What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Retro Starship]

OK this is NUTS. Still getting contracts done and not only to very far places but this one on the very slanted side of a very high mountain. LOL! I had to fly around again, just go over the peak, eject my chutes, cut the throttle, land and then slide in slowly down to it with my hand on the "Log Pressure" button.

Fortunately when I was in range I stopped it with the brakes, and was able to take the data while standing still. I did NOT have to have Jeb get out to do it. All the way down it was at maybe a 45 degree angle. I was almost going to skip this one.

I was able to recover it and come home. No way was I going to take off again afterwards... Look at how much fuel I had left!!

 

Edited November 16, 2019 by Saturn5tony

[Okhin]

So, tinkering a little bit with orbital infrastructure in order to make big toursist travel. Added a transfer ship to Mothra Lady (my LKO spaceport), to facilitate all the going and coming between Minmus, Mun and Kerbin SOI to validate three contracts at once. Needed to actually land on the mun for 2 tourists who were not satisifies and who started plays on the nerves of Val who then threatened them to throw a mun stone at them if they continued to talk that much. Mun stone that Val forgfot in her pocket, and then helped validate another contract which, finally, allowed me to end the R&D development and to start mining \o/ (sorry, forgot about the screenshot).

But before doing that (and those insane contract where I have to build a Mun station on top of a class D asteroid), I needed my engineers that I left if my Sunrise Observer. The orbital sun station which lacked a lab. And I got two tourists who wanted to get have a closer look at the sun, so I designed a small mission : Going up there with tourists, Val, the lab, and a small re-entry pod. Docking at the transfer ship on Mothra Lady and reconfigure it for the flight, reach the Sunrise Observer, dock the hab, take the engineers, go back to Kerbin SOI, dock where I can to (either Minmus or Mothra Lady, depending on stuff such as fuel left and speed) leave the, reenter the atmosphere with val, the tourists and the pod and then transfer the engineers in LKO 5if needed).

It went well, Val had to "fix" a docking port that refused to undock. A lot of swearing and orbital maneuvering were included in the process, but I finally validated that contract.

Everything left of the lab is the transfer ship and the reentry pod (yes, I planned to use the shinny fuel tanks and engines as a heat shield). While the engineers  grab their stuff to leave the station, Val, tinkering with the planned trajectory for "optimisations", found out that she could do a fly-by of Eve and then get back in Kerbin SOI. Stopping answering to mission control - who advised against it for reasons such as fuel level, speed of reentry and the fact that the tourists insurance didn't cover them if they were doing anything funky - she plotted the perfect (her words) return path below.

So, yes, she raced head first into Eve SOI (validating a contract that was kind of lost somewhere), and faced Kerbin for re-entry.

Realizing at that point that she was in fact driving a tranfer ship, not equipped for reentry. Especcially at those speed. Nevermind, she thought, As long as two pods survive the reentry, that will be ok. Gene will yell, but who really cares anyway? After some course correction, and deciding that 25 000 meters should be a good enough height for the savage aerobraking she planned, and moving all engineers stuff in the second pod, hoping that their tools won't be too heavy all while ignoring the complaint of the tourists too busy being outraged than enjoying the free ride to a previously unexplored planet.

The days were long. But engineers have duct tape and at least, now, the tourists are quiet and aren't touching anything, nicely and comfortably strapped in their seats.

And then the reentry began. Firing the nukes retrograde to hope slowing the ship enough to not completely disintegrate. But, on the other hand, if she brakes too much, the remaining parts of the ship will be too heavy for the three chutes she had. So going engine first in the roaring atmospheres, she braked.

So, it was kind of a wild reentry. One that's not taught in the books - there's no books for that but if they were, they wouldn't teach about this maneuver. And as planned, the unplanned disassembly and disintegration of the ship hitting the 20km altitude at more than 3200m/s went well. If exploding stuff is a definition of going well. But she landed, and everyone was safe. Even the tourists. Everyone back on the Kerbin soil. But yes, I'm now one transfer ship short. But it was fun.

And now, let's work on those refueling systems and asteroids I can now have fun with (as well as the last batch of engines). And I need to plan the Duna orbital base thing too.

[NHunter]

Today, my Nero expedition departed for Gael:

Meanwhile, the Hox mission arrived to an easy intercept of Argo, so that's were I went first:

And now we go to Hox:

[Delay]

Mostly launched stuff to make my space station an actual space station! (There are no Kerbals in that thing)

Before it was just the part that's in front.

[Triop]

48 minutes ago, Delay said:

my space station

I love it, the station, the picture, it looks so clean.

[Bev7787]

20 hours ago, Jestersage said:

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.

Is it based on the X-37B?

Meanwhile I made an infographic of assembly flights 

[Jestersage]

1 hour ago, Bev7787 said:

Is it based on the X-37B?

Meanwhile I made an infographic of assembly flights 

1) Nope. Think redder 

2) Nice infographic... but I thought KVV is still not out for 1.8?

[Kchinger]

Landed my fuel ferry on Minmus to start getting fueled up.

Kerbal is for scale (by the right landing gear, under the KAS hose). It holds a LOT of fuel, and should be able to get most of it back to LKO since Minmus is so easy.

 

Other than that, just some normal contract stuff. I set up KAC alarms for transfer windows to all of the planets, so I can start sending relays and doing a bit of science at least. Possibly might just go ahead and send a manned lander and see what happens, but that's scary, so I dunno. Duna isn't the first window, which is giving making me wonder what to do exactly on the order.

Need to get a LKO station set up, for a contract and just to get a launching pad for inter-planetary.

[Francois424]

Today I set off for Uranus in my Kerbal-Sized RSS game.   After I assembled my space station in orbit of Kerbin to make sure everything worked, then docked everything to my large mothership that will bring everything to destination....  I deorbited and crashed it on purpose...
Why?  Simple.  I didn't feel like strutting everything together with KAS or other mods, so I just reassembled everything in the VAB with the struts, and "replaced" the older one that I destroyed via the cheat menu.
No wobbles, no Kraken, no problems, everything works fine !!! (yay!)

The 4 engines are FTmN2240 (or 2240 thrust worth of Nuke engines... PER engine) surrounded by a lot of Jumbo-64 tanks modded into 6.4k Liquid Fuel equivalent.
However, even with 8 radiators per engine, the slowly overheat when I push the throttle over 66%.  Still, it's a very powerful mothership (w/515 parts but lag isn't TOO bad).  Electrical power is provided by a 2,5m nuclear reactor.
As far as it's cargo is concerned, it has about 9 station modules (1x core, 4x Habitat which is a huge stock fuel tank with 2x 4kerbal habitation each, an RCS+Xenon module, a Refinery module with 4 large Convert-o-tron and 2 largest stock radiators, and the Science module which has a Science lab, all experiments, a Cupola, and 2 (folded) large origami antennae.

 

I also sent a mining ship as a different mission to Uranus too.  Tho it'll land on Titania, the only moon of Uranus in RSS (sucks that there's only one, and it's far from the planet too... might have to cheat it closer, hehheh)



It only has room for 2, but can hold and liftoff with 48k ore.  It uses 6x FTmN280 engines, has lots of RCS nozzles and has it's own 2,5m nuclear reactor and Convert-o-Tron... I fully loaded it with ore before liftoff and even tho it's dV is only about 2k it can fully refuel 4-5 times, and each time the dV is increased as the ore is reduced.
Four radiators, lots of landing gears, a claw (easier for docking and transferring ore to the Station once it's fully assembled), few lights, and a lot of large ASAS since it's pretty heavy fully loaded.  Four drills should do well when landed as well.
It "Only" took 157 parts, but many of these are struts, landing gears, and lights.  Considering how compact I was able to make it, and not too tall too, I   ** finally ** managed to make a good mining ship with minimal modding.  The Pilot and engineer crew seem to like their new "house"
[Edit] ah yes, it also has an orbital ore scanner... but I think this thing needs an antenna to work, so I might have messed this one out.  The M27 cockpit does have a small antenna tho, maybe with the station's relay antennae it will work. Time will tell.

Pretty productive afternoon.  Soon^TM  I should have pictures of the station construction and Titania mining operation. 
I also want to send a rover, but I recon the gravity is worse than Minmus so I might need to build an RCS "hover-rover" instead. 
We'll see when I get there.  Good evening everyone !

Edited November 17, 2019 by Francois424

[Bev7787]

2 hours ago, Jestersage said:

1) Nope. Think redder 

2) Nice infographic... but I thought KVV is still not out for 1.8?

1) ah well, time to dig up some stuff

2) I play 1.7.3. I have a habit of not downloading latest versions if the current version suits me. RSS habit. My RSS save was brought with me from 1.0.4 to 1.3.1 and I don’t want to break it.

[Nezclaw]

i'm starting to think the scientist i pair with val might have the badS flag. i'll need to do a launch with her and val to check. I meant to do that today but got sidetracked with other things. Anyway, I got the telescope en route out of Kerbin's SOI, and my drill has intercepted the asteroid and begun drilling. I wonder if it might just be easier to retrieve bill and bob from mun and try something else to recover jeb, because the rig they're in has drill-o-matic juniors, bill's not a full level engineer, and there are not enough solar panels to adequately power the drills and converter full time. it was my first attempt at fuel extraction, so i didn't know yet how much power i needed. also i messed up the arrangement of ore tanks. one of them was on single symmetry instead of 3x symmetry. so i only have four instead of six.

[Space Nerd]

Did my first manual docking!

[Hotel26]

The following (the culmination of five, intensive years of study at Kerbal Aerospace Academy) will take some explaining:

This is called Spear...  It's a kind of autonomous Taser device...

I spent this fine Sunday, as usual -- busy with Mad Science.  It started out, humdrum enough: refactoring heavy vehicles...  Some of them use a "Klaw attachment".  It slices; it dices; it blends to a puree...

But, how do you snap it on and off your heavy vehicle conveniently?  Well, it has to be autonomous!  When you're done using it, it undocks and maneuvers to the side of your vehicle and embeds itself, just like the tick it kinda looks like.

Moreover, have you ever noticed that targeting a dock and docking with it, dock to dock, becomes quite easy with practice?  But not so easy when you are controlling a heavy vehicle -- with a claw -- and attempting to get a claw-hold on another heavy or oddly-shaped vehicle (e.g. some spaceplanes).

In this case, fire the light, speedy, maneuverable Spear at the target to get a quick dock and now you have a real (proper-sized) dock to steer to and  connect with.  Yea, Brother!

You can even use it as a control point to have that other oddball craft turn itself into position for you to slide straight down the fire-pole to dock!

(It also doubles duty as a monopropellant supply.)

                                                                       

Like a few other of my hare-brained ideas, this one may end up on the scrap-heap.  Which is pretty much what Mad Science is all about, isn't it?

 

Edited November 17, 2019 by Hotel26

[Delay]

12 hours ago, Triop said:

I love it, the station, the picture, it looks so clean.

Well, at least it's more "stationy" than before.

[Retro Starship]

Last night I did quite alot of express missions for 2 and sometime 4 passengers for my career at tier 4. Quite honestly I only have one more upgrade to the R&D building and the entire complex is completed, thanks to the tourism contracts in this game. Here is my rocket I have created and been using the past couple weeks for it. (when I have 4 passengers I just add that compartment, just above the one shown.) Its really smooth with no wobbles too and I can make fine looking orbits!

Yes a little bit of an overkill engine wise but it gives me, still a beginner, a little room for errors and for the extra passengers.

Edited November 17, 2019 by Saturn5tony

[NHunter]

Planted a flag on Hox:

Watching the sun from the local monolith:

Time to go home...

[Triop]

Today's visitor...

[Laie]

40 minutes ago, NHunter said:

Planted a flag on Hox:

Nice ride. Which mod?

[Thygrrr]

I finished my Duna Program today (even though 6 Kerbals are still orbiting, I will need to run a crew rotation)

This is the first time I landed Kerbals on Duna after... many hours of KSP. Super happy, because this was connected and made possible by the large station I built around Ike (and moved to Duna) earlier this week.

Over 60 mods active, in particular USI Life Support, which made this mission challenging because of Habitation, Homesickness, and Supplies.

Full Album with lots of Gifs: https://imgur.com/a/7Vc5bNh

 

 

No other game gives me the sense of accomplishment that KSP gives me, and man that new terrain shader sure makes Duna's vistas beautiful.

Edited November 17, 2019 by Thygrrr

[Cavscout74]

Made some progress in my new 1.8 career:

See the rest in mission reports- "Out of the Sands"

[NHunter]

1 hour ago, Laie said:

Nice ride. Which mod?

Craft is using an assortment of Near Future parts (with tweakscale) and some DMagic science parts too.

Edited November 17, 2019 by NHunter

[Gameslinx]

Took more than just today but finally It's ready...

I added multiple cities to one of my planets.

 

 

[RoboRay]

Started a stock solar system career after being away from KSP for a year and playing nothing but RO/RSS for a couple of years before that.  So, I decided building a space station would be a good way to get back up to speed with the game and see what all has changed.

I'm digging the X-20 mod and Restock, btw!

 

[Triop]

48 minutes ago, RoboRay said:

 

I love how the Mun (Obi Wan: "That's no Mun...") is photobombing your picture. Cool stuff.

Edited November 18, 2019 by Triop

[panzer1b]

More ship designs which im quite happy with,

Made a new longsword class frigate, based on a older vessel just modernized to today's standards.

Fairly easy to blow the entire front off, but its sorta more of a weapons platform rather then a tank, so its fine for its role.

Then i overhauled my older by failed warhammer battlecruiser into something worth using.  Lags pretty badly since it is just over 500 parts, but it can take fire and dish out damage itself (armed it with 4 heavy torps, 2 anti-fighter/light missiles, and like 6-8 SRMs.  Its still not quite 100% optimal, but it works, and its got enough hangar space for 2 fighters or shuttles (those pods on the side are dual purpose, mounts engines and hangar space as well as some secondary weapons underneath).

Managed to severely cripple it, but the mid section still was functional (took every last bit of ammo from the nebula class frigate to do this).  This thing isnt quite a dimension class (which is better in like every category possible), but since i intentionally limited myself to low tech feeling parts only (no nuke engines, no cargo bay armor, so fancy anything), i think it came out great.

And ofc the best screenie i managed to get out of this thing, looks like something straight out of a sci-fi movie with those side panels being torn from it as it explodes violently...