What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Guest]

I still haven't decided what to do next in my career, so I've just been tooling around with experimental craft. Updated the Skua -- I downgraded the way OP motors to something more reasonable, which makes it fly acceptably on Kerbin also. I'm working on a variant of it which is intended to be the ultimate Duna science exploration machine -- full science plus heavy scanning arm, command pod with room for one scientist but with advanced avionics so he can fly the thing. Refining it. With the lower mass it works supremely well there. 

In case any others are interested in making electric Duna flyers, here's a tip: there really is only one good propulsion solution for it. It's the 2.5 metre ducted fan, with two stacked light-duty rotors with eight blades each in them, both powered and contra-rotating. The limiting factor on Duna isn't power, it's the prop fill factor, and you need to get as many blades in there spinning as fast as possible to produce the thrust/lift you need. 

The good news is that this solution works pretty nicely at least for relatively light craft. You'd need massive numbers of them to get a heavy plane working but I think even that ought to be doable. Good job @SQUAD on the ducted fans -- they really fill a niche, and look pretty cool too!

As to my career... yeah, I don't know. I've got a nice operation going around Duna and around Vall, and the Vall station could theoretically do something of a grand tour with the exception of Tylo and Eve. But I don't know if I feel like a grand tour.

Alternatively I could start thinking of surface bases on Laythe and Duna. But I'm not really keen on that either, there's something of the "been there, done that" with them as I've done both in previous careers. 

[TanDeeJay]

Got my Space Hotel module docked to my space station.

Come one come all to enjoy a nice 1000k journey above Kerbin.

The luxurious cabins have plenty of space for you and your family! 

With your own personal docking port you can park your space ship right outside your accommodation. 

 Why not bring your friends families as well!  book now!  Only 100000 Kerbal Bucks per Kerbal!

Wanting to visit the Mun? Or maneuver on Minimus? Or take a jaunt to Jool? Or been ever thinking about Eve?  Then this is the perfect stop off for you!  Refuel your ship while you enjoy one last night of luxury before you head out into the cold dark universe.

 

 

The offset alignment of the inner vs outer docking ports proved to be an issue when trying to align all the parts once in orbit, but I will try out the docrotate mod suggested by @Dave7 in another thread to fix the alignment.

 

[DylanSemrau]

11 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

Had some time to do a little tinkering with 1.8 and tested out a new mod to go with it - "Completely Non-Aggressive Rocketry"   @DylanSemrau  did a beautiful job on his V-2 & WAC Corporal.

Nice. I’d suggest you use the texture switch for the first stage if you’re gonna make a bumper, looks far better imo. Also the lil wings on the second stage are too high, you can see where they should be on the engine’s shroud.

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Another fairly minimal day to report; hoping RL calms down soon so I can get more time to play. Isolating which mod is leaking memory in torrents would be nice as well...

Began my day yesterday at the Infans Calcitrant Yards over Ike, where construction of the Moneybux 7 expansion module for space station Ikeport was complete. The module was loaded up with fuel supplies from the shipyard's stores and launched.

Another day, another piece of garbage I have to add to a space station to increase the lag...

The module burned for an intercept with Ikeport. Originally that was to take place twenty minutes later, but unfortunately I forgot to set a KAC alarm apparently...it was a couple of orbits before I got around to performing the burn for rendezvous. At least I was able to get it plane-aligned with the target...

After clearing a filament jam from the 3D printer at the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo, it was time for Tango 3's rendezvous with LSV House Corrino over Tylo. The craft performed a successful rendezvous and closed to within five meters of the warp ship before coming to relative station-keeping. At that point, Val left G. Grant docked to Corrino for a brief spacewalk.

Val mooning the camera.

Val boarded Tango 3 and went ahead and put it into the dock before transferring back to G. Grant. Her spacewalk cleared half of the current exploration contract; at this point Corrino is cleared for departure as soon as I can get a sufficiently large window to focus on the warp. With luck, probably today sometime...

From that I went back to Usumacinta and ordered up two Castillo Depots again (that's what got jammed in the printer), sticking with the outpost this time until they were done. Engineer Madorf Kerman went on EVA when they were complete and loaded their steamer trunks to the Tango 1 rover, then got in the driver's seat to find a spot to deploy them. The outpost had sufficient available supplies to inflate one of them immediately upon attachment and allowed Madorf to at least attach the other one; inflating that one took a little bit of time for the outpost to prep up more Konkrete. I was able to inflate the second depot by the end of the day, with the end goal being sufficient storage of Rocket Parts for the orbital shipyard currently under construction at the base as well as sufficient fuel to launch the damn thing...

Realized I'd goofed with the Moneybux about the time I was pulling the Depots off the printer, so that's where i went next. At the next pass at the intercept point a burn for rendezvous took place, with said rendezvous occurring 75 minutes later. The module was successfully docked to the station and the transfer stage was discarded and deorbited. At this point, to finish up the contract that required the module in the first place, I'll have to transfer up 4000 Rocket Parts to Ikeport, an easy mass driver shot from the Scan Queen outpost on the surface. That's liable to be first thing that happens next session.

Between the Moneybux's burn and its arrival at Ikeport, I conducted a third and final burn of the Boop-Boop 7x probe I've had over Duna most of this past week, putting it in a 4,182.1 by 3,638.3 kilometer, 178.81° inclined orbit. This burn put it close enough to the target parameters to complete its contract. The Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus also completed its print of a Spamcan 7 Bop-A self-refueling 2-passenger monopropellant lander; after fueling, pilot Johnler Kerman and engineer Deston Kerman boarded the new craft and took off, landing near the target Part G991D, which turned out to be a Mk-3 to 2 Adapter tank. Owing to the size of the part, the two kerbals have rather wisely opted to remain on the surface until daylight to try to mount it to the lander. Meantime they'll be attempting to refuel their craft - the drills are (once again) giving them some issues...

Aside from the aforementioned probable activities (namely sending Rocket Parts to Ikeport and House Corrino going back to Kerbin), today I'm liable to be continuing to get Roy Hinkley to space station Gillyport; I got the craft plane aligned but it'll be two more hours before she hits her rendezvous point. I've got garbage to haul off of Minmus, which will hopefully happen before the probe that'll take it from Minmus orbit over to Kerbin is ready to launch; that's coming up soon. Longer term, I've got a probe over Pol that'll make its first maneuver to a target orbit in several hours, and the launch of the remodeled Woodsy Owl 7 from Eve is on the horizon, as is the Tylo shipyard. I've also got an orbital rescue mission to conduct at Kerbin once House Corrino arrives. I'm hopeful that Tango 3's safe delivery to Kerbin's surface will unlock one of the three remaining worlds of the system for exploration and colonization. I'll let y'all know what happens over the weekend on Monday morning, time permitting of course...

[Retro Starship]

Again, doing a bit more flying this week than rocket launches. Did this one last night. For some reason, I get quite alot of low altitude (below 18km) type of contracts recently and most are really far away. Got Val to take some pressure readings over in Africa. I really need to save Gralo tho, shes been up there in orbit all week, as well as Bardo! lol

 

[Guest]

Surveyed Laythe. The plane transfers to and from polar orbit were much more expensive than I thought -- probably should've bounced off Tylo -- so I ended up having to do a refueling mission to Vall afterwards. But got it done. I still don't have my launch profile from Vall sorted, I went low again and had to take some manoeuvring losses. Still made it to the station with 150 m/s to spare.

[woeller]

A Starlink-ish Mission where the Booster will perform its landing burn automatically... no Mechjeb and no KOS.

 

[Nezclaw]

9 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

The simplest stategy is to launch from KSC directly into the very same plane.  There are some good video tutorials on this.

When the target asteroid is inside the Kerbin SOI, set it as target, wait until KSC is under the target trajectory (Map View); launch and pitch over on the appropriate heading.  Bear in mind that inclination is relative to East and compass headings are relative to North, so a mental adjustment is required.  Map View gives a decent picture.

aight, thanks that's about what i figured.

in other news, i managed to botch a rendezvous in high Kerbin orbit twice by fat fingering the staging. it wasn't even the rendezvous. it was the return craft supposed to bring Val home. At that point i realized i should probably stop playing KSP and just go to bed.

in retrospect, coupling the craft with docking ports on the late stages may not have been the best call.

Edited November 15, 2019 by Nezclaw
just a short addendum

[Cavscout74]

Had a day of frustration - my mining module arrived at the asteroid station, allowing the second capture vehicle to undock & head to a parking orbit for the next asteroid.  My plan to reduce part count by using weldable docking ports failed on every front. 

Mining module leaving Kerbin's atmosphere, staging the fairing.  The backwards docking port will get removed by an engineer and attached (with KAS) directly to the asteroid.  Then (the plan anyway) was to dock normally and have the engineer weld the docking ports, eliminating them from the part count & making a solid joint.  Unfortunately, that didn't work - apparently, when attached directly to an asteroid, the ports won't weld. 

Then my engineer spent very nearly too much time rearranging other parts on the surface of the asteroid before realizing I was low on EVA fuel and hadn't grabbed a KIS fuel tank to bring with me.  This is probably the closest I've ever come to running out of fuel on EVA, just 0.04 units remaining.  And I was at least 100m from the hatch when I made my last maneuver, so I'm lucky my aim was good.

In the end, it didn't matter - I timewarped for most of the 3 days till the next maneuver (for a returning Minmus lander) and upon exiting timewarp, first the mining module exploded into pieces then the entire asteroid and everything attached came apart a few moments latter.  My last save was before the mining module docked.  Ugh. This is actually a no quickload/no revert career but I make exceptions for things like kraken attacks. 

[Delay]

Took a break from patching and instead actually played KSP!

The last time I posted on a thing I've actually done in KSP was with a crazy 5-burn maneuver to Moho. Turns out that the (expected) imprecision from actually performing a burn gave me an opportunity to do it in just 4!

Of ~4800m/s I started with I will have 900m/s after Moho capture. Not bad considering the original plan would have left me with 200! I don't know what to do with that extra dV...

[kapteenipirk]

Ok, these new brakes are pretty insane!!

 

 

On an other note, tought it'd be a fun idea to make a special version of the SeaFortress with prewar US navy colors.

[Hotel26]

On 11/16/2019 at 3:55 AM, Nezclaw said:

fat fingering the staging

Mod-L (a toggle) locks staging.  You'll see the flashing green staging light just turn constant pink and the space bar is locked.  Once you get through ascent, you can lock it (if you remember) as a kind of safety catch.

(I think that's Alt-L for Windows and Right-Shift-L for Linux.)

Edited November 17, 2019 by Hotel26

[Zeiss Ikon]

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1)

I spent all my play time the last two nights fighting with MechJeb, engine failures, RemoteTech, and orbital mechanics.

Just to be clear, as far as i can tell, all that stuff was working as designed, it just wasn't being any more cooperative that the laws of nature demand.

My third attempt at a first Lunar flyby (first for this career, my second in RSS/RO, having done it once in 1.3.1) was launched mere days before the contract was to expire, due to rushing the build a bit.  Got the spacecraft into orbit, with enough actual dV for the Lunar transfer, and every time I tried to start the burn I was out of communication (low orbit over the Pacific northeast of Australia, because that's what the Moon's position demanded).

Okay, that's why MechJeb has the ability to "execute next maneuver node" (under Mission Planning).  Unfortunately, this burn requires staging to ignite the engine (after settling ullage with RCS), and this MechJeb function won't do that automatically -- and did I mention my node was in a dead area for command contact?  Waiting in orbit for a few days for the Moon to move resulted in dead batteries.

Fortunately, I had a quick-save on the actual launch pad.

Next time, I found I could push the maneuver node back two orbits (I'd tried three on the first attempt and been in another dead spot) and be able to make my burn where one station (Guam) was able to send the staging command to the spacecraft.  MJ did its usual high precision job on the burn -- in other words, overburned by several meters per second, turned the entire craft and burned back with RCS (apparently MJ also doesn't know the RCS quads have a reverse).  I staged away the spent engine and tank and power-hungry booster avionics, stabilized the craft with the solar panels facing the sun, and started to warp out to the Moon, on course for a flyby of a few hundred kilometers (contract required less than 4000 km).  About a quarter of the way out, Science Now! notified, and I ran all the experiments on board, first time in Space High -- mass spec, Geiger counter, micrometeorite counter, temp and pressure, then started to transmit the result -- and noticed I was getting "no usable comms" messages for each experiment I tried to send.

Yep, out of range.  But I had a pair of helical omni antennas, for which "use case" is "the Moon!"  Which work a lot better if you remember to turn them on.  While you have communication via some other means.

Remember that quick save?  it was still on the launch pad.

Spent a couple launches fighting engine failures -- the AJ10-37 has a pretty poor ignition record, it seems, and is also prone to the "loss of performance" failure that halves the delta-V for the stage.

Got another launch with a good orbit, remembered to turn on the antennas, and made the insertion burn (once more, in contact with Guam only).  And then it was time for bed, in order to be awake enough to drive to work this morning.

Must have accidentally turned off "Hide UI" when I updated the title setting in Historian.  Those first-generation solar panels generate a total of about 71 W when they have maximum sun exposure -- the avionics uses 70 W.  Unfortunately, the antennas use another 5 W each, so if I remember to turn them on, I'll have dead batteries sometime after passing the Moon anyway.  I may try to set up a return trajectory to bring the spacecraft back within range of the built-in antenna in the avionics; if I can do that, and turn off the helicals after transmitting the Moon data, I'll get a fully charged spacecraft back in a couple weeks.

[Triop]

Today, I don't even no what to say, things are getting strange around here....

Edited November 16, 2019 by Triop

[GRS]

Way so late...but here's my Attempt of The Ultimate Challenge...which i've done with full seriousness and competence

Enjoy...

[Nezclaw]

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

(I think that's Ctrl-L for Windows(?) and Right-Shift-L for Linux.)

what if i'm using linux but running it in WINE? /j

anyway, i finally got Valentina and Tiul home from orbit, after much swearing, resetting, and fending off baby kraken. my to-do list includes launching the sentinel telescope into solar orbit, having bill and bob pick up jeb and return to kerbin, getting my asteroid drill launched, and figuring out how to launch a craft to the next planet.

[nelso]

Finally got a very cheap first mission home from Jool, no ISRU and only about 3000 delta V at LKO, using mainly gravity assists to get to Jool and back.

Didn't take screenshots of the first part, but I took the Kerbin-Eve-Kerbin-Kerbin route to get to Jool (seems to be the easiest), so the initial burn was only about 1000 m/s to get the initial Eve encounter from LKO.  More delta V spent fine tuning encounters.  Used Tylo to reverse gravity assist into Jool orbit, and was able to do science and crew reports at a few of the moons, resulting in a lot of experience and science for a cheap price (1000 science and 44 xp for the crew without landing, mainly from the Jool system, with 70,000 cost of launch vehicle).

The more difficult part was getting back to Kerbin.  I had a highly eccentric orbit of Jool and wanted to use Tylo for the large boost back to Kerbin .  My first attempt was a failure, going into an extremely eccentric Kerbol orbit and attempting gravity assists off eve to return to Kerbin, but couldn't manage to get it to work.  Tylo can give pretty extreme gravity assists from a highly eccentric Jool orbit, probably enough to get to the sun.

What worked a lot better is shown below, where I time-warped to a standard transfer window from Jool to Kerbin (kerbin about 45 degrees behind Jool, which I just estimated visually), dodging the moons in the mean time, and finally setting up a Tylo assist to get the Kerbin encounter.  The Jool escape burns used only about 100 m/s delta v total, much better than the 2800 m/s needed without assistance from the moons.  I returned to Kerbin going 4500 m/s and aerobraked beginning at 52000 meters with NO heat shield, and using the remaining 1000 delta V I had to slow down and make the craft lighter.

Due to not planning this mission very much, with only 4 small solar panels and no external batteries, I had to get out and push the craft to pick up some Jool area sunlight for reaction wheels to work.

The original craft, only about 70,000 credits, with 45,000 of those in the main stage inside the Fairing, which circularized the Kerbin orbit and did the rest of the mission including landing back on Kerbin 20 years later fully intact.

Final return to Kerbin, after several aerobrake passes beginning at 52000 meters with no heat shield, and burning the rest of the fuel (about 1000 m/s) to increase deceleration from drag, then doing a water landing.

In addition to 1000 science from crew reports, the pilot gained a lot of experience, mostly from fly-bys of Jool moons.

This kind of mission was quite hard the first time, since I couldn't find any guides to show how to set up all these gravity assists.  However, one thing I realized is the Kerbin-Eve-Kerbin-Kerbin assist route is pretty consistent because once at the Kerbin-Eve transfer window, the future position of Kerbin after the Eve assist will be consistent so one can set up a the first Kerbin assist to get a 3 year orbit for a second a Kerbin encounter (again I cite bradley whistance who called this the K-E-K-K-J route in his Odyssey by Bill series), which will make the final Kerbin assist out to Jool possible with a large margin to get a Tylo reverse gravity assist into Jool orbit.  Also I assume the initial Kerbin-Eve transfer window needs to roughly lined up with some Jool transfer window for the final Kerbin assist to get to Jool, but I think when starting a new game it is pretty close.  My guess is there is there's a window for all to happen about every 3-4 years but I'd like to know if someone knows.  It depends on the angular resolution or granularity of the Kerbin-Eve transfer windows, which I believe is about every 1.6 years or 144 degrees, but inclination is a big factor too.

If this math seems intimidating, I feel the same way.

[Zeiss Ikon]

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1)

And success.  First Lunar flyby of this career completed before expiration.  Final Lunar periapsis was about 115 km (comms to Earth were blocked by the Moon at that point, but came back while still around 200 km).  Between "Space High" science over every biome covered by a 28.6 degree orbit, and a fairly broad assortment of Space High over various Moon biomes (plus one set of Space Low), with telemetry, temp, pressure, ion mass spectrometer, Geiger counter, and micrometeorite impact detector (which was the most frequently polled instrument, apparently it's biome dependent in Space High over both Earth and Moon), I managed to send back just over 200 science (and that makes a bunch of KCT upgrade points at 1 per 20 science).

After passing the Moon, the spacecraft then entered an Earth escape trajectory, and will become an independent satellite of the Sun (at least until Earth gets in its way again) -- but the batteries died  a few days after the Lunar pass, despite the solar panels.  I'll add more panels to the next spacecraft going that far out; just a few more will produce positive electrical power balance for as long as I have comms to keep orienting the spacecraft to face the Sun.  Meanwhile, I need to get my whip and get over to the R&D center to make sure the big-brains over there aren't slacking off.

Okay, I was lying about the whip.  I'll take over an extra large urn of coffee.  Started to write "box of coffee from Starbuck's", and then remembered Starbuck's didn't exist yet in 1967.

[Cavscout74]

I spent a little time in sandbox & a test career setting up a prop plane for my new 1.8 career (Out of the Sands - see mission reports)

Any landing you walk away from, right Jeb?

Getting better, but that tail is ugly

This is more like it.  It is VERY maneuverable due to the CoM & CoL being too close together, but I didn't have the parts unlocked to really fine tune it.  The wings have fuel, so moving them moves both CoL & CoM.  Burning fuel (or just reducing fuel) in the fuselage fuel tank helps.  On the other hand, it goes pretty slow when it ends up in a flat spin and Jeb has survived every one so far without bailing out.

 

[Kchinger]

Today I returned 600 units of ore from Minmus for a contract, despite connecting the 10m heat shield incorrectly (forgot the decoupler below it, so I couldn't deploy it). First time I hit the water, sank, and broke up when it hit the ocean floor. Tried again and got land, no problem even without the heat shield. 

 

From left to right, ore return ship, miner, and base.

Then I landed a tourist ship on Minmus, switched a rescued Kerbal to it, fueled up, and headed off to orbit the Mun for the tourists. 

Tourist ship with the entire Kerbin system in the background. 

Then I built and launched a giant (950T or something at launch) fuel ferry ship. The idea is it heads to Minmus, fuels up, then returns to LKO to fuel ships. 

I have my doubts that it can land, or maneuver well enough to dock, but we'll see. I didn't drop any tanks, just 6 Mammoth engines in two stages, which were all recovered with Stage recovery (and a silly number of parachutes). 

I think it has about 550T of fuel off the top of my head, plus maybe 4500 units of MonoPropellant. 

And I just now noticed on that screenshot that there are Kerbals aboard. It has a probe core, I just put the command module on in case it came in handy to ferry some Kerbals later. 

Ugh, now I have to get those people home somehow. I wish putting people on ships was less automatic and had more checks. 

If it works I'll modify it slightly and make another one for liquid fuel. 

And if it turns out it can't land on Minmus, it still got about 200T of fuel to orbit for pretty cheap. 

[Jestersage]

Not the brightest screenshot, but a good sign of an achievement:

Picture may not show much, until you realize this is a pure LF setup. Now I am gonna try to squeeze a bit more delta-V before release.

And before anyone ask: Yes, this SSTO is inspired by a real-life planned plane. Virtual cookies for anyone who can guess what planned spaceplane this is based on.

Edited November 16, 2019 by Jestersage

[Nezclaw]

7 hours ago, Nezclaw said:

 my to-do list includes launching the sentinel telescope into solar orbit, having bill and bob pick up jeb and return to kerbin, getting my asteroid drill launched, and figuring out how to launch a craft to the next planet.

i did none of these things! instead i popped to minmus and did some seat of my pants flying that ultimately resulted my rover sailing most of a hemisphere over the minmus landscape, crashing, breaking half its wheels and an engine, then unlocking a science node, before patbert successfully intercepted the orbiting craft and boarded despite running out of monoprop. no reverting needed!

this game is not conducive to getting to bed at a reasonable hour.

Edited November 16, 2019 by Nezclaw

[Guest]

Oof, bleeping bugs and churn.

I decided to check if a favourite of mine, the Kerbules, would work on Laythe. 

I discovered that 1.8 broke it. The KAL controller now sets the authority limiter on the prop blades, when it's supposed to set the deployment angle. I.e. it now does nothing. Not up to reprogramming it ATM.

[Hotel26]

10 hours ago, Nezclaw said:

what if i'm using linux but running it in WINE? /j

My guess would be that you already know the answer, or will soon figure it out...  enjoy the ride.

[XLjedi]

On ‎11‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 6:59 AM, Okhin said:

I'm wondering if the mission builder can be used to create some kind of interactive narration stories / RPG with stock KSP. After tinkering a little bit, and working on a start base on Dres (first time I got to use all parts from KSP, never really did sandboxes first), I finally understood what it is.

It's a finite state machine. Not turing complete, but you can probably do some things with it (setting the score to specific value and have those value being the start points of some specific scenes). I miss the possibility to give a player a choice of actions, but I can probably get around that using some narration technique (having a specific kerbal entering a specific part of a station or spaceship could be one way to do that. It would require some specific writing, but nothing undoable). I also miss the possibility of creating custom assets (I'm not sure I can have a GameData folder specific to a mission) or setting variables. But the computer nerd in me is kind of enjoying trying to get around those constraints.

So maybe, I'll do some mission writing. Need to check others mission too, to understand how you people do things there, but should be fun.

Also, I'm trying to figure out if it's cheaper to go to Duna while doing an Eve fly-by, or if I should do it with two craft. I like the idea of the first option, but it seems like planning a window for it would be math crazy while I can probably just bruteforce it all the way down, using moar nukes. I also need to drop a lab on my solar outpost, and adding a return vehicle would be nice I guess.

I tinker with Mission Builder from time-to-time...  Maybe best to post a question or two in the Mission Builder forum.  Although, I acknowledge not many seem to follow or post in that forum on a regular basis.  If I could just figure out some way to have a catch-all node fire, complete it's little string, then return to the main storyline thread, I think I'd be pretty happy with Mission Builder.