiting Kerbin. No idea how they got there or how they weren't dead, or where the rest of the plane was.

I need to focus on science. My next goal is landing on the Mun, but I want all the instruments first, so I need some more science first. I have like 4 million credits and little science.

Zedwardson · October 21, 2019

Started RP-1 game. I suck which is awesome.

Maravone · October 21, 2019

KRASH tested the entirety of my Moon Landing mission in my RP-1 career. Everything seems in order for the real deal. Just need to wait for KCT to finish the rocket construction... Any day now...

Also landed my first Mars lander after an atmospheric entry from transplanetary speeds. It was an horribly overengineered lander, hopefully the next one will be smaller, lighter and just as capable. It looks good though. (I think)

Jeb-head-mug kerman · October 21, 2019

Didn't do much KSP today, just some simple 'housekeeping' (or orbitkeeping)? I finished working on my Scarab rocket, and docked it three times to my Space Station so I could replace the crew who have been in it for more than 10 years already. The rocket is quite small and has too much fuel and can carry 3 kerbals to LKO and back easily. It does for me what the Soyuz does for the ISS, meaning it does the dirty work! Here are some pics of the Scarab:

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Booster seperation

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docked with Impirator

Edited October 21, 2019 by Jeb-head-mug kerman

RizzoTheRat · October 21, 2019

16 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

The reborn Nexus reusable launch vehicle can loft a nearly 29t payload to LKO and return. Pictured here on its first launch, the initial design is powered by four 1000kN Boar engines (from Restock+, just a single version of the stock Twin Boar)

How big a deorbit burn are you using and how fast can you get away with deploying the grid fins?

I had a reusable SSTO in an earlier version of KSP, using 4 Mainsails, and with a 200m/s deorbit burn it was pretty successful. I found aiming to overshoot the KSC and using the airbrakes to bring the impact point back worked pretty well at getting it down within a few km of the KSC, but I needed to careful not to overheat the airbrakes. I played around with the concept a while back in 1.7 and using 4 Twin Boars I couldn't find a safe re-entry speed that would guarantee the engines not overheat and explode. I think the trouble is the heavier the payload capability, the more issues it has on re-entry due to the increased mass of the craft. I was thinking about having an inflatable heat shield that protects the engines and then jettisons before touchdown, but got round to trying it yet.

The SpaceX style flyback booster I have above is fun to play with, but in KSP a reusable SSTO is much more sensible as you don't need to mess about with addons that modify save files to all you to fly both the booster and second stage, although I am wondering if some physic range tweaking might allow a pair of flyback boosters to detach at say 10km and land before the next stage reaches Apoapsis.

Zeiss Ikon · October 21, 2019

4 hours ago, Zedwardson said:

Started RP-1 game. I suck which is awesome.

You probably want to put some kind of fins on that thing. Otherwise, it'll be prone to tumble after MECO.

'doh! Just realized that's a WAC Corporal engine. Screenshot froze the spin...

Edited October 21, 2019 by Zeiss Ikon

Zedwardson · October 21, 2019

2 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

You probably want to put some kind of fins on that thing. Otherwise, it'll be prone to tumble after MECO.

'doh! Just realized that's a WAC Corporal engine. Screenshot froze the spin...

Yep, the "Vee Mark I" is simply the tutorial rocket painted up in German paintjobs. I had the Tiny tim with some fins to spin it, and then its a WAC Corporal for boost. First launch I got to 115km, 2nd got to 170km, and third failed due to a main engine failure. (it can go over 200km, did that in KRASH)

The really hard part of launching it is avoiding vapor lock. But going from the near-stock game to RP-1 is like a entire new game.

NHunter · October 21, 2019

Today I planted a flag on Muse.

Spooky...

Apparently, there is some bug with terrain, and it starts fading into transparent at about 1km from craft. (or when you go below around 20-25km while in orbit)

Maravone · October 21, 2019

5 hours ago, Zedwardson said:

Yep, the "Vee Mark I" is simply the tutorial rocket painted up in German paintjobs. I had the Tiny tim with some fins to spin it, and then its a WAC Corporal for boost. First launch I got to 115km, 2nd got to 170km, and third failed due to a main engine failure. (it can go over 200km, did that in KRASH)

The really hard part of launching it is avoiding vapor lock. But going from the near-stock game to RP-1 is like a entire new game.

Be careful with Mean Time Before Failure in your engines though. In KRASH, Testflight is disabled by default, so you may be getting the wrong idea about feasible burn times.
Good luck! Achieving your first orbit in RP-1 is an unforgettable experience! I don't remember the first time I reached orbit in stock KSP, but I sure remember every milestone I achieved in RO/RP-1.

Cavscout74 · October 21, 2019

7 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

How big a deorbit burn are you using and how fast can you get away with deploying the grid fins?

I had a reusable SSTO in an earlier version of KSP, using 4 Mainsails, and with a 200m/s deorbit burn it was pretty successful. I found aiming to overshoot the KSC and using the airbrakes to bring the impact point back worked pretty well at getting it down within a few km of the KSC, but I needed to careful not to overheat the airbrakes. I played around with the concept a while back in 1.7 and using 4 Twin Boars I couldn't find a safe re-entry speed that would guarantee the engines not overheat and explode. I think the trouble is the heavier the payload capability, the more issues it has on re-entry due to the increased mass of the craft. I was thinking about having an inflatable heat shield that protects the engines and then jettisons before touchdown, but got round to trying it yet.

I don't remember exactly, probably somewhere around 200 m/s. The grid fins can get a little hotter than stock airbrakes - this time around, I've gotten a temp bar to appear on them but it didn't get very high. I used to launch most of my payloads on older versions of the Nexus (in 1.3.1 & 1.4.x), but got tired of spending as much time landing boosters as doing anything else - especially when I'd launch 10+ craft for an interplanetary mission, and would have to land all those boosters. It was a good design though, and it handled well going both directions, so I thought I'd recreate it. I may play with a Mastodon version as well - the compact variant should be able to fit 4 as well. I thought about trying a Mainsail version - Restock gives it a compact variant as well - but anything needing that much thrust to launch won't be able to make orbit on the Nexus launcher alone unless I add more tanks, which will just snowball into a big headache.

My career made a giant leap forward last night & this morning with the arrival of the first few craft of my manned Duna mission. There was some weirdness going on last night with KSP the required a few restarts - several craft started picking up large phantom forces when I jumped to them shortly before entering Duna's SoI. The Duna Crew Vehicle should have been the first craft of this mission to arrive, but when I jumped to it, it rapidly went from 5 hours away from the Soi to 5 days & climbing before I hastily exited KSP & restarted. It saved at the 5 day mark, so the Duna Station arrived a few days before the DCV. I had this happen two more times last night with other craft as well. I usually see this when I've been playing for a while, but I'd only been on for an hour or so when the first glitch happened, and the others happened with even less time than that. But this morning I had no issues. Anyway, here some shots of my Duna mission in progress:

Spoiler

Duna Station entering low orbit around Duna

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Duna Crew Vehicle entering Duna's SoI

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And preparing to dock with Duna Station. Kelrik the engineer EVA'd over to the crew station, first to weld the docking ports holding the hab modules and then to power up the station. While doing that, the crew was treated to their first sunrise in Duna orbit. With Scatterer, sunrise or sunset around Duna gives everything a nice blue tint

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For the crew, its just "hurry up and wait" - both the Duna & Ike landers are several weeks away. This whole mission was strange - between the phantom force glitch last night, to just the fact that craft that performed their transfer maneuvers over the course of maybe 3 days are arriving over the span of nearly 2 months. Until then, the Duna & Ike survey satellites arrived and entered polar orbits around their respective targets

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Finally, the Ike mining outpost arrived in Ike orbit. I ran out of time to pick a landing spot - the highest ore concentrations were on the night side, so I decided to wait & find a spot another time

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While the first Duna craft were arriving, I had one of my Eve rovers & the Gilly Sojourner-Surveyor probe both arrived.

Spoiler

Gilly Surveyor safely landed - at least until a gust of solar wind blows it away

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Gilly Sojourner probe in a near-polar orbit

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Eve remote rover in low orbit. The landing went smoothly (especially compared to the first attempt) but due to being on the night side, no good shots were available

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I also built & launched a double LKO rescue craft to recover a pair of scientists. Mounts two expendable mini-klaws. It captures the first rescue craft, the rescuee transfers to the Palici pod and the klaw & derelict pod are jettisoned to self-destruct while the rescue craft boosts back to a higher orbit to plot the next rendezvous

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After jettisoning the second klaw & derelict, the Palici pod prepares for reentry with the two rescuees on board.

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Finally, a new Mun outpost was landed near my old one. No crew has been sent yet, but the plan is to clean up the old outpost & have the new one for limited refueling capability

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Zeiss Ikon · October 21, 2019

8 hours ago, Zedwardson said:

Yep, the "Vee Mark I" is simply the tutorial rocket painted up in German paintjobs. I had the Tiny tim with some fins to spin it, and then its a WAC Corporal for boost. First launch I got to 115km, 2nd got to 170km, and third failed due to a main engine failure. (it can go over 200km, did that in KRASH)

The really hard part of launching it is avoiding vapor lock. But going from the near-stock game to RP-1 is like a entire new game.

Not sure what tutorial you're referring to -- and I never went through the tutorials anyway -- in the base game I jumped right in after finding instructions for making orbit in the demo, and when I came over to RP-1 I started right off with WAC Corporal, A-4, and Bumper (I was familiar with those rockets fifty-plus years ago).

The trick with a Tiny Tim is to hot stage the sustainer -- I think it was Nathan Kell who I saw starting the booster, and sustainer and releasing the launch clamp simultaneously. Only 2.6 seconds until you need to stage, the sustainer takes a third of that to come up to thrust, and if the WAC Corporal is already burning, you won't have a big deceleration from air drag after burnout, so you can stage a few tenths of a second late without a shutdown (stage early and you'll still have trouble).

Of course, when you make a Bumper (WAC Corporal on top of an A-4) you'll have to manage ullage differently. Lots of options there.

I'm surprised your sustainer doesn't tumble anyway, without fins -- you must have hit just the right spin rate. Too slow, and the aero forces on the nose will push it over (and the angular momentum will produce a flat spin); too fast and the engine will shut down because the propellants fall to the outer surface of the tank and don't cover the feed lines.

eddiew · October 21, 2019

Fresh 1.8 with (currently) no mods. Sending a probe to the Mun proved too challenging for the 30 part limit of the basic VAB, so we had to send something less complicated: Jeb.

Surprisingly, he did a respectable job of piloting an unwieldy rocket to low munar orbit without so much as a manoeuvre node. From here, a stir of public interest led to a boost in funding that allowed us to employ a mathematician to plot his route back home.

Despite not landing and only carrying 2 basic science units, Jeb managed to bring 135 data points back home, opening up the next phase of rocketry research.

(If anyone can recommend an alternative to imgur, I'd like to hear about it. I can't understand their new UI at all )

Fizwalker · October 21, 2019

On 10/11/2019 at 7:18 AM, capi3101 said:

Me, I use KER to pick my landing spots...if it's telling me the slope is a bit much, I just drift it a bit until the numbers become a little more civilized. Kerbnet's another way of doing it if you want to be stock about it; you just focus in your field of vision relatively tight - say within ten degrees - of the area you're interested in and look at the elevation. If it doesn't deviate too much, the area's relatively flat; you can then mark it with a waypoint and it'll show up just like if you were doing a survey in the area.

And then if you're truly desperate, Kerbal Konstructs. Flatten that sucker ahead of time. Is that cheatsy? Oh yeah...

(1.6.1) After a relatively mediocre day on Wednesday (car's fixed at a cost of US$ 1k, BTW), yesterday was much improved. I began my day by having LSC House Harkonnen break orbit over Pol and warp to Jool to pick up speed for a final warp to Kerbin. The ship arrived at Kerbin at a speed of 3,214.1 m/s and only required one warp-back to bleed off the remaining speed to settle into a 502.7 x 348.8 kilometer, 1.69° inclined orbit. Once in orbit, the G-LOC 7a that the staff at the Petrobas 36 outpost on Pol had been printed up and that Harkonnen had brought to Kerbin undocked and began lowering its orbit in preparation for entry. Shortly thereafter, Gilligan also undocked from Harkonnen having returned from her tourist run to the Joolian system, burning for an intercept and plane alignment with space station Kerbinport. Flight time to intercept was eighteen minutes, and at the intercept point Gilligan performed a burn to rendezvous with Kerbinport fifty minutes later. While waiting for the rendezvous, I went ahead and performed the final de-orbit of the G-LOC.

Grab your screenie now, cuz the damn thing's coming down at night again...

The G-LOC affected a successful landing in the ocean 84 kilometers to the east of KSC; Trajectories decided to take a nap right at atmospheric interface, otherwise I probably could've hit the space center proper. The craft's entry brought the current exploration contract to a close. I would've dealt with replacement contracts right away, but I had received word from the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe that the printing of the planned Laythe shipyard was finally complete, so it was off to Baker. The outpost transferred fuel to the shipyard's booster and engineer Jubald Kerman finally said goodbye to her colleagues and boarded it, as her permanent post was finally ready to go.

TLY launch. Actually need the fairing this time; kinda concerns me that the SAFER reactors are sticking through the fairing...might wanta fix that one of these days.

Launch and orbital manuevering was a success, with the Tradidit Lestum Yards establishing themselves in a 101.4 x 100.3 kilometer, 0.15° inclined orbit over Laythe (tradidit lestum means "lathe" in Latin - get it? Yeah, it's stupid.). Jubald activated the SAFER reactors and brought the station's mass driver on-line. I need to get back there soon to supply the station and to get Jubald working on a Da Luv Boht 7 rescue craft for Laythe; had the idea that such a craft could be used for space station Laytheport's mass driver...if I get that done, major construction at Laythe will be at a close.

Next on the schedule of events was the arrival of Gilligan at Kerbinport.

Traffic pattern at Kerbinport's still relatively full, especially for craft of Gilligan's size...

Gilligan docked without incident, at which point rescuee pilot Kimfrid along with seven tourists (whose names I've already erased from my log, dammit) from three different contracts boarded the Auk VII 16-passenger plane docked at the station. The Auk then departed and deorbited for landing at KSC.

The one bit about the NavUtilities mod that makes me nervous everytime - I have to fly right past Mt. Killakerbal on the approach. You get within 100 meters of scraping the mountain if you're on the proper glide slope...

A good way to finish up four contracts at once.

The plane had a fairly beautiful landing at KSC 09, bringing four contracts to a close simultaneously. I finished out my day yesterday with four easily wrapped-up contracts: engineer Matdon Kerman at the Caue Serpente Yards over Eve transmitted a crew report for a contract, engineer Macnie Kerman at the Samwell Tarly Yards over Gilly did the same, and I wrapped up a pair of ore-hauling jobs, one between Pol and Jool, the other between Mun and Kerbin. Nine contracts all wrapped up yesterday...

So far today after grabbing replacement contracts (lots of ore hauling but also the go-ahead to orbit Tylo), I've been busying myself with operations at Minmus; Next Objective and Necessary Evil delivered fifteen colonists to space station Minmusport on Wednesday (about the only thing that happened), so I began the process of getting them back to LSV House Atreides (in a funky orbit) for the ride back to Kerbin. Both ships have departed Minmusport, flipped their orbital orientation to retrograde (about a 300 m/s maneuver each) and set up intercepts with Atreides. The Crater Maker 7 15-passenger lander itself has left Minmusport with a full load of colonists, and will be making its way to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface at the earliest opportunity. Lander operations are the first thing on my agenda next opportunity I get to play. When I get the lander down and offload the colonists, all of the extant contracts I had yesterday will be buttoned up and/or completed except for a survey near the Echo 4 quadcopter on Eve, which I'll probably go ahead and take care of. Then it'll be time to begin planning for some of these new contracts.

Probably need to get LSV House Corrino over to Tylo with a ScanSat and some comm satellites. I'm go for orbit; means I need to start scouting out potential base sites...

Very cool pics! What mods are you using for your bases?

capi3101 · October 21, 2019

19 minutes ago, Fizwalker said:

Very cool pics! What mods are you using for your bases?

I've gotten into the WildBlue suite of mods, mainly Pathfinder, Buffalo and MOLE. My base's are just Pathfinder (though the craft I use to deliver them to their sites also use Buffalo parts).

Fizwalker · October 22, 2019

3 hours ago, capi3101 said:

I've gotten into the WildBlue suite of mods, mainly Pathfinder, Buffalo and MOLE. My base's are just Pathfinder (though the craft I use to deliver them to their sites also use Buffalo parts).

Awesome! Thank you very much; I'll add that to my list of mods!

Speaking of which, started a new game this evening. Pretty simple little craft, a Mk I capsule, some goo canisters a parachute.... and a Flea. Spent 7 days building it (I have KCT installed) got the A-1 onto the pad... and the booster failed to light. *Sigh* Thank you Oh Scrap..... >.< Ah well, we shall see what the next launch attempts bring.

Edit: The 6th attempt, the booster lit off and Sidlun became the first Kerbal to be spam in a can over the shores east of the space center!!

Edited October 22, 2019 by Fizwalker

Zedwardson · October 22, 2019

8 hours ago, Maravone said:

Be careful with Mean Time Before Failure in your engines though. In KRASH, Testflight is disabled by default, so you may be getting the wrong idea about feasible burn times.
Good luck! Achieving your first orbit in RP-1 is an unforgettable experience! I don't remember the first time I reached orbit in stock KSP, but I sure remember every milestone I achieved in RO/RP-1.

In stock KSP I just recall I sent a Kerbal into Helocentric orbit before I figured out how to make a orbit.

I look at KRASH as "highest theoretical" launch...

5 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

Not sure what tutorial you're referring to -- and I never went through the tutorials anyway -- in the base game I jumped right in after finding instructions for making orbit in the demo, and when I came over to RP-1 I started right off with WAC Corporal, A-4, and Bumper (I was familiar with those rockets fifty-plus years ago).

The trick with a Tiny Tim is to hot stage the sustainer -- I think it was Nathan Kell who I saw starting the booster, and sustainer and releasing the launch clamp simultaneously. Only 2.6 seconds until you need to stage, the sustainer takes a third of that to come up to thrust, and if the WAC Corporal is already burning, you won't have a big deceleration from air drag after burnout, so you can stage a few tenths of a second late without a shutdown (stage early and you'll still have trouble).

Of course, when you make a Bumper (WAC Corporal on top of an A-4) you'll have to manage ullage differently. Lots of options there.

I'm surprised your sustainer doesn't tumble anyway, without fins -- you must have hit just the right spin rate. Too slow, and the aero forces on the nose will push it over (and the angular momentum will produce a flat spin); too fast and the engine will shut down because the propellants fall to the outer surface of the tank and don't cover the feed lines.

the spin was something that took a long time to work on, I am going to start a new save tonight and put the spin fins on the WAC portion and I bet I won't have the issues I had with the original design. the main differnece of the 130km and 170km lauch was I timed the spin better.

The "Tutorial" is on the RP-1 webpage on "How to get a working sounding rocket" and mostly goes over the various tricks you can do so you get used to the very different structure of the game from stock.

Servo · October 22, 2019

I've been a bit of a denizen of the SPH for a long time. I decided a few weeks ago to challenge myself to do several things I'd never done before, including:

not give up on a career save after the first Kerbal death
Land/return from somewhere outside the Kerbin system

Complete the tech tree

Visit somewhere other than Duna or Eve

I'm most of the way into the tech tree, after a relatively efficient path through it (as near as I can tell). Spoilers have the missions up to the ones I flew today:

Spoiler

It started as a pretty standard career, until this happened:

This was my first attempt at an orbital rocket. Keen-eyed career players among you may notice the problem: it was complete overkill

So Jeb did a flyby of Minmus...

I reflew a similar mission to the Mun, but actually brought science equipment. This was another absolute coup for science.

The next step was a Minmus lander. Bob suited up and got into the capsule, before realizing that he had no SAS control.

Remarkably, he managed to land on Minmus without incident. However, his luck ran out on the hop to the next biome, and he crashed into the Minmus lowlands with 500 science in the can.

At this point, the space program was in dire straits. It desperately needed to complete the Minmus contracts, but only had enough money for the Minmus lander OR another scientist. After some frantic completion of some WORK NEEDED signs outside the KSC, a total of less than 500 funds was left in the KSC's Kredit account when Landos and his rocket hit the pad.

Fortunately for everyone involved, the mission was a resounding success, and brought back all of the investors who were most of the way out the door.

After a short foray into station-building, the KSC turned their eyes towards Duna...

The Long Road to Duna:

KSC's best engineering interns were tasked with designing the Duna return mission, and they came up with a hideously complex mission profile to visit Duna and Ike in a single mission, requiring a total of no less than 6 aerocaptures, 4 rendezvouses, the transfer of cans of fuel between spacecraft, and the coordination of two spacecraft on interplanetary trajectories. Rather than fail the interns right away, the KSC admins decided that it would be prudent to test out such a mission and spacecraft on a nearer target. The Mun had not yet been landed on, and would be a perfect proof of concept for the mission.

Thus, Magellan 0 was launched, with Jeb, Landos, and Bill aboard.

The mission had the arduous mission of ensuring that all of the delta-v calculations were accurate and ensuring the stability of the launch vehicle, before attempting a pair of landings on the moon to simulate biome-hopping on Ike or Duna.

Landos was also tasked with figuring out how to use the newfangled science tech that the Kerbal Science Agency had given them. He found out quickly that they hadn't packed enough solar panels, and made a mental note to tell the engineers back at KSC to put more in the Duna mission boxes. After a short hop to the neighboring biome, he rendezvoused the mothership to head home.

While the mission could have conceivably continued until all biomes on the Mun had been reached, the Duna transfer window was coming up quickly, and Jeb was getting bored. Seeing as he was sitting on enough delta-V to make the transfer right then and there, he was wisely recalled from the Mun with the others to debrief and prepare for Magellan 1.

.... but not before another ill-fated attempt at station-building. Seeing a lucrative contract, the engineers decided to throw together a new station to replace the obsolete Roanoake station, which to date, had never been crewed. Unfortunately, the launcher was aerodynamically unstable. Fortunately, that meant that it was able to safely land in the water several Kilometers off the coast of the KSC. Embarrassed, but not deterred, the crew dutifully fished the station out of the water, slapped some fins on the rocket, and relaunched it.