What did you do in KSP1 today?

[putnamto]

added a fuel tank and docking module to my kerbin station, this station is in orbit for science, refuelling, and to act as a waiting area for launch windows. 

the whole thing went up in this arrangedment due to COM issues, so i decoupled the tug for the station(it went up with the payload) and docked it to the top, then decoupled the top and moved it to the bottom, flew the thing to the station, docked, then decoupled the now bottom and recoupled it in its final resting place on the side of the station

 

Edited January 6, 2020 by putnamto

[purpleivan]

Stage 4 of the Daker 2020 didn't have much in the way of steep hills.

But did have plenty of bumps in the ground to leap off.

Including one at the finish line.

 

[Hotel26]

I'm building a second mega-refinery on the Mun, 180 degrees opposite the first.  It'll be daylight somewhere!

I've extended the booms on Snowflake (for easier docking) and I've changed out Zippo's 2 Rhinos for 4 Vectors in aid of a better wheelbase, increased ground clearance -- and easier docking.

                                                                            

I think my next big project on the Mun is a network of 6 bases around the equator, 3 each around the 45 degree latitudes and 1 each at the poles.  Don't ask me why...

Edited January 6, 2020 by Hotel26

[RizzoTheRat]

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

I've extended the booms on Snowflake (for easier docking) and I've changed out Zippo's 2 Rhinos for 4 Vectors in aid of a better wheelbase, ground clearance -- and easier docking.

I've not got my current game to the point to revisit my Foldbase, which was based on your Snowflake design, but I was also thinking about extending the booms as I had to be really precise with the orientation of docked modules, and had to close solar panels when landing a new module as the clearances were so tight.  The trouble is that make the whole design taller, which might be a problem fitting the core to the carrier while still being able to carry shorter modules, so I might need to go for a double hinge.

Have you had any issues with finding a flat enough space for the bigger footprint base?

[Hotel26]

21 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

Have you had any issues with finding a flat enough space for the bigger footprint base?

Most interesting and an excellent question.  I survey first.  I landed a Ladybug there first and then brought in a Bombardier.  I flew the Ladybug around a bit and the Kerbal got off and jet-packed a bit.  I set the Ladybug/Kerbal around where I wanted (but allowing some space for landing the big rig.)

After all that, the Snowflake came down and sat on a knoll.  Sans herbe.  And you know in KSP, knolls are pointy.  Its booms were hanging into space enough I knew it was going to be a problem.  OK, so, no matter.  One of the Kerbals jumped down and took a short confirmational stroll.  The Spider was still mounted on the Snowflake.  Took about 60 seconds to hoist it into the vaccuum and then "jink" it laterally 40-50 meters.  The result is perfectly flat.  But inclined.  Flat means that weight pressed on it (i.e. a docked Zippo), won't break it.  But inclined means you have to be really gentle with the touch-down (Spider bringing each Orb down), as the combo can cartwheel back up from KSP physics craziosity.  Doable though.

I was just thinking today that I wished KSP's initial procedural body generator had favored flatter curves occasionally.  This applies to Kerbin finding good landing fields, too.  It's a buzz when you do find one, though.

The flattest one I know on the Mun is at about 98E on the equator.  It's not high yield, though.  5% ore.

Really interested you made a design.  Getting my original Zippo docked...  man, oh man.  I always retract radiators before landing anything.  But I've even had to pull drills up in order to wedge the old Zippo in.  The new design is a cinch.

21 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

Foldbase

Great link!  That video of the automated landing (and docking) is quite incredible.  The word fanatical also comes to mind: truly impressive!

Edited January 7, 2020 by Hotel26

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Howdy y'all, and Happy New Year! Ready to begin my seventh year with this game...can't really believe I've been playing this long.

This Christmas season was unfortunately the year that my eldest son introduced me to Minecraft. Having been a fan of Dwarf Fortress back in the day and Stardew Valley more recently, both my wife and I have found ourselves rapidly addicted; I've already managed to depopulate a village (because I was mining instead of paying attention to what those judgmental jackholes were doing, which was getting eaten by Zed), explore a good sized cavern, fall into lava, completely tear down every damn building in the depopulated village and build a fair sized castle to house some new folks, tame a horse and begin considering how the hell I'm going to go about with re-population. Right now I'm fishing for Saddles; keep on pulling up enchanted bows, which I suppose is okay in its own right...

All of this, of course, severely cut into playing KSP over the break. But I did do a few things while I was waiting my turn...

In my last post on the morning of December 23^rd, I had just landed a Zima 7 capsule / Cigar 7 Eve Descent Module with tourist Joemon Kerman aboard on the surface of Eve about 16 klicks to the west of the Alexander L. Kielland outpost. Much of the rest of the day was spent with retreiving Joemon and getting him back into Eve orbit. Engineer Taning Kerman went on EVA from ALK and boarded the nearby Echo 4 quadcopter, which flew the distance over to the Zima (a task made harder by the fact that Vertical Velocity Controller has decided it no longer wants to work, one of several probably related bugs I've seen of late that probably can be attributed to stupidity on my part). Upon arrival, Taning attached the Zima to the 'copter long enough for Joemon to transfer over. Once Joemon was aboard, the Zima detached and Taning back aboard, Echo 4 returned to ALK. Upon landing, Taning attached the 'copter to the outpost so that Joemon could offload, then detached the 'copter and returned to her post in the station's Castillo Factory module.

Joemon's stay at the outpost was brief - I had ordered up the print of a new Zima 7 Eve Ascent Vehicle long before his arrival and the outpost had had it ready to finalize for nearly two full days prior to that, so with him aboard I mashed the finalize button and began fueling. Once fueling was completed, Joemon transferred to the capsule, quick-saving occurred and the thing launched successfully to a 113.5 by 112.3 kilometer, 0.25° inclined orbit to end the day. Only took four tries.

Next session was on December 27^th, which began with the ordering of a new Cigar 7 at the Caue Serpente Yards in eve orbit; total print time was three hours and nineteen minutes. I figured I should be ready for the next tourist wanting to visit Eve's surface. I then fiddled with the two probes I had over Dres, one of which I was able to put into a 14,549.3 by 6,082.8 kilometer, 6.51° inclined orbit to finish out its contract (the other one - the stationary orbit one - still isn't in the proper position and it's really starting to hack me off, honestly). That done, I finally had time to get St. Simeon Salus deployed from space station Eveport to go pick Joemon up - total flight to time from departure to rendezvous and docking was 55 minutes.


First screenie of the new year! SSS came pretty close to whacking the Zima at rendezvous - glad that didn't happen...

After docking, the Zima separated from its core booster stage (which was then de-orbited) and began the return flight to Eveport. Total flight time back was 54 minutes.

Log shows my next session on December 30^th, which began with a quick refueling shot of fuel and Rocket Parts from ALK to CSY, after which St. Simeon Salus arrived and docked at Eveport. By then the Cigar at CSY had been finished for about 35 minutes, so fuel was transferred to the new module and it launched from the shipyard on a course for Eveport. Total flight time to rendezvous was just short of one hour, but the actual docking didn't occur until the next session on New Year's Day - the 30^th was a pretty short day all told...

New Year's Day didn't see much but it does account for my last two screenies. The day began with a correction burn of the Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane heading towards Minmus; the plane was about halfway through its transit and the burn corrected its approach so that it would be able to reach space station Minmusport upon arrival (in theory anyway). Once that was done, I went ahead and got the Cigar to Eveport, docking successfully to the Zima capsule.

Eveport has got a little bit of heft to it along two of three axes at the moment. Add some more stuff along the third and it'll become a genuine navigational headache...

That done, I spent the rest of my time with the Delta 1 quadcopter on Duna conducting a temperature survey mission.

One of these days I should get around to replacing Delta 1. Don't get me wrong, it works, but it's the prototype design - the later 'copters are all so much more capable. They're also far easier to control on manual...

Delta 1 flew 353 kilometers to the northeast of the Enchova Central outpost on the surface, hitting two waypoints for contract. Delta 1 is still out at the target zone right now, and with Vertical Velocity Controller still out of commission, it may be staying out there until I need it again.

Got a little bit more done on January 2^nd. The Scan Queen outpost on Ike drilled 3000 units of Ore for the initial piece of a delivery contract, and LSV House Corrino over Dres printed up a Pink Noise 7 communications satellite carrier in preparation for the historic flight to Moho, which will take place at the earliest opportunity. LSV House Atreides, which was also over Dres at the beginning of the day, proceeded with its ongoing tourist mission - the ship broke orbit at warped to Kerbin, arriving at 5,582 m/s. After seven warpbacks, the ship changed position to slow down further and proceeded from there to warp directly into 845.1 by 285.1 kilometer, 173.8° inclined Munar orbit, arriving at 423 m/s.  None of the passengers aboard Atreides were headed to the surface, so after she received a quick load of fuel supplies from the nascent Boot Hill outpost there (including the first mass transfer of Xenon Gas from the outpost to a warp ship), Atreides broke orbit and proceeded to Eve, arriving at 14,166 m/s. 24 warp-backs later, the ship settled into a 725.8 by 704.7 kilometer, 3.79° inclined orbit. Once in Eve orbit, Strange Cargo docked to Atreides departed and burned for Eveport to go pick up Joemon; total flight time to rendezvous was 57 minutes (and once again didn't happen until the next session). Meanwhile, the Non Est Hic shipyards over Vall completed its print of a Da Luv Boht 7 rescue ship. After the shipyard received replacement supplies of fuel, Enriched Uranium and Rocket Parts via mass driver from the Vermilion Block 380 outpost on Vall's surface, the new craft - dubbed SS Eastland - launched and burned for intercept and alignment with the Spamcan 7c lander that ran out of gas in orbit before the Christmas break. Flight time to intercept was 23 minutes.

Nothing else happened until earlier this morning, when Eastland reached intercept and burned to take it to rendezvous with the Spamcan in 84 minutes after two orbits. Strange Cargo arrived and docked at Eveport; after Joemon boarded and the ship was refueled, it departed again to return to Atreides - total flight time to rendezvous will be 73 minutes, or roughly the same time that Eastland reaches the Spamcan (a condition I had hoped to avoid by having Eastland go around two times instead of one - for all the more good it is going to do me). 

The Plan for today then is to get Strange Cargo back to Atreides and Eastland to dock with the Spamcan. Once SC is back at Atreides, I'll begin the difficult task of warping Atreides to Gilly; I had hoped to avoid having to do this but noted too late that one of her current passengers was wanting to head to orbit. Eunice Howell currently en route to Gilly is carrying another passenger, so that might make final retrieval a little easier at least. That said, I'm quite worried about Eunice Howell's fuel status - she might not have sufficient fuel for orbital entry, which is why I've been building another rescue ship at the Samwell Tarly Yards over Gilly. I discovered this morning that the shipyard was apparently out of Rocket Parts, so I'll be sending them up first thing next session and I hope to launch the rescue ship later today. Eastland will be refueling the Spamcan, and then both craft will be heading back to space station Vallport. Time permitting today, Corrino will be heading to Moho; it's more likely though that that will take place at some point later this week. Hopefully I'll be able to take some decent screenies when that happens; many of the events of these past two weeks have happened at night, of course...

[Curveball Anders]

On 12/21/2019 at 3:59 PM, Curveball Anders said:

At last, after many trails and failures.
A quadcopter that can be landed and fly on Duna.

In reference to Dragonfly (I want to point out that the atmosphere on Titan is a bit denser than bloody Duna) ...

 

A late update, it hits about 8k on Duna, and flies well as long as the Sun is up.

But it's an absolute nightmare to land, balancing descent speed and have the b..y thing stay still horizontally ...

 

[capi3101]

6 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

But it's an absolute nightmare to land, balancing descent speed and have the b..y thing stay still horizontally ...

I'll suggest Vertical Velocity Controller and Horizontal Landing Aid as mods you may want to check out. I use them and they definitely help make flying my own quadcopters easier. 

8k is also my observed operational ceiling for Duna; at least, that's the point at which the craft's TWR goes below 1.0 - I've gotten it up around 11,000 but there gets to be some wicked up/down oscillations if it goes up that high. Definitely not something you want to pull around the higher peaks on Duna.

Same design gets up to around 22,000 on Eve and gets into the trans-sonic at that altitude. Just saying.

[purpleivan]

Val just completed the 5th and final stage of Dakar 2020 in a time of 10:12.

She had a lot of fun competing this year.

Edited January 7, 2020 by purpleivan

[KerikBalm]

While waiting for kopernicus so I can scale up the ksp system, I tried to develop a reusable Eve ascent system, since its doable at that scale, with breaking ground.

I still lack the ground infrastructure for relinking the ascent vehicle with the booster (which may need a redesign), but its a proof of concept:

Its linked by standard docking ports, but if I were doing a real mission, I'd use shielded docking ports for higher heat tolerance during re-entry. It climbs well through most of the ascent at 40 m/s on electric power:

It tops out at about 11 km:

The first attempt at an orbit had a problem with the separation, but here it is shortly after engaging rockets:

The TWR of the lander allowed it to get into an orbit before the booster fell to far:

It glides equally well forwards and backwards when emtpy

going back to the launch site:

First landing:

and maneuvered back on the pad:

But... it would take some work to recover the orbiter, and make it able to reenter, land nearby, and be re-attached.... but nothing was thrown away and I got a kerbal to orbit.

 

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Not a lot to report for y'all today; I think the time may be at hand for me to begin the process of upgrading to 1.8. It's my understanding that some garbage collection optimization took place with that update, which if true would definitely be useful. Right now my setup gets to about 5 GB memory usage after six or seven scene changes; my box only has 8 GB memory, so at that point the act of shutting down the game can take upwards of ten minutes. Hard to get things done when you're spending that long just getting the game to load and unload...

Found a desert village in Minecraft yesterday within a day's travel of my 'castle'; apparently that's good. Damn near fell into a nearby ravine in the process. But KSP still won out time-wise. 

Day yesterday began with a trio of refueling mass driver shots. The first of these was from the Ocean Ranger outpost on Gilly to the Samwell Tarly Yards in orbit, which involved a load of fuel and Rocket Parts; this kickstarted production on the Da Luv Boht 7a rescue craft under construction there. Unfortunately, completion time jumped up to six hours, well past the scheduled arrival of Eunice Howell in Gilly's SOI; that made me more than a tad nervous. The second shot was from the Sleipnir A outpost on Dres to LSV House Corrino in orbit, and involved supplies of bipropellant, Xenon Gas and Rocket Parts. The impetus there was to prepare the craft for departure - she's really no longer needed in orbit of Dres and at this point I'm looking for a window to send her on to Moho. The final shot was from the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve to space station Eveport in orbit, and was just a shot of standard fuel supplies in the wake of the recent tourist visit there. Mainly did that one just to get it off of my plate...

That done, the scheduled rendezvous between Strange Cargo and LSV House Atreides in high Eve orbit took place, and as unintentionally scheduled, that happened seconds prior to the rendezvous between the rescue craft SS Eastland and the Spamcan 7c lander left out of gas in orbit of Vall.

I suppose it's nice to know that you can still call AAA and get service all the way out here...

My next composite lander design. Or not. Looks like it'd tip over a little too easily...

Docking between Eastland and the Spamcan occurred without incident and Eastland was able to top off the Spamcan's tanks from its available fuel supply. After that, Strange Cargo proceeded to dock with House Atreides.

Now now, come over here and give grandma a kiss...don't be shy about it...

With docking completed, Atreides now faces the task of a warp to Gilly when a window to do so opens, which will be a little bit tricky owing to the very slow speed required for direct orbital entry and the fact that the ship's load is imbalanced. The presence of Strange Cargo will help a bit, but it's still likely that a final conventional burn at the end will be required and I'll be unable to go much past one-third thrust while still maintaining the ship's attitude. It's what I get for keeping the ship in service, but dammit, warp drives are expensive and/or time consuming...

Up next on my agenda was the process of getting Eastland and the Can back to space station Vallport. I made the decision to go ahead and have the two craft travel together so I wouldn't have to finagle additional maneuvers/scene changes, a decision that worked fairly well. Total flight time to rendezvous with the station was right at one hour.

The composite craft making an RCS course correction to take it to rendezvous. Found a way to make light on the dark side of Vall...

Upon arrival, I had to work quickly - Eunice Howell's arrival at Gilly was fast upcoming and I knew I would want to focus my attention there owing to the fueling problems. The Spamcan detatched from Eastland and proceeded to dock with Vallport without incident, after which I had to focus my attention on Howell. I knew the ship had 150 m/s of fuel remaining, and needed to know its arrival speed.

Howell arrived at Gilly at 530 m/s. After a quicksave and a valiant effort to get the craft into orbit on RCS fuel after the main tank went dry, and seeing the craft sail right past, I reverted and then quit for the day, stopping off with a quick hack via KML to give the ship a third of a tank of gas for a second try...

I'll find some way to punish myself for the cheat later...'cuz this was definitely cheating.

So today will begin with that second attempt to get Howell into orbit. Assuming that's successful, I'll be heading to Vall to put Eastland into dock next to finish up that distraction at Vall, and from there I'll be making my attempts to get Atreides to Gilly and Corrino to Moho. I need to consider halting the construction of the Da Luv Boht at Gilly since I will not be needing it now - had a good name picked out that I can recycle for use later if I want. I've got fourteen colonists and tourists setup for a new interplanetary run that I could do with LSV House Harkonnen pretty easily and some other contracts at Eve I can knock out, plus a survey mission at Vall and the ongoing effort to put a probe into a stationary orbit over a specific spot on Dres going on. Plenty going on if I can get enough actual play time within which to get it done.

Hope to have something more interesting for y'all tomorrow.

[Guest]

Hmm... sun going down. Defiantly shoulda brought more fuel =/ 

Edited January 7, 2020 by Guest

[Retro Starship]

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

Well a few days ago I needed to have Kathely test a few simple parts for a new contract. 3 total but the last was a bit on the difficult side. It was to test a large 2.5m heat shield at a low altitude and at a hot speed of at least 1610m/s to 1960m/s in the air. Usually this is simply done by a nice descent from space and click the button at a good angle gliding down when it gets hot. But ohh no Kathely, wanted to do it her way... going up!

Going up with enuff boosters to raise the heat of the rocket at 32,000 meters or so while almost burning up!

Here is her successful mission. (getting rid of the boosters in the spoiler was fun to watch too)

Also had to test the wide 1.5 decoupler at almost the same time as the heat shield going up. Man both of these covered the whole capsule/cockpit too.

 

Here it is, almost at 32,000m and we are cooking the rocket! (look the the left edge overheat display, almost fried one of the cub engines)

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

OK, lets go home and get rid of our smaller heat shield. (Keep the big one, engineers need to look at it)

 

Job done, all 3 contracts green, got the two cub verniers, the 1.5 decoupler and the large 2.5m heat shield tested. Going up as well! Did Kathely get any extra credit for testing the heatshield ascending... No she did'nt. She got docked for over heating the cubs at 27,000m and the engineers are still cooling them off.

She was pleased though, when asked about the mission, she said when asked.

"Man what an awesome ride!!"

 

[Bej Kerman]

My original 7 kerbonauts are scattered across the cosmos, so I'm working on a craft to get them back. It looks quite messy right now, but it's also quite practical.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Bej Kerman

[Delay]

Day 3 and counting of texturing the Mammoth...

Everything except for the four engines is not loading in Blender. Reconstructing the UV layout is a painful cycle of adjusting and checking. It doesn't help that this is the second to last part in the "Engines" tab!

[Lisias]

I'm working on some entries for the Around Kerbin in 80 Minutes Challenge. Making a working new design is already hard enough, but making one that lands easily is the worst part.  

It was a perfect approach, except by being a bit too high and hot - after [redacted] minutes flying at Mach [redacted], descending from [redacted] meters high in so small time demanded too much from the control surfaces on an airplane now with a heavy nose. The previous craft (that managed to accomplish the same stunt) had more control surfaces...

Obviously I occluded the craft as I didn't applied her yet to the challenge.  (no Kerbals were - permanently -- injured on the stunt after the quick-loading)

As you can see, had KSC be 5 meters lower, I think I would had landed her!

 

I managed to explode the craft ONE METER BELOW THE TARMAC!!!

 

And got a perfect addition to my "Perfect Landings that Didn't Happened" Album Collection!

 

Well.... I had made so many rounds around Kerbin due these... "hard landings"... that I don't need the Map anymore, I know where I am by looking to the ground!  And now, I'm going to do it again. Should I try to do it blinded this time?

Edited January 8, 2020 by Lisias
Kraken damned autocompletes!!! :(

[NHunter]

Planted a flag on Scindo:

Landed on a flat area -- the craft is, unfortunately, not rated for sloppy terrain -- so not much to see here beyond flats and some hills in the distance.

[michaelbezos1]

Hi guys i stucked at pitching down process at the going to orbit i do not know what to after as after there is announcemnt spacecraft is out of tracked. 

 

If you do not help i would have to research by myself through youtube or google. 

 

Much love :> 

 

i think now it could be advisabkle to press attidute and sas at the part of pitching down but i am not sure. 

 

Also found that :

pitching down by clicking w 

W

Pitch adjustment (down)

0.07.3

Edited January 8, 2020 by michaelbezos1
adding info

[Shadowmage]

23 hours ago, Delay said:

Everything except for the four engines is not loading in Blender. Reconstructing the UV layout is a painful cycle of adjusting and checking. It doesn't help that this is the second to last part in the "Engines" tab!

Already looking pretty good.

If interested, the TU dev version has an updated UV-exporter tool, that will generate the UV maps for you as .SVG files.  Hit me up with a PM if you wanted more info.

[Retro Starship]

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

Last night just a quick hop into a sub-orbit to test some of my new Cryogenic engines for the level 6 career Im doing. 

Yea just two tests, one a "Ulysses" CE-2X Cryogenic and a big decoupler at around 48000m. Had a Ulysses at the bottom too. A really fun ship!!

 

[michaelbezos1]

This is good advanced progress

but unfortunately still not reach that level,

Much love :>

Keep going.

[Okhin]

Been tinkering with Snacks resources, to get a grip at Config nodes and stuff. I do have a Sleep resources now, as well as stims that scientist brew from soil and monoprop', using a stim steamer (and it almost taste like coffee, while keeping Kerbals awake). I'm strugling with the EntertainmentCenter though, I'd like to have a switch between Night mode and entertainment center. But I guess I'll have to think things a bit differently.

Besides that, not much happening in Game. I wasted some days of playing doing useless stuff and forgetting that both fairing and docking port are crossfeeder, so ended up burning all the LF I wanted to use to move a munar station in a polar orbit (and then, back to an equatorial one), for scanning purposes.

I guess I'll do it differently today.

[Delay]

2 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

If interested, the TU dev version has an updated UV-exporter tool, that will generate the UV maps for you as .SVG files.

It doesn't occur often enough to be a true annoyance. By far most meshes load just fine, but thanks anyways!

[Cavscout74]

I tested a rover-glider at KSC.  It flew unbelievably well, and worked right the first time.  Unfortunately, I don't have enough time in my career to do proper testing before sending it to Laythe, so it's getting loaded on top of a rocket and will be tested on the actual mission.

I used a large sounding rocket to get it airborne, then it has a single 0.625m Torch engine buried inside the structural tube for some thrust (~0.6g's at full load) to keep it going.  Handling was - as I already said - unbelievably good and after a few turns around KSC, it was time to try to land.  Both canard & wing angle of incidence were left at zero to (hopefully) make it easier to launch into orbit.

Landing also went quite smoothly.  Then the fairing was jettisoned, exposing the rover.  The Torch was used to taxi over the fairing debris, then the glider gear was retracted while the rover gear was extended

And finally the front & rear decouplers fired, freeing the rover.  It took a little bit to push the pieces clear enough to get the rover away.   It is not the greatest rover I've ever made, but it has most of the experiments I have available in my career - except a scanning arm - plus a pretty good antenna, a large battery, & a RTG for power with small backup solar panels

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by Cavscout74

[RizzoTheRat]

Posted my first ever challenge

In doing my own entry I discovered what a rubbish design the KerbalX is.  I've never played with any of the stock ships before.  I reckon moving the Poodle down the stack, so you start on the last stage a lot sooner but it has a lot more fuel, would be way more efficient.