What did you do in KSP1 today?

[JorgeCS]

Hi people!

Yesterday and today as well I’m building from scratch a mission to Eve. As lately I’m working in pure stock (plus DLCs, but trying to avoid them), I miss the SCANsat parts to find a proper place to land. And no, don’t really like the KerbNet.

My last mission to Eve was about 2 years ago and terribly laggy, so this time I’m trying to minimize the part count while still trying to give a nice appearance to the ship. I hope I can post pics and the mission report a few days later.

Cheers!

J

[hoover2701]

Slowly crawling through my new career game (JNSQ/PBC/KerbalismScienceOnly/TAC-LS/USI-MKS). Finally I have done my first manned mission. Of course it was Jebediah who had the honor of being the first Kerbal to orbit his home planet.

Simultaneously I launched my relay carrier to Minmus. I started the Minmus Probe Program in Strategia as I still need more science to build reliable Mun Spaceships for my manned missions.

[Cavscout74]

So I kinda stumbled across mention - with pics - of some disc-wing mono- and bi-planes built in the early 1900's that actually flew.  One was even described as pleasant to fly.  And I thought something like this:

...really deserved to be in the skies of Kerbin.  So, here it is:

Spoiler

And it actually flies!!!!!!  It could almost be described as pleasant

Roll control is a little sluggish, but not surprising since I'm using the elevators for roll & pitch control

Aerobatics are even possible - although pitching maneuvers (loops, Immenlmann's) work better than roll maneuvers.  Poor Magas Kerman nearly blacked out during this semi-Immelman, and she's a 3-star pilot

But it's stable enough to cruise at low altitudes

Coming around to try to land

And this is why I chose an external seat rather than a cockpit.  This was pilot error rather than design error.  I pitched the nose down past horizontal then tried to roll upright and couldn't do that fast enough to be able to pull out.  I was actually almost wings level & starting to bring the nose up when I slapped into the ground & Magas went bouncing for several meters

 

[Retro Arcade]

Today I started a new KSP Run in Science mode. I'd never tried that before so I decided to give it a chance, after all, it seemed easy since there wasn't a budget. The first launch was a failure. The craft went out of control but it landed safely. Then, I'd unlocked General Rocketry and began making a more complex craft. That went pretty nice. It almost escaped the atmosphere. That's pretty much it, I'll probably try way more when I don't feel too tired. 

[Vanamonde]

I made a goofy looking probe and left Kerbin's SOI for the first time (in this save). It beamed back science on the way, high above and low over Duna, took grav readings from most of the biomes, and all in all, transmitted 1600 science, and now remains at Duna to serve as a relay for future landing missions. 

[Pipcard]

Y67, D227 - The Dosei Maru will transport base modules and colonists to Sarnus's moons, Ovok and Hale

[Hydranaut]

Well, I finished up my last exam (Electrical Engineering) for my third semester of university today. And KSP decided to give me a nice present...

Mün Castle!  First time i've seen it for myself in my 4-6 years of playing KSP.

 

[AlamoVampire]

18 minutes ago, Hydranaut said:

Well, I finished up my last exam (Electrical Engineering) for my third semester of university today. And KSP decided to give me a nice present...

Mün Castle!  First time i've seen it for myself in my 4-6 years of playing KSP.

 

Congratulations on both!!

053006252020

[RealKerbal3x]

No pics, sorry.

I built and tested the entry, descent and landing system for an Eve rover. I've been using a standardised rover design in my latest career - in addition to examples on the Mun and Minmus, there is one on its way to Duna. I found that this rover design doesn't fit horizontally behind a 2.5m heatshield, so I decided to mount it vertically inside a fairing for Eve entry. This means the vehicle has a bit of a mass imbalance during entry, but it still manages to survive. The design seems fine for now, but I feel like I might tweak it a little before the Eve transfer window comes around.

[The Flying Kerbal]

On 6/23/2020 at 1:40 PM, Hotel26 said:

  

 

This is Harpoon...   We're no longer afraid of Eve.

"We're no longer afraid of Eve."

Speak for yourself mate! 

Joking aside that's a cool looking vehicle you built yourself, I hope you'll be posting more information on it, I'm really curious to know what's hiding in that bulge... 

[Hotel26]

19 hours ago, The Flying Kerbal said:

I'm really curious to know what's hiding in that bulge...

Gee, thank you for asking!  Testing this vehicle was lots of fun.  I think I deposited all 4 or 5 test shots safely on the surface of Eve.

I have to say that the exploits of @BadOaks recently was the final spur to find a safe way down to the surface of Eve.  I have been dying to go explore.

Having "the bulge" behind the CoM really helps with the ascent out of Kerbin, but no doubt also with the descent through Eve's heavy atmosphere.  There's a 5m heat shield in front and 3 Big-S tail feathers in the rear.

One has to have one of the aft tanks pinned open and, preferably, all 3 of the for'ard during lift-off, to pump fuel back to the engines.

Harpoon makes LKO comfortably.  You then need to bring it to a close rendez-vous with a space-station with a tanker or tug with a claw to refuel it before departure to final destination.  dV is about 3.5 km/s.

After the de-orbit and retro burn until fuel exhaustion, the Mammoth is discarded, followed by a turn to prograde and deployment of the heat shield.  At safe speed (under chutes), the following is jettisoned in sequence: nose, tail^[*], fairing followed by decoupling of the cargo, which may then fly to an easy landing.  Ah yes, the main thing is to plan the final decoupling of the cargo to occur in daylight!

And now, for the contents:

Electroglide.  This electric plane, crew of 6, does 160 m/s on Kerbin and I've had it to 95 on Eve.  Once trimmed (including prop pitch), it's very pleasant to fly without SAS.

[*] My Engineering team is reviewing this cut-away sequence as separating the tail first may likely turn the vehicle retrograde, thus allowing a subsequent, clean separation from the nose and heat-shield.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Hotel26

[Plane Crazy]

I got fed up with horizontal SSTOs, so I made a vertical one. It's capable of delivering a Jumbo 64 tank to LKO.

Nailed the landing!

[RoninFrog]

I barely built an Ike base!

First, I deployed a Lantern rover to scout around for a good spot.  It found a tiny ledge on the side of a mountain with a good view (not shown), high altitude (also not shown), and some decent ore.

An opportunity for the Augustine shuttle to land came up before the actual base modules.

The ISRU and Hub sections were the first to land.  It did really well, only 18 meters from the Augustine.  A match was applied to the extra oxidizer and fuel in the landing stage via the tracking station.

Oh no!  Oh dear!  We don't have enough boosters!  Quicksave time!  I totally did not realize that the craft with the Hab, Power, and Docking modules did not have enough dV.  I quicksaved back to orbit, and then thought about my life choices.  Should I send another one from Kerbin?  Should I try to land without the Power module?  "My Augustine still has some fuel left!" said Valentina.  It was time for a radical plan B. 

I have some serious doubts about this, Val.

The Augustine successfully docked and the useless, underpowered landing stage was sacrificed to the Kraken.  Unfortunately, the Kraken was unsatisfied with this measly offering and I only barely managed to save this massive, flailing pool noodle by rapidly spamming the "grandparent part" autostrut.  The good news: we have seven times as much dV.  The bad news:  an Ike TWR less than four, an off-center COT, and the landing gear on the Augustine and the base are facing opposite directions. 

Oh dear.  Oh dear!  OH DEAR!

"Tada!" said Valentina.  There was much rejoicing as no random spurts of fire and noise shot out of anywhere.

Docking the last module onto the hub!

Oh yeah!  Base assembled!  I can't wait until morning so I can actually see it! 

Now I gotta go build one on Duna...  

[FahmiRBLX]

Built my first custom cockpit. And I'm not proud of it despite the hard work. It's ugly & rough, to be honest.

And made a plane for it. Surprisingly I've managed to get above-1 TWR.

And yes, the pitch input is a meh.

[N_Danger]

Rocket Rescue went after a Kerbal in LKO.

And then we went to Minmus to rescue another Kerbal on the surface. A VIP wanted to go along to "supervise" but Val thinks he was just playing tourist.

Val says "Don't bump it too hard climbing in or there will have to be another rescue mission for all of us"

But all is well that ends well.

 

[FleshJeb]

On 6/24/2020 at 11:08 AM, JorgeCS said:

I miss the SCANsat parts to find a proper place to land. And no, don’t really like the KerbNet.

https://kerbal-maps.finitemonkeys.org/

EDIT: Color Relief mode on this one: https://ksp.deringenieur.net/

Edited June 26, 2020 by FleshJeb

[Cavscout74]

Only had a few little things going today - did a little Laythe exploration with the Ocean Explorer, put a small station into Mun orbit and got a crew moving to Minmus to re-staff my heavy mining base.

Laythe Ocean Explorer heading down to its max depth to gather some more data on this watery moon:

After a deep (nearly 400m) dive, came back to the surface and my high gain antenna promptly jammed during deployment.

On the surface it can reach nearly 60 m/s, which is enough to get some air:

Mun transfer station in orbit - just a collection of docking ports, a single hitchhiker and plenty of snacks

Minmus crew departing on one of my Lightning II spaceplanes

While they were on their way, the Peregrine lander returned to Minmus orbit & docked with the station to await the crew.  I'm REALLY glad I moved the docking port to near the CoM on the final version of the Peregrine, because this one was not much fun trying to dock.  I really don't know what I was thinking when I stuck it over the cockpit at the front.  I think once the crew arrives, the engineer's first job will be to move the docking port somewhere better

Edited June 26, 2020 by Cavscout74

[RyanRising]

I had a copy of the first version I got, 0.20.2, kicking around my hard drive so I decided to give that a shot.

You needed a few more boosters and struts back then than you do nowadays. Those engines overheat real quick when run at full thrust- maybe Skippers would have done the job since they don't actually lose thrust at sea level?  Hey, at least I remembered not to use the nose cones.

I didn't take any pictures of the ascent. Had to focus on flying. Did you know you couldn't use engine gimbal for roll control back then either?

This was not my first attempt, not by far, but I landed! Turns out the Mun is kinda ugly up close. Not pictured: the ground textures vibrating from... probably 32bit precision.

SAS is not a gentle stability assist, it's "I'm going to hold this attitude or tear the craft apart trying." Consequently, anything that requires changing attitude has to be done without the assist. The launch probably would have been the best place to show this, but alas this is all I've got.

Heatshield? What's a heatshield?

DO NOT descend on parachutes at Phys-Warp higher than 1x. Parachutes fully deploy in a hurry, and maxing out the G-meter probably isn't good for a craft at normal speed. (Sorry for the small UI here, I don't think there was any scaling option back then.)

And yes, they made it back down in one piece. Thankfully I hit the ground - though splashdown on parachutes is usually fine, water is a lot more dangerous than land.

It was a fun trip down memory lane, but I think I'll go back to the modern game now.

[AG-cs]

3 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

Only had a few little things going today - did a little Laythe exploration with the Ocean Explorer, put a small station into Mun orbit and got a crew moving to Minmus to re-staff my heavy mining base.

Laythe Ocean Explorer heading down to its max depth to gather some more data on this watery moon:

I like that it can also fly after a dive. Its shape is also pleasing. 

Is it possible to collect scientific data on the ocean floor as well?

[RoninFrog]

Duna base!  I'm really on a roll today!

First, a Lantern rover was deployed to find a good spot.  I got a spot that is equatorial, flat, low altitude (denser atmosphere), acceptable ore, and a view of Ike.

Once the spot was found, the habitation, docking, and power modules were landed via parachutes.  Everything was going just peachy.  Even though I didn't land close to the Lantern, it was okay since the modules are mobile while not assembled.

This part of the base was delivered without a hitch.

The hub and ISRU modules, on the other hand, were a disaster.  Ten parachutes slowed me down to 15 m/s, but that wasn't enough.  Every time I tried it, I would either bust a drill on one end, or destroy a docking port on the other.

So, I tried not dropping the landing stage, using the last drops of fuel to slow down.  It kind of worked!  The ground was really flat, so I managed to land upright on those four girders.  But when I tried to tip myself over, I would fall too fast and those blasted drills would always blow up.  It was quite a situation.

...and then, I had a totally kerbal idea!  What if, instead of jettisoning the landing stage, I jettisoned the parachutes!  Yeah!  Then, I could use the landing stage to lithobrake!  Brilliant!

And it worked flawlessly.  I jettisoned the chutes about 150 meters up, and then slammed into the ground at around 50 m/s.  The landing stage was completely flattened, and it scattered debris all over the area.  The base modules fell over on their side, and a few seconds later, the parachutes floated gently down into the wreckage.  It was a real mess, but Tomrod did a quick inspection of the modules, and nothing was broken.

The reaction wheels weren't enough to right the craft, but fortunately extending the drills worked great!  Tomrod trundled on over to the rest of the base, and everything was successfully assembled.

[munseeker]

My latest attempt at "just quick" building an asteroid base to support refueling of interplanetary missions has suffered some feature creep. I'm delighted to report that my age-old ZZZ radio telescope mod still works as a prop in 1.9.1! The base also has space for up to 47 Kerbals, which is plenty of space for the four-Kerbal permanent crew that take this rock around Kerbol on year-long assignments.

 

Edited June 26, 2020 by munseeker
added newlines

[Leopard]

not 'in' KSP, at least not yet..

did give the console (egg box) version another spin the other day, don't trust it to spend the time investing in getting anywhere on a platform where updates can break things but you cannot elect not to update..

in unrelated news, a refurbished PC arrived today, Core i5, 8 GB Ram, win 10 pro (first two good, last one I can live with), plan for this evening is buying the PC version of KSP and installing it, likely sans mods for now just to get the hang of flying it via a keyboard, and without sound as the speakers arrive tomorrow (probably)

doubt the machine will let me go nuts, also doubt it will run KSP2 at all/very well so will be sticking with 1.whatever

should finally be able to actually go places and do things in a version where it is hoped critical bugs actually get fixed, sometimes

[RoninFrog]

I landed a spaceplane on Duna!

Here it is in reentry.  It was right about here that I noticed that if a spaceplane has enough wing area to land on Kerbin, it doesn't necessarily mean it can land on Duna...

I think this Duna colonization mission I have recently been doing is the most untested, poorly designed, cobbled together thing I have ever done.

300 feet up, over 150 m/s, and dropping like the brick this shuttle is...

Smash!

Quicksave...

Smash!

Spoiler

Smash!

Smash!

Smash!

I was completely at a loss as to what to do.  It seemed hopeless.  Then I asked Jeb, "You got any ideas?"  "Oh you bet!" said Jeb.

It was a radical plan.  A Jebediah-level plan.  The first thing was to stall the plane at 10km up.

The next step of the plan was to plummet backwards, straight down, through a cloud of radioactive exhaust! 

Oh, yeah!  This, my friends, is how to properly land a plane in KSP!  Holding really stable, and a steady speed at around 37 m/s.

Come on, don't anything break!

Ha ha!  Yeah!  Perfect touchdown! 

 

[Fraktal]

Today marked the first time I decided to try using flaps on my planes. The result: I swiftly re-engineered all of my planes to use the wing root elevons for this purpose only, extended by default and toggled via action group. Of course, I'm yet to figure out why one of my small planes rolls to the side upon reaching 60 m/s on the runway. It's not yawing like overweight landing wheels usually do, it's rolling.

I'm also considering timewarping a couple hundred days forward to the next launch window to Duna so that I can get back to space testing, but am not sure if I should. I mean, yes, it's a science sandbox game so time is no factor, but I should be using that time for more testing. I just don't know what I should test...

[EchoLima]

Using mods, I flew a Rosetta style mission to a comet, aiming to recreate what could be done in 1.10.

I think it goes to show how great of experience mods allow - you can practically play new versions of KSP (including KSP 2) years before they're released!

I made it into a video, which you can watch here: