What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Zeiss Ikon]

(1.8.1, Breaking Ground, Making History, stock)

I am saddened to report that, while attempting Matski's rescue in a fairly inclined orbit beyond the Mun, Jeb managed to strand himself, Bill, and Matski (again), despite leaving LKO with over 2000 m/s of dV in an upgraded Rescue series craft.  I blame negligent piloting, using excessive velocity performing the rendezvous with Matski's craft (another Onion without engines or tanks -- how does a craft like that get that far out?), and excessive dependence on a Mun assist that turned out to provide less assistance than expected.

I had a quick save with Val on the launch pad before Gradard's rescue launch, so I've reflown that mission (with frequent quick saves) and am in process of adding still more dV to Jeb's craft to ensure he'll have, on LKO, the 900 or so m/s to reach the required orbit, 200+ to circularize, 300+ to change plane, then some to rendezvous -- and still have 400 or so to drop periapse well into the atmosphere for the return.  I think 2500 m/s after LKO circularize ought to do -- but then I have to figure how to get that large a vessel into orbit with only 1.25m parts (and no crossfeed available on radial decouplers -- technology not unlocked yet).  It's likely to involve Moar Boosters...

[Retro Starship]

(1.8.1, Making History, Breaking Ground, Kerbalism and many mods)

Nothing to crazy for last night.

Just tested some parts, a Valiant engine and the tiny Twitch engine on splash down. So funny because Val got one heck of a spinning ride when I activated the Twitch! LOL!!

Spoiler

Edited December 21, 2019 by Saturn5tony

[amarillo114]

Today I rescued Jeb for Mun (bet that this is a classic!). It's been a while since I kinda crashed against mun but Jeb managed to survive. It was my first time in Mun and I left him stranded for a long time. But I don't forget about him not a single moment. I built an orbital station in mun , prepared a lander, transferred fresh fuel and went to the rescue. I managed to get at 17 km from Jeb's landing. Using his EVA's jetpack he managed to get to 3.2 Km from the rescue ship. He had to save his last 0.40 propergol for reaching the hatch of the lander (some stupid kerbal back in KSC forgot about ladders). We barely managed to land back again in Kerbin doing an extra orbit to aerobrake from 3122 m/s. 

 

Wow. I love this game. 

[amarillo114]

16 hours ago, Tim_AZ said:

Today I made a tutorial for building quadrotors.  I have a whole new appreciation for how much work goes into these kind of videos.

 

Awesome stuff!!

[noname_hero]

Finished another mission in my Kerpollo program, this time to Eeloo. Given this was my first mission to Eeloo, and considering the next two missions on my list are Moho and Duna+Ike, both of which I've managed to fly in another playthrough, I'm running out of learning opportunities before I have to deal with Evepollo.

I'll admit I'm happy I managed to fly Eelollo without using any gravity assists. I know, better players would be happy to put in a bit more effort in exchange for free delta v, but I'm happy to see that even simpler mission plans can work if one launches with enough fuel. Sure, this approach kind of undermines the goal of learning more, but considering I already know how to make simple gravity assists, I'm okay with it.

Besides, it is not like I haven't learned anything. For starters, I have checked that Mk. 3 liquid fuel tanks do work *great* for NERV-powered craft. I have learned that an attempt to overcome one's tendency to bolt on too many solar panels is kind of misplaced when going to Eeloo - battery status never fell below 50%, but some moments made me a bit nervous. And I have been reminded that connecting one's orbiter with one's lander by docking ports can subvert one's expectations of fuel levels - the NERVs drained *all* fuel from my lander near Kerbin, and I was lucky I only ditched the transfer stage during the final reentry, as all the oxidizer aboard was kind of useless with no fuel for it.

I guess I better accompany this story by a screeenshot from *before* I made that mistake :-)

[NHunter]

And now I have landed the probes on Fury:

Midlands:

Lowlands:

Highlands:

[Arco123]

Today, I worked on the script and information on The Great Kerbin War. It takes a long time to write and think about what will occur if this was on another planet. And think if it was real. 

Even if I'm an author I still have to take the time to think. Also, what image formats does this site support?

[Tim_AZ]

Bill and Bob Kerman continued their long trek to the next biome to set up more experiments.

[fulgur]

9 hours ago, Arco123 said:

Also, what image formats does this site support?

This site doesn't do hosting of images or videos. You have to upload to a site (for images Imgur is preferred) and then copy the image/video location.

Today I landed on the Mun in the latest Career.

[LittleBitMore]

I designed one of those fold-up basketball hoop designs you find on the ceilings of basketball stadiums (with Breaking Ground), as a request from a friend. Still a work in progress, but a kerbal can fall down the hoop when it's deployed.

I also attempted to design a Laythe lander for a future Jool 5 mission. It really likes to explode on a mountain, and tip over in the water. I eventually left the idea for future me to deal with.

[Arco123]

Google drive???... If I'm getting you right you upload it and then grab the link to the image and put it in here?

[Geonovast]

3 minutes ago, Arco123 said:

Google drive???... If I'm getting you right you upload it and then grab the link to the image and put it in here?

A site specific for image hosting, like imgur, would be better.  Google Drive can work, but getting the permissions right can be tricky.  Google Drive isn't really meant for image hosting.

[Arco123]

Huh, Sadly I use a chromebook from school so I cant open the imgur site. I can see images on the image shersh and on the forum and stuff. Is there any other site?

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, Arco123 said:

Huh, Sadly I use a chromebook from school so I cant open the imgur site. I can see images on the image shersh and on the forum and stuff. Is there any other site?

I use https://cubeupload.com/

It's unlikely to be blocked by your chromebook.

[Arco123]

Oof it's blocked by gogardium. I kinda hate school chromebooks for that...

 

 

[NHunter]

I've planted a flag on Fury.

It took me three attempts to land this thing in one piece - landing legs don't seem to like this particular ship and kept exploding if it came down any faster than 1 m/s...

[RizzoTheRat]

Today I am mostly waiting....

 

I keep my KSP install on my Dropbox so I can play it form different machines.  My usual one is an i5-8600k, but I'm away for the next couple of weeks so any KSP time I get will be on my old Phenom X4.  Quite a performance difference.

Sent an early game mission to put 3 tourists in Mun orbit, and launch was running about 1/5 real time.   Nice booster separation though

To be fair though I am amazed how well KSP runs on older hardware.  It might be a good idea to take SVE/EVE/Scatterer off though.

 

Oh well, time to go and put another coat of paint on the hallway while I'm waiting for it to circularise

Edited December 22, 2019 by RizzoTheRat

[Francois424]

( KSP 1.7.3 - Kerbal Scaled RSS )

Oh boy where to begin...  Might as well pick up from last update (2 weeks ago I think).
So last time I had just arrived at Mars with a ship full of Tourists, and had landed on Phobos with the lander.
So as the ship is headed to Mars for those that paid the agency to land on it, I decided to give you guys a limited tour of the habitat ring !

Nothing beats the state-of-the-art luxury comfort of the KASA's habitat ring, happy tourists means more money, tho they wonder what is this 'Jool' and 'Laythe' on the posters?

Then the 'Poseidon' got in orbit of Mars, and the lander went down.  Unfortunately something happened with the camera and only this picture survived :

Honestly tho, it took a lot of 'simulations' to land this thing.  Wanted to land on 'Olympus Mons' but it was a VERY bad idea, given parachutes didn't open... *eeep!*

 

 

The next leg of the trip was Jupiter, or rather it's 4 moons.  Those tourists are almost making me do a Jupiter-4 all over again.  Thankfully, they only want to land on two moons (Europa and Ganymede), but it does mean I have to stop every where.  I decided to start with the closest of moons, and planned my aerobraking/capture in Jupiter's atmosphere.

The Poseidon is definitely not Atmosphere-rated.  However with all sails furled it could withstand a 1000km slowdown.

Obviously this was not enough to do the trick so we had to complete the maneuver with the engines.  Still, it halved the dV cost, not too shabby.

Maneuver completed, now making the final adjustments to get an encounter with our first of the four moons...

 

So first, we are tasked to bring our tourists on a Fly-by of Io.  In a Kerbal-fashion, everybody started calling it the "Pizza moon".  Darnit, I'm hungry now!

 

Using Io's gravity, we slingshot ourselves to the second destination : Europa.  This time however we needed to do more than just a Fly-by.

So we got a 50km orbit going . . .

. . . And set ourselves down gently on the surface... It's odd that tourist pay this much to land on a moon, yet don't want to step outside... Oh well, it's their money !

Then it was Ganymede's turn to welcome the 'Poseidon' into it's orbit . . .

 . . . And allow our brave pilot to set a flag while stretching his legs.   Again, the tourists didn't want to leave the ship... *sigh*

The final step in the Jupiter system was a simple fly-by of Callisto.  Sorry dear, but no one wanted to land on you

 

We then started thinking head.  Next on the tourist's destination list was Uranus.  No doubt they all heard about that Station we built over there, not to mention Titania's mining operation and exploration.  The fact that Uranus is an absolute beauty (minus her ring and greenish hue in this mod) is sure to lure tourists in. 
The problem tho is that we're literally strapped for time on this one.   So after the Agency took a look of thing, they planned a 3-maneuver trajectory that would meet with Uranus in about 4 years (!!!) - they say we have Jupiter to thank for this.  A bit expensive on the Delta-V side, but this craft is state-of-the art, so it has plenty.

The first 1'675 dV maneuver drops our altitude from beyond Calisto (in this picture) down to 2'000km of Jupiter.  Enough wiggle-room for the next one . . .

 . . . a 2'925 dV maneuver in the shadows of Jupiter.  Although it drops our altitude around 1'750km, we are still safe from Jupiter's storms.

 

And with that we have an ejection burn that meets with Uranus in 9 years, 163 days.  That course takes us back DOWN into the Kerbal system all the way to a Mars periapsis (no encounter tho), where the final and third maneuver will happen to shorten the trip to 4 years and 160 days.  It's quite hefty at 4'500 dV, but given the time constraints I figure it is well worth it.  To note that these "end-game" engines on the 'Poseidon' - 4x "Sundogs" and 1x "Aurora" both have 20'000isp.  Not quite interstellar level of power/isp, but it's quite enough given proper maneuvering and planning.  So dV with this craft is enough to do a grand-tour and back and have enough spare for a few interesting missions  .

Now I wonder what the orbital insertion maneuver will cost once we reach Uranus... But this is a story for another time !
Thanks for reading, and happy holidays everyone !

 

Edited December 22, 2019 by Francois424

[Cavscout74]

Posted another update for my career

Highlights include:

A rocket attack on Minmus

Tried my hand at hauling orbital debris

And tested out a seaplane - Jeb says its a great platform for fishing

[Fireheart318]

On 8/15/2019 at 9:54 PM, coyotesfrontier said:

Did some testing in my main install, making sure all the mods are working correctly before I start science mode. I mostly just built things, however:

https://imgur.com/a/xzkeFjR

 

I love what you did with the engines on that plane!

[putnamto]

made a giant pyramid out of gold, then strapped it to a rocket, and landed it on the mun, for the low low price of half a million dollars.

[amarillo114]

Today I set up some ground science experiments for the first time! Now back to KSC to spend some science! Next step, research about rover building. You never get tired of playing this. Dope!!

[NHunter]

Since I was left with a bit of spare fuel after landing on Fury, I decided to visit Anger (ok, that extra fuel was no coincidence, and I did pack a second set of deployable science experiments, but, whatever...)

Edited December 23, 2019 by NHunter

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Had another elongated busy weekend this past weekend, which cut into my playing time fairly substantially. I also seem to have made it to today without taking any screenies; my apologies to y'all there...

After Wednesday's trans-Gilly burn of Eunice Howell, I was fairly certain the craft would have insufficient fuel to enter orbit upon arrival, and would require the presence/dispatch of an emergency tanker craft. The problem there, though, is that my existing Da Luv Boht 7 design utilizes standard size docking ports, whereas Eunice Howell like all other Minnow 7b touring craft uses a small port. To rectify this issue, I began my day on Thursday at the VAB and designed the Da Luv Boht 7a. That involved loading the Da Luv Boht, taking the docking port off, putting a Claw in its place and then saving the damn thing under a new name. The new design should be a little more universal. That done, the Samwell Tarly Yards over Gilly were ordered to begin printing one up; construction should take 23 hours and 15 minutes to complete. This puts the new craft complete a few hours before Howell arrives at Gilly, so I should be all set. Just leaves the rendezvous to deal with there. I did have to send up some more Rocket Parts to the shipyard to ensure the craft would be completed on schedule, but that just involved a quick mass driver shot from the Ocean Ranger outpost on the surface.

With one of her tourists bound for the surface of Eve and another headed towards Gilly, LSV House Atreides was given the go-ahead to press on with her current interplanetary touring run. The next scheduled stop was Dres, which required Atreides to warp to a point 1.3 Gm over Kerbol to bleed off the necessary speed for orbital entry. This was a lengthy process, during which time the Boop Boop 7w probe over Dres returned to apoapsis - I still wasn't in the right spot there, so later in the day I kind of brute forced it - I stayed with the probe until I got the green light for the target spot then changed my orbital period to 9 hours and 40 minutes - the same as Dres's rotation rate. This put me off the target orbit parameters, but what I figure I can do is perform a radial burn to finish putting myself in the right spot to finish out the contract. I've only made four attempts to finish the contract with this probe already; getting kinda sick of it, honestly...

Atreides did finally warp to Dres, arriving at 263 m/s and entering a 224.7 by 29.1 kilometer, 25.20° orbit - good enough for government work. Or at least, good enough to get credit for the contract. No tourists are heading to the surface. Next stop along the way is Mun...

Finished a 51 day colonization contract at the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus; went ahead and washed and then frocked 12 new crewmembers into the program there. Next batch of colonists for DH are still seven days out.

Day ended on Thursday at the Caue Serpente Yards, which launched a Cigar 7 Eve Descent Module after fueling (and nearly a day after finishing up the construction owing to other goings-on). The Cigar made its way to space station Eveport and docked after a 48 minute flight with the Zima 7 payload already at the station. After a quick refuel of the module, the combined Zima/Cigar craft departed Eveport with tourist Joemon Kerman aboard. After taking the time to refuel Eveport with a mass driver shot from the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve's surface first thing this morning, the Cigar deorbited and landed safely approximately 16 kilometers to the west of ALK. Joemon did wind up pulling 9.8 gees during the descent and the Cigar broke off two airbrakes at landing (as is wont to happen with that design), but there were no noteworthy mishaps there.

So today my main priorities are to retreive Joemon and get him to ALK; the new Zima 7 Eve Ascent Vehicle has been ready for the past ten hours at ALK. Eve launch - always fun (in the Dwarf Fortress sense, of course). I'll also be having House Atreides head back to Kerbin and on to Mun. Seems odd heading back that way with folks still deployed, but that's just the way it is. Atreides is going to have to head to Gilly herself eventually - one of her other passengers wanted an orbit there and I missed that fact when I had Howell head that way. Nothing really else to talk about; I've got a lot of survey and drilling contracts that I might knock out over the holiday break coming up. 

Going to try to find some time to play over the next two weeks, but in case I don't make it back here to report to y'all, I hope all y'all have a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, have an okay-ish Festivus, and for the rest of y'all I'll give a Seasons Greetings. See y'all next year.

[Retro Starship]

(1.8.1, Making History, Breaking Ground, a few basic mods)

 Headed off to do a contract task for some pressure readings near the south pole. Flew by "Victoria Falls" which is a great vacation place for Val & Bill Kerman, I have been told. Accidentally flew by this area as @Castille7 mentioned it once to me here.

Got 3 readings done with no problem in flight and flew back to KSC for a somewhat ok landing with my newly designed jet called "Nitengale II".     (<- yes spelled that way on purpose)

(Sorry for the dark images. Always seem to get these lately.)

Edited December 23, 2019 by Saturn5tony