What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Okhin]

A lot is going on here with all the strikes and people fighting government, so I've been quite away from video games. But I have this contract about making a space camp, which requires me to get 12 tourists, 3 crew members (scientist, engineer and pilot, one of them being at least level 2) and bring them in LKO for 40 days. ANd brong them back after that. In one piece (each individual kerbal in a separate piece, but in not more than one piece each)

And yes, I have snacks.  I also have a 1.25 station up there, but it's damn too small, and expanding it to have the space camp is not worse the hassle of upgrading everything (did I mention I also recently unlocked the lamp'O'Tron ? Which make for a lot of upgrades of the few station I already have). And since I also have hydroponics (and getting a bit paranoid on the amount of snacks per kerbal per day), I'm working on a more permanent LKO base. I'm still wondering if I should use HitchHikers as reentry pods for the end of camp, or if I should stick a bunch of onion re-entry pods with ants engine and oscar fuel tank to deorbit all those kerbals in a big onion train. Which might be fun, but could also lead to dozen of applicants dying (and I only have one of those dozens).

That's where I am in the design right now. I'm not sure a lab in LKO is wort the cost, but if I'm wrong, please, tell me, the bottom part isn't done yet. And I do not yet have the 2.5m wide heat shield for Hitchhikers reentry, but it's probably not required for such a low orbit. And no, I do not plan (yet) to launch all that in one massive launch, the drag will kill me (and most of the kerbals).

Also, some guys got lost on the launchpad muttering things about non-sense concept such as profitability of space casinos and hostel. May be I should them that space should not need to be monetized and going there is, by itself, way funnier than playing with abstract concept such as kash in casinos. (or is it kasinos?)

[Lisias]

So… This is not exactly what i did today (I only got time to publish it today - I did this on the whole last week!!!).

I was watching some videos from @Cupcake...  (I miss his videos already!) and saw this:

Spoiler

 

 

And thought to myself: "hell of an idea, how I didn't think this yet?". So I toyed with the concept a bit, and so I realized this would be a nice excuse to a long due Kerbin Airborne Circumnavigation Quest. Not exactly a challenge nowadays, but I never did that propperly, so...

This thing flies surprisingly well. And this cockpit made the journey a delight to the eyes  - I just leaved KSP running on the second monitor while I was doing something else (not possible while working, as I use another account - disclaimer in the case my boss is around!)

Of course, I didn't made a video for the whole journey. It took me 3.5 hours (more or less) to do so (I decided to Go West).

Long history made short - a lot of sightseeing and a… somewhat almost uneventful landing.  

Tons and tons of fuel. You can get rid of almost 2.000 units of fuel and still be able to do the job.

 

I ended up overshooting KSP, so I came back on a Split-S (I like this maneuverer a lot!)

 

And landed successfully (at least, on my book… ) Not bad for a keyboard pilot.

 

I think I need to adjust something on the wheels….

 

But other than some rubber scattered on the TARMAC, everything worked fine!

 

I need to do it more times (but on the new Mac Potato, the old one is sufferable!).

Edited December 18, 2019 by Lisias
Some entertaining grammars made less entertaining.

[Zeiss Ikon]

Yesterday, I started a new career in 1.8.1, Making History, Breaking Ground.  Also yesterday, I made my first Mun flyby (took about six launches to get the science).

I've been playing nothing but Realism Overhaul for more than a year, and I'd been meaning to pop the funds for Breaking Ground, so I downloaded 1.8.1, a compatible copy of Making History (which I bought when it came out), bought and downloaded Breaking Ground, and set it all up.

Started with the common first launches, Mk. 1 pod, Flea booster, Mk. 16 parachute, and three Basic Fins, launch pad EVA reports, etc.  Worked a couple hardware test contracts.  Finally, I was pretty sure I had the technology to go for orbit (well, actually, I launched Val, and reverted the launch to accept the contract after verifying I had the dV and then some).

I'd forgotten how little rocket it takes to get to orbit on Kerbin (this thing wouldn't get to half of orbital velocity on Earth).  In fact, this Vector A Terrier was able to make a 77x93 km orbit with a whisper of fuel left in the second stage, without even igniting the Terrier.

After a little testing and some science, Val stayed up for two orbits, then returned to Kerbin (something about a tickertape parade date).

Of course, we all play KSP, and we know what this means: stretch the third stage tank and go for the Mun!

Getting to the Mun without manuever planning is a little, um, uncertain, but we can trust Jeb to get it done.  The extra fuel weight meant the Terrier had to burn a bit to make LKO, then there's the 800 m/s or so to get from LKO to the Mun -- that left Jeb with 139 m/s at  his Munar periapsis of 718 km.  He couldn't confidently make his return burn in the Mun's SOI (no nodes, no orbit projections), so he waited another orbit, past his perikerb of 1350+ km and back to apokerb of 12000+, where orbital velocity was just over 300 m/s and just over 120 m/s was required to lower his perikerb down to about 42 km.

Sorry, no shots of the aerobrake pass, but nothing burned off the pod, and just for flying by the Mun, Jeb brought back 89 science, unlocking the rest of the 45 point tier, as well as bringing in enough in contract payouts and "World's First" donations to upgrade the Tracking Center, making Jeb's the last mission in this save to be undertaken without maneuver nodes.

[Okhin]

So, will do the report mission later, but at least, I managed to start this space camp. With a lot of shinny lights (I love dokcing stuff, but in the shadows of celestial bodies and without any light it kind of suck (even if I do not use the outside view much, navigation in total darkness is hard).

Anyway, before hitting my bed, mandatory screenshot (The branch of the stations are the reentry modules, they'll be more than fine from this low orbit. I'm wondering if I'll leave it there or if I'll add an engine later and send it geostationary, that would make for a more interesting space camp).

[Guest]

Starting next video, Videos will be unlisted and available on Website until the next day

https://kerbalanders.wordpress.com/2019/12/16/ksp-1-8-1-dres-lander/

 

[Ratwerke_Actual]

This morning I uploaded a short vid of a heavy boost vehicle I built and launched for a user who supplied a 1kiloton station.

https://upload-video.net/a1117QEaL12

This evening, stuck playing stock game on a netbook, so flew a stock craft (Slim Shuttle) to a Station Core.

When I can't be on my modded saves, It's still fun to fly.

 

 

[Hotel26]

"Any landing you can swim away from..."  well, this one landed very gently but 887 meters below sea level, just off the coast of KSC where two fervid days of Mad Science have just been conducted.  (This is starting to affect my paid job!!)

                                                                                   

This is Neptune and it's not a plane, although it does fly.

It's not a boat, although it does float.

It's not a submarine , although it does submerge.

And it's not a submarine base until we Mad Scientists get it to work.  But we are now very close.  The hunt has been so long and arduous, we didn't bother to repack the chutes on the surface, before making the dive attempt.

"Success, too long pursued, comes suddenly and with rude surprise".  That's what we say every day in Mad Science Lab, anyway, never expecting it.

 

Edited December 18, 2019 by Hotel26

[Arco123]

Today. or well later I'm fixing a bug called #autoloc. aka removing it and stuff.

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Another fairly minimal day to report this morning but at least I got another piece of my infrastructure in place.

Yesterday began with a continuation of my efforts to get an Auk XI 10-passenger spaceplane with nine passengers aboard to space station Kerbinport, the plane having botched its ascent and requiring an emergency dispatch of Island Princess from the station for refueling (which took place yesterday). The plane arrived at its rendezvous with the space station after a single orbit's delay, followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of Island Princess.

 
Island Princess burning for rendezvous with Kerbinport, coming in......between an Auk and a hard place (crap, am I really doing this joke)?

Neither craft was allowed to dock immediately, as the Boop-Boop 7w whose stationary orbit I'd adjusted a few days ago came back to its apoapsis at roughly the same time. As suspected, my math was off - instead of the probe being over the target point, it was another thirty degrees off the mark in the wrong direction. A quick set of calculations later I adjusted the probe's orbital period to six hours, 26 minutes and 40 seconds, or 736.2 by 316 kilometers at 0.01° inclination. The target point is about 240° off of the apoapsis point and so that should (keyword: should) put the probe back at apoapsis with the target point underneath it. Of course, that was the hope last time, but at least this time I won't have quite as long to wait to find out if I was correct or not...

Probe burn done, Island Princess and the Auk both docked at Kerbinport without further delay. Eight of the Auk's passengers transferred over to Strange Cargo docked at the station while pilot Sansel transferred to one of the station's hitchhiker modules and with tourist Jongard Kerman staying on the plane, his itinerary to travel to Kerbin orbit only fulfilled. The Auk will stay at Kerbinport until the rest of the tourists return. Strange Cargo departed the station once the tourists were on board and burned for intercept and alignment with LSV House Atreides in HKO. Intercept will be in 25 minutes with SC just 0.02° off of Atreides's orbital plane. 

Shortly thereafter I got notification from the Sleipnir A outpost on Dres that the print of a Dystopia Planitia 7 Mun shipyard was finished and ready for launch. Heading out to the base, the print was finalized and fuel supplies were transferred aboard. Engineer Calkin Kerman transferred from the outpost's Castillo Factory module to the shipyard's cupola and the shipyard launched to an initial 60.5 by 10.7 kilometer, 0.05° inclined plane over Dres - did it without having to pull an emergency fuel transfer from Sleipnir too, for which I was quite happy. After Strange Cargo performed a burn to take it to rendezvous with Atreides in one hour and 46 minutes, the new Dres shipyard circularized to a final orbit at 60.6 by 60.1 kilometers at 0.02° inclination. The booster was discarded, the solar panels deployed, the nuke reactors and mass driver were brought online and the newly dubbed Nullus Recogitet Shipyards in orbit of Dres came into being.

Just think - I only have two more of these things to launch for the entire system...

Sleipnir recycled the launch clamps and transferred up supplies of ore, fuel and Rocket Parts to the new shipyard to close out the day yesterday. This morning, I went to the VAB for a quick redesign of the Ikeport Core 7, mainly just removing the launch booster and fairings. A print of this variant (unimaginatively dubbed the Ikeport Core 7 Station) was ordered up at NRS, which Calkin will have done in 38 hours and 20 minutes. Additional Rocket Parts and monopropellant were shot up to the new shipyard from Sleipnir, and with a tourist wanting to visit the surface of Eve, I closed out my morning so far by ordering up a Zima 7 print at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve's surface; printing time will be 9 hours and 36 minutes.

So today my priority is to get the tourist expedition going: Strange Cargo's rendezvous with Atreides is the next thing on the KAC alarm schedule. Shenanigans in the Jool sphere of influence is liable to happen first but the ship will eventually be heading to Dres as well as Eve and Gilly. The only scheduled landings are at the latter two worlds, so Atreides may be flying a fair bit before we get out there. Still got colonists en route to Minmus, still have some surveys to do, still have some drilling to do, still got an engineer heading out to Vall from Laythe waiting for Atreides to get there so he can hitch, and still got some satellites to position over Dres. Hoping to wrap some of this up in the near future; I'll keep y'all updated.

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) At the time that I'm starting to type this, nobody else has posted on the thread. Not sure I've ever done back-to-back dailies before. Now watch one of y'all ninja this. Hey, if it happens, it happens...

My apologies for this post not coming sooner today; as I was attempting to post screenies up to imgur this morning, Google proceeded to tell me that some of my passwords had been compromised in a data breach, so I spent a good hour getting that taken care of. Imgur was one of the sites where my password was compromised, apparently. So that's happened today.

Yesterday was largely spent in the effort to get engineer Mitvin Kerman out from space station Laytheport to the Vermilion Block 380 outpost on Vall. The day began with the rendezvous of Strange Cargo with LSV House Atreides in high Kerbin orbit.

Strange Cargo - she used to be the flagship of the fleet. Design's showing its age now...one of these days I'm going to have to get rid of that Rockomax decoupler holding the drive stage to the crew cabins...

After successful docking, Atreides broke Kerbin orbit and warped to Jool, arriving at a velocity of 11,129 m/s. After four warp-back maneuvers to bleed off speed, the ship came to a 108,730.7 by 4,285.6 kilometer, 6.72° inclined orbit over Jool, good enough to satisfy contracts for the passengers that had included a Jool orbit in their itineraries. Atreides immediately shifted gears and began maneuvers to bleed off sufficient speed to head directly to Laythe orbit, arriving there at 1,463 m/s and settling immediately into a 365.9 by 236.0, 2.04° inclined orbit.

Having satisfied those few customers who wanted to head to Laythe orbit, I shifted over to space station Laytheport, where Mitvin had been waiting since a successful flight up to the station last week. Mitvin boarded M. A. Summers docked at the station and departed.

Design's less laggy when there's not as much stuff docked up to it, I gotta say.

Summers began maneuvers to take her to a rendezvous with Atreides, with a total flight time of 76 minutes.

Other end of the flight, a relatively short one for once. That was not a complete sentence and the grammar pedant in me has been duly triggered...y'all better hide......

With Summers safely docked, the time had come for Atreides to head on to Vall; the ship broke orbit and headed over to Jool to bleed off the required speed for direct orbital entry.

While that was still ongoing, the Boop Boop 7w probe I've been attempting for the past several days to get into stationary orbit over a specific spot on Dres came back to apoapsis and burned to circularize. I missed the mark again, but this time I was far closer and I saw what the mistake was that I'd made (I'd calculated for the target point being the indicated apoapsis instead of where the probe was). A new set of calculations have been made and it looks like a very slight increase in the orbit should get me where I need to be finally. Made that burn earlier today; alas that it had to be reverted owing to events at Vall, as I'll discuss shortly.

As soon as I was done meddling with the probe, I returned to Atreides and finished the warp to Vall, arriving at 586 m/s and settling into a 372.3 by 243.1 kilometer, 5.28° inclined orbit. Once secured in orbit, Summers departed for the Non Est Hic shipyards, where the Spamcan 7c lander I'd built for the Vall SOI was presently parked. Summers arrived at the shipyard one hour and 42 minutes later.

Y'all excited yet, kids? Going places! Docking! Undocking! Docking yet again!! Thrilling adventure in KSP to report today (or else)!!!!!!

Once docked, Mitvin immediately transferred over to the Spamcan and departed to head to Vermilion. The landing took place earlier this morning, with the craft coming down about thirty meters from the base. I've encountered a bug that prevents Mitvin's portrait from showing up and renders the EVA button in Ship Manifest inoperative; luckily the method of clicking on the hatch still works (bug first presented itself as soon as the Spamcan departed NEH). I can only assume, though, that I may have messed up with my last batch of colonization reassignments somewhere. Can't say where exactly. At least this time around I can undock my craft without things spontaneously breaking...still annoying though.

Mitvin has made three attempts to attach the lander to the outpost for refueling; everything goes okay there until he un-links the lander, at which point it flops over for no apparent reason. I'm considering just sending the lander back to orbit without refueling; there's still about 2,000 m/s of delta-V left in the tanks as is. No real reason why it couldn't make it back...

So as far as the rest of my day goes, I plan to get Mitvin inside Vermilion. Really - that's all that needs to happen there. I'd also like to get the lander back either to NEH or to space station Vallport; either will do just fine. I have to re-burn the probe over Dres, which is no big deal other than the fact that I have to re-do it. Atreides's expedition will continue with a visit to Pol, after which she's headed to Eve for some landing shenanigans there; got a passenger heading down and their EAV will be ready to go in about another two hours or so, which should be enough time to get them down there and over to the launch site depending on how warp maneuvers to head to Pol go. Other than that, I've got nothing to report that I haven't already reported in the last 48 hours. Hopefully the day will improve and I'll have something else for y'all tomorrow. Hoping y'all make some posts too...

[Lisias]

9 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

(1.6.1) At the time that I'm starting to type this, nobody else has posted on the thread. Not sure I've ever done back-to-back dailies before.

Well... I just didn't posted anything on my attempts of doing acrobatics with @purpleivan's craft because I'm somewhat busy cleaning up parts scattered over KSP...

(Hey, PurpleIvan, I improved survivability a bit!  Buildings now don't collapse anymore!! )

[Retro Starship]

(1.8.1) Last night I needed to bring two tourists (Barttrey & Staski Kerman, a lovely couple) into orbit and fire off a structural pylon at 90,000m into space. For the pylon I rotated them to look like a pair of downward wings even though this is not an issue for flight but looks cool. The CoM attributes with them though were fine with it being up higher, so the launch worked just fine for that test in low space.

What is funny tho, about this is that one of the kerbals (Jeb) looks a bit blocked out in this entire mission. For some reason the connection of the Mk1 capsule to the Mk2-b pod (with the missing history mod) for two kerbals seems like the problem. Not sure tho. The Mk1 by itself has never had a black image over the kerbals face. Who knows?

The large Mk1-3 Command Pod could have taken all three of us (as well as the Gemini one, in a way) but with my level 5 of career I did not have the Mk1-3. It worked fine though, he could still control the ship for the whole mission.

Spoiler

 

Ok a fine orbit, now to glide up to and around the 90,000 - 100,000m area to test the pylon.

Spoiler

 

The pod activation height is almost there... Now stage it!!!!

Job done, lets go home!

Spoiler

Home sweet home, now KSC come and get us. 

Jeb did not see anything because of the black screen in front of him but Mr. Barttrey & Miss Staski Kerman had alot of fun together...alone... in there Mk2b pod... alone... with no one watching. Hmmm I wonder if they even looked out the window to even view Kerbal at all?  This we shall never know.

[Selective Genius]

The Mk1 version of my Duna-Ike Lander was tested on the Mun, and it 'Tilted on it's side'. But hey, it did not crash and scattered it's debris over a 3 mile stretch, atleast! Seriously, landing legs are a wobbly mess, and they are the reason I tilted over! 

Valentina stayed in the crew cabin, while the scientist and engineer got busy deploying experiments waiting for the rescue ship to arrive.

(The Experiment cargo lands at ju~ust the right position. Took 3 tries, but I figured it out.)

("We deployed the experiments, now what?" "Now we wait, we wait for the eventual rescue.")

This one is the Mk2 of the same lander, and I hereby swear I will never use landing legs, only these structural components to land. I lost Jeb, Bob and Bill because of those damned landing legs, and almost lost Valentina and 2 rookies in this flight as well..

Mk2 boasts several improvements, like addition of vernier engines to provide engine gimbal. The aerospike used does not have any engine gimbal so RCS has to do all the work. I added a reaction wheel; The absence of a reaction wheel and gimballing ability made an abort attempt impossible for Mk1 when it was tipping over. Morever, the RCS now used LFO instead of monoprop, simplifying operations by a lot. The Karbonite drill does not touch the ground, but still drills karbonite so yay!

Oh and by the way, how many experiments can we deploy? One on each celestial body, or one in each biome?

Edited December 18, 2019 by Selective Genius

[djr5899]

Doing something I probably should have done a long, long time ago...building a series of ships designed for to visit each of the stock planets/moons.   Too often I get caught up in playing the game (career/science) and end up doing the same thing over and over.  This time, I'm just building and testing, and not worrying about anything else, starting with Duna series craft:

• Duna LS Lander - Duna launch system that includes a science based lander.  Aim of this craft is to be able to reach Duna SOI, undock lander, land on the planet, return to Duna orbit, dock to transfer Kerbals, jettison lander, and have enough fuel to get back home to Kerbin.
• Duna LS Auto-Fueler - If anything goes wrong with the Lander system, the unmanned Auto-Fueler can be sent to Duna SOI to refuel any stranded craft.
• Duna LS TR - Transport and Rescue, for those times when refueling just won't cut it, and you need to send a recovery ship.
• Duna LS Miner - Ore mining ship.  Most likely unmanned, and most likely several variety (miner, rover to transport surface fuel, craft to transport to orbit to awaiting fuel ship).

1st two in the series have been built and tested.  Still undergoing some refinement.  Dres and Moho series will be up next.

[Cavscout74]

I finished out the second year in my career, full details in the mission report. 

The biggest event was the arrival of my Dres Sojourner in orbit around Dres:

First crew on Kerbinport Station splashed down safely & eagerly climbed out to enjoy the fresh ocean air:

And started setting up another set of relays near the edge of Kerbin's SoI:

[DStaal]

1 hour ago, Selective Genius said:

Oh and by the way, how many experiments can we deploy? One on each celestial body, or one in each biome?

Per Biome.  And it's possible that you can deploy more than one for faster science generation, I think.  (But not more total, and I haven't fully tested.)

[AHHans]

2 hours ago, Selective Genius said:

Oh and by the way, how many experiments can we deploy? One on each celestial body, or one in each biome?

The games doesn't keep you from deploying more experiment stations on a CB. But you will not get anything more from deploying more than one.

[Ratwerke_Actual]

Still playing around with my stock save on a notebook. A self challenged goal of docking as many stock craft to an asteroid station as part count allows.

Today, a nuclear variant of the Mallard joins the all stock craft party.

Also pictured: Kerbal X, Kerbal 1-5, Slim Shuttle, Dynawing Shuttle, Learstar 1A, And an Aeris 4a.

 

 

[Tim_AZ]

Today I sank a quadrotor.

[BadOaks]

I've been testing out some hardware for a new Duna mission using only stock parts. One of the big problems I always have with crewed missions is how my kerbals are going to spend the duration of their stay on the surface while also doing something useful. One of my early ideas this time around was the scorpion base, a habitat/lander setup with an integrated rover attached under the "tail". Structurally it's a little wonky, and I didn't know how it would handle during EDL. It would also be limited to just staying wherever it happened to land, like on a slope or a rock.

My next idea was a modular set of habitats that could be combined into a larger base. Moving the modules around and connecting them was a problem though, and a construction rover would be a whole can of worms of its own, so I gave each module it's own little retractable rover base. The "skirt" also contains some fuel tanks and engines for a soft landing system.

I actually did end up sending a pair of these to Duna, but they topple so insanely easily that their max speed is basically 4 m/s and you still have to control them exclusively through gentle use of the trim controls. That's a problem when they tend to land a kilometer or more apart (these two took about 25 minutes in real time to reach each other). They also don't do anything useful aside from being a functionally stationary habitat. I might use the base for something, but it's going to be a one-off rather than consistent part of my space program.

So I'm thinking... I need a long-term habitat, a rover, and a landing system, preferably with science and ISRU capability as well. What I came up with is the Base Rover 10, which is basically everything except the ISRU in one package, plus an ascent vehicle. The shrouding contains a science lab and full science suite along with various other useful doohickeys. Each leg is robotically articulated to fold up for compact storage inside a fairing. Unfortunately the design tends to violently anger the Kraken, with phantom forces dragging it sideways across the ground while the legs spasm uncontrollably. I liked it enough to keep working on it though.

After a few iterations I came up with the Base Rover 14, which has not only tamed the physics engine's wilder impulses but, in fact, has some of the best handling of any rover I've ever built. I reserved robotic articulation only for the non load-bearing outriggers, which keep the vehicle from rolling during turns. When testing it on the Mun, I found it has a safe max speed of around 30 m/s. The ascent vehicle was ditched in favor of ISRU capability, and I added fuel cells for power in addition to a roof-top solar array. 

I'm calling it the Mobile Extended Exploration Base System (M.E.E.B.S.)

I sent a test crew down on the Duna lander I'm planning to use. They met up with the MEEBS in the northern tip of the Farside Crater just before sunset.

After surviving a week-long Munar night on fuel cell power, I tested the ISRU system and Bill got out to check the drill and look like he was doing something.

Then we took off north to get some science from the Mun's Canyon biome. Covering distance is so easy in this thing. It's going about 24 m/s here with no problems maneuvering.

Unfortunately, the canyon entrance is blocked by a huge crater.

Is this the end of the trip? Nope! MEEBS is not just a base with wheels, it's a base with wheels and rockets.

With full tanks MEEBS has 1270 m/s dV, enough for short sub-orbital hops between biomes. Putting the outriggers in stowed position ensures that the CoM stays centered over the thrust vector such that torque never exceeds 0.2 kNm from full tanks to empty, and vernier RCS at the front and back provide very good maneuverability for landing.

MEEBS has basically everything needed for extended surface exploration. Replacing the terriers with aerospike engines would probably make it viable for a Laythe mission as well.

Mun hardware test mission album: 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Cavscout74]

18 minutes ago, BadOaks said:

MEEBS has basically everything needed for extended surface exploration. Replacing the terriers with aerospike engines would probably make it viable for a Laythe mission as well

I've started tinkering with mobile bases again after a while of just having fixed bases with rovers and/or aircraft to explore the area. It started with just putting wheels on my standard small outpost to find more suitable terrain (and because the landing legs kept exploding for no reason) and morphed into full-fledged mobile bases.   I'm not there yet in my current career, but my abandoned 1.7 career had a large mobile base get tested on Mun & was getting ready to send to Duna

As an alternate idea on Laythe, you could use electric props, either to fly or for propulsion across the water.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Cavscout74

[BadOaks]

11 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

I've started tinkering with mobile bases again after a while just having fixed bases with rovers and/or aircraft to explore the area. It started with just putting wheels on my standard small outpost to find more suitable terrain or resources and morphed into full-fledged mobile bases. 

As an alternate idea on Laythe, you could use electric props, either to fly or for propulsion across the water.

I think the MEEB might be a bit too bulky to be an aircraft, but replacing the wheels with pontoons to make it a boat would be pretty cool if I can get it to work. I definitely want to have a separate fold-wing prop plane though, and even made this thing to get it through EDL. Still need to make the plane.

 

Edited December 18, 2019 by BadOaks

[Starwhip]

I have been fighting against the rocket equation in a Real Solar System/Realism Overhaul career mode save. This design is 4x heavier than my launchpad can handle and would take several years to build and still cannot make it to orbit. I'm probably going to need to do some additional science experiments and contracts to get the necessary technology and facility upgrades to get up there.

[BadOaks]

59 minutes ago, Starwhip said:

I have been fighting against the rocket equation in a Real Solar System/Realism Overhaul career mode save. This design is 4x heavier than my launchpad can handle and would take several years to build and still cannot make it to orbit. I'm probably going to need to do some additional science experiments and contracts to get the necessary technology and facility upgrades to get up there.

Have you tried adding more stages? I've never used RO, but historically I think a lot of the early engines were not very efficient and particularly hard hit by the rocket equation. The first American probe, Explorer 1, was launched on the Juno I rocket with 4 stages. It was only when we started getting more efficient with our engines and fuels that 2 stages became common.

[Starwhip]

3 minutes ago, BadOaks said:

Have you tried adding more stages? I've never used RO, but historically I think a lot of the early engines were not very efficient and particularly hard hit by the rocket equation. The first American probe, Explorer 1, was launched on the Juno I rocket with 4 stages. It was only when we started getting more efficient with our engines and fuels that 2 stages became common.

All the engines I have available are real-world analogs, and I don't yet have the engines to make Juno I or an R-7 yet, so it is difficult or even impossible to get anything to orbit so far.