What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Guest]

Second fatality in my limited-reloads, no-reverts career. Wenlan Kerman was returning from a scientific flight on a Sargasso LR spaceplane. The only exceptional condition was that the plane was carrying about a quarter fuel, so she was a bit heavy. She was coming in for a landing, pulling S's to bleed off speed when she lost control at low altitude, stalled, and went nose first into the ground. Most of the plane survived but regrettably not the command pod with Wenlan in it. Stupid, unnecessary casualty.

[Kchinger]

1 minute ago, Brikoleur said:

Second fatality in my limited-reloads, no-reverts career. Wenlan Kerman was returning from a scientific flight on a Sargasso LR spaceplane. The only exceptional condition was that the plane was carrying about a quarter fuel, so she was a bit heavy. She was coming in for a landing, pulling S's to bleed off speed when she lost control at low altitude, stalled, and went nose first into the ground. Most of the plane survived but regrettably not the command pod with Wenlan in it. Stupid, unnecessary casualty.

If you're using mods, smart parts has a fuel bleed valve you could use to get rid of excess weight. 

[RealKerbal3x]

I built an SLS complete with Orion spacecraft, despite my I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it attitude towards that particular rocket...

The fancy plumes are from Realplume. I highly recommend it, because its plumes are far superior to the stock ones.  Big shout out to @Zorg for keeping it maintained!

I even created the ICPS, with its multitude of struts. Moar fancy plumes!

Hullo Mun!

Back home safe.

Edited November 12, 2019 by RealKerbal3x

[Retro Starship]

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

Most of the plane survived but regrettably not the command pod with Wenlan in it.

There must a huge cemetery somewhere on the planet Kerban!

R.I.P Wenlan.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Kchinger said:

If you're using mods, smart parts has a fuel bleed valve you could use to get rid of excess weight. 

This is a no-mods (other than KER) career.

[DStaal]

7 minutes ago, Saturn5tony said:

There must a huge cemetery somewhere on the planet Kerban!

R.I.P Wenlan.

I'm pretty sure Kerbals cremate their dead.  Usually with a bonfire, explosions, and fireworks.

[airtrafficcontroller]

My first fly-by on the Mun with the new terrain shader.

What a beautiful job they did!

Spoiler

 

[pmborg]

Testing this aerodynamic marble

Pilot saying, I swear that I will takeoff and I will try to keep, the number of takeoffs equal to landings.

DeltaV of 72k m/s is enough

https://kerbalx.com/pmborg/spit2A

 

Edited November 12, 2019 by pmborg

[Cavscout74]

My career saw my recently captured class E asteroid arrive in it's final orbit and I got my load of tourists in the new 16 passenger Titan lander through Minmus & Mun landings, then back to Kerbin. 

Once the capture vehicles fill up their tanks, at least one - possibly both - will be detached to be used on some other asteroid in the future.  Currently, I'm waiting on a craft to finish building that will bring up equipment to start turning this into an asteroid station

Titan lander landing on Minmus near my mining base

And leaving the Mun (and its landing gear) behind

Due to some issues with the launcher, a bit more dV was used than planned to reach orbit.  I still ended up with just barely enough – I hit Kerbin’s atmosphere with 33 m/s remaining out of ~2800 in the lander.   I didn’t even count what I made from the trip, but it was a nice chunk of funds.

 

I went back again to revisit a few aircraft designs to improve on them.  First up was my maritime reconnaissance plane, renamed as the CR-03 Trident.  The magnetometer in the tail was replaced with a different version.  It doesn’t do anything in flight, just for looks.  I also made a few minor tweaks, then buzzed around the islands for a bit.  I think I need to add a searchlight or two but otherwise I’m pretty happy with it.

Next up was my CB-02 Bear.  Nothing major, just added RATO and tweaked the cluster bomb position in the bomb bay and added one more ring of 4 round fuel tanks to the cluster bomb.

The little dark puff of smoke is where the bursting charge separated all the round tanks to fall freely, which are barely visible just before the tracking station

Last up before calling it a day was a quick hop around KSC in my CF-07 Talon fighter.  I really like the handling and looks of this jet, so I've been ending just about every KSP session lately with a quick hop in it.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Cavscout74

[Guest]

I improved the "Skua" Duna tilt-rotor. I added a second pair of fans inside the ducts, modified the airfoil, and changed the way the fans attach to the craft. The results are pretty impressive: I got it past 8400 m altitude on Duna, which is enough to clear its highest peak. On Kerbin its hover ceiling is over 14 km. 

On Kerbin it is an utter beast to handle because of the obscene amount of power the fans produce, theyp ractically rip the wings off if you're not careful, and the wing flex will most likely cause all kinds of interesting situations most likely ending up in a crater. On Duna though it is a quiet, docile little craft. I might actually want to fly it there in a career mission just because tooling around with it there is fun.

The craft on KerbalX is updated with the new version.

 

[Retro Starship]

Tonight, I got my skycar over to the mountains way over to the north-east. Just running around looking for stuff. (was trying to go somewhere else for a contract but did not make it that far..hehe) and found this crystal on the edge of the mountain. What is it for?

[ezaroo]

33 minutes ago, Saturn5tony said:

Tonight, I got my skycar over to the mountains way over to the north-east. Just running around looking for stuff. (was trying to go somewhere else for a contract but did not make it that far..hehe) and found this crystal on the edge of the mountain. What is it for?

Scan it with the robotic science arms from breaking ground to get science points! It’s one of the surface features from BG.

[Zeiss Ikon]

8 hours ago, Saturn5tony said:

(1.8.1) Nothing big last night, just had to test out the RE-L10 "Poodle" Liquid Fuel Engine up above 70km. I was a large engine so a bit of a bulge in my rocket was required. This was in the 4th tier of career mode I am doing. I think there is a medical term in how this rocket looks shape wise... 

Looks to me like black snake that swallowed a biggish rat.

[Triop]

Today, we fixed the truck we found yesterday.

[SlinkyMcman]

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

Looks to me like black snake that swallowed a biggish rat.

or a smallish elephant

[Kchinger]

Well, I managed to land the Minmus Rover Miner. Only took two tries. First one rolled a bit off axis so I couldn't control it with the Thuds and it slammed onto its side. 

Definitely harder to drive in the low gravity. It wants to flip and roll if I'm not gentle.

Drove over to the ore lander about 2 km away, set up for mining, and quickly realized I had two issues. 

1. I had a pilot, not an engineer. I had tested on Kerbin with an engineer, but somehow ended up with a pilot on the pad. This isn't the first time this has happened, I need to get in the habit of checking my crew on the pad to be sure. 

2. I had never used the KAS transfer station before, and didn't realize how it worked. I thought you used two hose things to attach, I never saw the socket piece, so I can't connect them. 

So, another opportunity! 

Got a contract for a Minmus base and a Kerbin rescue. So I built a lander with a big 4 person module plus an MPL. I'll grab one scientist from orbit rescue, then I've included an engineer with the sockets and tools to fix the existing ships, another scientist, and a pilot. My current pilot on Minmus will round out the necessary crew for the contract, I'll get my hose stuff fixed, and send the ore back. 

How will I get all of those people from the new Minmus station back to Kerbin? Maybe I won't, I dunno. They can level up from there, they can reach orbit without even needing a ship, and fuel ferries will be landing anyway that they can hitch a ride on maybe. 

The base is in LKO, ready to rendezvous with the rescue, and should easily reach Minmus surface tomorrow. Needs a much more precise landing since it isn't a Rover. 

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) For a while there yesterday, I didn't think I was going to have much to talk to y'all about today, but it turned out to be fairly eventful after all.

After Monday's failures with the launch of the Woodsy Owl 7 junk-ascent-from-Eve craft, I began my day at the VAB addressing the inherent flaws in the design. From the launch of space station Tyloport over the weekend, I'd learned that it was worthwhile to put Sepratrons on remote launch vehicles as they would be filled miraculously with solid fuel during construction, so Woodsy Owl received some. I decided some test flights were in order though, and it was a good thing; on the first test flight, I had the Sepratrons up too high and the boosters slammed into the core for loss-of-vehicle again. Moved those down and on the second try the vehicle made it to orbit over Kerbin at under 1/3 thrust with fuel still in the third booster pair, which is what you want to see with an Eve launch vehicle test.

Redesign work complete, I next had the task of removing Module L-H50 from the Woodsy Owl at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve. The job again fell to pilot Lerod Kerman and engineer Taning Kerman, since they were the ones that had attached the module to the launch vehicle in the first place.

Taning running out to the Woodsy Owl while Lerod stands someplace not entirely safe. "Wait, that's not an owl that cares about pollution! It's the Goblin King!!"

A complication arose in that Woodsy Owl had taken out ALK's launchpad; the loss of the pad put the payload just out of reach of the two kerbals. Fortunately, Taning had the bright idea to go grab one of the two ladders off of the Echo 3 quadcopter nearby and attach it to the Woodsy Owl's service bay (i.e. where the paywad was).

A normal ladder...not something out of an M.C. Escher painting, fortunately...

Both kerbals ultimately had to climb the ladder to get the payload out and at one point it was necessary to attach it to the bottom of an engine bell, but eventually it did get detached from the rocket successfully.

I think Lerod finally realized just where exactly she was standing. Taning seems unconcerned at least...

Once the module was detached and Taning reattached the ladder to Echo 3, she went ahead and entered the outpost, with Lerod closely following suit. It then fell to engineer Gilford Kerman, the only 4-star engineer at ALK, to get rid of the unneeded, flawed booster.

"You have no power over me, Jareth!!!"

That job done, ALK's crew set about with repairing the damage done to the base with this whole fiasco. A new Rangeland launch pad was printed up along with a new night-vision camera for Echo 3, both of which Taning deployed.

Taning wanted a selfie in green. Which is kind of odd considering she's green in all of her selfies...you know, because she's...a......kerbal.........I'ma gonna shut up now.

Once that's done and Taning had returned to ALK's factory module, I ordered up a redesigned Woodsy Owl at ALK. Construction is expected to take 25.5 hours to complete.

Finally at the point where I didn't have to be at ALK anymore, my attention turned to the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo, where construction of a Minnow 7b with ground booster had completed. The new craft, which my middle child christened Tango 3 (despite the fact that it's not a rover) was fueled and proceeded to launch from Usumacinta, successfully attaining a 100 kilometer orbit after thirteen minutes of flight.

Landing on Tylo is difficult, but launches just need Kerbin-rated boosters; I could do those in my sleep. T3 entering orbit.

Once in orbit, Tango 3 aligned with LSV House Corrino in higher orbit over Tylo and then burned for an intercept, reaching that intercept point 31 minutes later where it conducted a burn to take it to rendezvous. Flight time to rendezvous will be two hours and fifteen minutes.

Today should be plenty eventful. Picked up a contract to put a satellite in orbit of Pol, so I'll likely be firing up the Non Pollinis Grano shipyard in orbit first thing this morning. Also got a mission to haul junk off the surface of Minmus; going to start attending to that soon. Roy Hinkley is almost to Gilly; I expect to be able to finish up the tourist run there today, and then maybe get Hinkley heading back to low Eve orbit and rendezvous with LSV House Atreides for the journey back to Kerbin depending on how everything goes. House Corrino is scheduled to leave orbit for Kerbin as soon as Tango 3 docks up. Tango 3 will not be staying in service - she'll help me finish up the current Tylo exploration mission and then conduct a rescue mission over Kerbin before deorbiting. Only other things I've got cooking right now are an expansion module for Ikeport still under construction and what I hope to be the final burn of a satellite in orbit of Duna right now. I'll let y'all know how things go tomorrow morning.

[duesenmilan]

22 hours ago, Saturn5tony said:

There must a huge cemetery somewhere on the planet Kerban!

R.I.P Wenlan.

There is a mod for this, you know. Not mine!

https://www.curseforge.com/kerbal/ksp-mods/eterno-rest-2000-space-coffin-continued

 

On other news, I finally got some time to start a new career game in 1.8.1 after like 6 months of hiatus.

So far I have nothing special to report, but got to space on second flight and might have got orbital, if I did not stage those glorious new boosters to early.

[Nezclaw]

still working on rescuing jeb. Bill and Bob are hard at work extracting fuel from the Munar surface.

I also sent an experimental craft to minmus to look around, only i accidentally sent an engineer and a pilot instead of a scientist and a pilot.

[Kchinger]

1 hour ago, Nezclaw said:

 

I also sent an experimental craft to minmus to look around, only i accidentally sent an engineer and a pilot instead of a scientist and a pilot.

So I'm not the only one having crew management issues. 

Maybe I need to hire a manager to keep all these people straight and get them on the correct ships.

[Cavscout74]

I had two major projects going today - first was launching what amounted to a pile of parts to start making my asteroid into a space station.  It kept my engineer busy attaching parts with KAS, but I got most of what I wanted done with this craft.  I did lose a radiator panel and a truss section to space unfortunately.  There will be more launches to finish the station - at least one more parts craft, plus at least two major components (a crew section and an ISRU section).  The crew section is nearly ready to launch, followed by another parts craft in a few days.  I haven't even designed the ISRU module yet, and I really need to redesign the parts craft so I can keep part of it attached for fuel storage.

Parts craft getting ready to perform transfer maneuver

First step was to attach everything close to the parts craft, then one by one move them out to better locations.  Due to the actual surface being below the visible surface almost everywhere, the trusses are needed to keep parts visible when attached to the asteroid

Everything mostly in place.  The radiators could be clustered together but I had to spread out the solar panels to ensure coverage

Once I was done with station building, I took up my CF-07 and flew it from KSC to the desert airstrip the long way.  It flew nicely and only burned about 2/3 of its fuel (including drop tank).  This marked the longest atmospheric flight I've ever made in KSP - done plenty of trips from KSC to the desert strip the short way, and plenty to the north pole, but never this way before

Sunset over the ocean

Making landfall again

Over the desert - getting close now

On the ground

Edited November 14, 2019 by Cavscout74

[NHunter]

Landed on Julia:

[Triop]

Today, we chopped and dropped.

[Thygrrr]

 

I finished my Ike Space Station.

Mission album: https://imgur.com/a/hcsBSGs (over 75 pics and vids)

 

13 Launches

4 Launch Vehicles

66 Mods installed, including USI Life Support

HARD game preset, but with some difficulty tweaks

(120% reentry heating, but also double DSN Range, and allow Saving and Loading because by Kerman, this game glitches a lot)

Edited November 14, 2019 by Thygrrr

[nelso]

I spent many hours messing with gravity assists, trying to optimize a kerbin-eve-eve-jool path (and other paths) using a reasonable time, like under 10 years.  Discovering orbital inclination is the real enemy, and also that KSP is just not good at planning these maneuvers even with advanced transfer planner.  The new node editor in the lower left is a nice improvement though, and I've learned to place nodes an orbit or 3 ahead to see future close approaches, and adjust the impending gravity assist off eve.  I'm not nearly the levels of Bradley Whistance and thinking I'd rather just spend the extra 1000 m/s to get a straight encounter with jool.

Screenshots are by luck getting an almost perfect gravity assist from laythe.  The jool system is pretty fun, getting gravity assists by accident rather than fine-tuning encounters.