What did you do in KSP1 today?

[DBowman]

On 8/10/2020 at 2:37 AM, billbobjebkirk said:

Last night, instead of working on my ongoing save, I took on the gargantuan task of building Wernher Von Braun's insane moon lander from his 1952 series of articles in Collier's magazine:

  Reveal hidden contents

As far as my google searches can show, I'm the first person ever to build this design to Kerbal scale and post it online. At 444 parts and a fuelled mass of 1,177 tons, I can see why!

Nice work! I had a go also, it should be a challenge thread, a whole series of Von Braun Style (like Apollo Style challenges)

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/27292-what-did-you-do-in-ksp-today/&do=findComment&comment=2397476

Hyper edited to LKO, and took it from there

[N_Danger]

 I had my first contract to Jool on this play through. I used a modified Sundiver satellite and launcher. The Jooldiver lifts off.

The transfer burn in progress. I was 14 days off the optimal launch window but no worries as Jool has a big one.

Arrival at Jool and science instrument check out.

Satellite deployed after the orbital insertion burn.

And a slight tweak to the inclination to fulfill the contract. This is my first visit to Jool after the visual overhaul and the big green guy looks good.  Val and Tylo in the picture. Val will be the next target after this contract is complete. Plenty of D/V left even after that contract is done for additional opportunities.  

 

 

[Grogs]

11 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

These satellites should be useful for my upcoming Dres and Jool probes, which will launch in a few hundred days. Until those come around I think I'm going to occupy myself with those Mun and Minmus base contracts that have been sitting around in Mission Control for ages.

I've wondered about doing something like that, but it seems like anything that could connect with the RA-100s could connect directly with Kerbin. So it would really only help when something occludes the connection between the probe and Kerbin. Barring the odd planetary conjunction I think that could only happen with the Mun or Kerbol. For the former, having high polar relays would certainly work. For Kerbol occlusions, I think you need relays outside the Kerbin SOI. Two satellites 120 degrees in front of / behind Kerbin should do it, or maybe just one in a polar orbit of Kerbol.

[billbobjebkirk]

58 minutes ago, DBowman said:

Nice work! I had a go also, it should be a challenge thread, a whole series of Von Braun Style (like Apollo Style challenges)

-snip-

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/27292-what-did-you-do-in-ksp-today/&do=findComment&comment=2397476

Hyper edited to LKO, and took it from there

-snip-

Very impressive, I love that you hads the sttion and the three landers as well! This would make for a pretty cool challenge, might write one up once I finish this mission.

[Grogs]

Two of my new S3 tankers arrived at Minimus Station, bringing docking port extensions along with them. I could tell as soon as I showed up that two of the four side ports will be useless because they're too close to the solar/radiator panels. I have a plan to add more fuel storage to give them more standoff, but for now it's not a problem.

 

Here's the fully assembled station. Minimus Station is really hopping right now. Jeb and Bob headed down to Minmus to mine the first of many loads of ore to refuel those tankers.

 

Back on Kerbin, I worked on version 3 of my Mk2 space plane.

 

I think it had a little too much roll authority. The wings aren't supposed to snap off like that, are they? Funny thing is I was almost able to put it in orbit like that.

 

Following that little debacle, I worked on version 4 of the space plane. Maybe I even flight-tested it before cramming a load of tourists and red shirts onboard.

 

Good takeoff, everything is stable.

 

Made it to space and everything deployed.

 

Putting it in orbit completed a contract to build a new station over Kerbin. It's a funny-looking station, but I can't complain about free money.

 

And the new RCS and docking port designs worked out great for docking with the real station. I think we have a winner, just as long as it can land.

 

And landed safely on the wheels. I'm still not good enough to land on the runway in one piece, but this is a step in the right direction.

[Guest]

While I am back with Minecraft for a while... I am getting a Comet Base being built. The dimensions are around 24x24x24 Meters weighing I believe at more than 300 tons.

[Pipcard]

Y95, D403 - Negi Maru Plock insertion

Y95, D405 - Correy, Tanbeth, Dilbur, and Frozon on Plock (not in order)

[RealKerbal3x]

6 hours ago, Grogs said:

I've wondered about doing something like that, but it seems like anything that could connect with the RA-100s could connect directly with Kerbin. So it would really only help when something occludes the connection between the probe and Kerbin. Barring the odd planetary conjunction I think that could only happen with the Mun or Kerbol. For the former, having high polar relays would certainly work. For Kerbol occlusions, I think you need relays outside the Kerbin SOI. Two satellites 120 degrees in front of / behind Kerbin should do it, or maybe just one in a polar orbit of Kerbol.

Now that I think of it, my designs for those probes also have giant dishes on them. Since I now have a long-range relay network, they probably won't need those. I'm going to have to do some testing with smaller antennae connecting to the big relays at various distances.

Edited August 11, 2020 by RealKerbal3x

[Hotel26]

It's been a long, long time since High Command gave any love to my Deep Ocean Research Lab, SSW of the KSC, so I put together this mission, comprised of @Brikoleur's, Long Umpire (with a shot of "reverse" engineering to invert the long cargo-bay):

which has proved itself a very capable sea-plane:

  
 

transporting for me, in this case, an ocean surface fuel dump, replete with 1-krew shelter for operations; and a Cousteau submersible ocean explorer.

A night operation to deliver 4 new personnel to the DOR Lab [click and arrows for slides]:

  

A late-night celebration on board with plenty of schnapps...

 

Edited August 11, 2020 by Hotel26

[Angelo Kerman]

I did some more launchpad part testing...

[RaiderMan]

...up and over method?

[billbobjebkirk]

Continuing onwards from my previous post, today I finally sent my Von Braun Mun Lander on the expedition she was designed for! Most of the mission was fairly straightforwards, but the landing was probably the hardest I've ever done, this thing has the maneuverability of a battleship in a glacier!

[FezCool]

Today(or rather, yesterday) I sent a surface outpost to the Mun. The plan was to send the Outpost to the Mun with a Lander bringing a replacement crew and since I had a few days until one of my Duna probes had to execute a maneuver I decided to just send the two crafts to the moon at basically the same time. 

Landing the outpost was tricking since I only had 600m/s in the tanks and the spark engine had a very low TWR. Nevertheless we persisted and managed to land on a flat area near a crater.

Sadly it was quite dark at the time so Bill had to be on constant look out for Hostile Aliens.

After setting up the science experiments Jeb went out in the secret rover to check out some surface anomaly I had seen while landing.

It turns out the surface feature was a crater that was on the side of another crater, which was pretty funny. It was also the first time I got to use the surface scanning parts so that was nice.

After Jeb scanned the crater we had Valentina and Lando land the uh Lander for crew exchange. Landing this was also tricky due to low visibility and the peculiar position of the outpost being right next to a large crater.

In other news I tested a large ssto, nicknamed the "Eagle," and found that it could not only get to orbit but also had a lot of DeltaV to spare. This is pretty cool for whenever I get around to using this ship.

[Astrionix]

@billbobjebkirk Could you possibly do the planned Mars mission? You may need a mod such as FMRS (burntogether is outdated) since you would need to control multiple ships at once.

 

[billbobjebkirk]

8 minutes ago, Astrion said:

@billbobjebkirk Could you possibly do the planned Mars mission? You may need a mod such as FMRS (burntogether is outdated) since you would need to control multiple ships at once.

 

It's certainly on my radar, though if I did end up doing it it'd probably be just one glider and one passenger ship, as even the one Moon Lander did some not fun things to my framerate. As for Burntogether, it might actually work for me since I'm actually still on 1.2

Edited August 12, 2020 by billbobjebkirk

[Pipcard]

Y95, D406 - Negi Maru in Karen's SOI (Outer Planets Mod)

Y95, D407 - Karen, Madula, Debina, and Valette on Karen (right to left)

Edited August 12, 2020 by Pipcard

[theonegalen]

Plugging away at my new 10.1 career on my new computer. For the first time in about five years, I'm able to run Scatterer and AVP, so even when I don't quite make it to orbit, things are still gorgeous! The stock terrain overhaul is quite nice too!

https://imgur.com/a/CNUqe9p

Edited August 12, 2020 by theonegalen

[Grogs]

Val took up another load of kerbals bound for the Mun and beyond in the space plane.

 

After transferring them at Kerbin Station, the Mun Bus headed out with 16 aboard. The economy section was quite full except for a couple of seats next to the lavatory. Even those with diamond status couldn't get upgrades.

 

I managed to not overshoot KSP on re-entry this time, but couldn't quite stick the landing.

 

Over at Minmus, I crashed the now-empty probe ship that had brought over RTGs for the surface science. My strategy was to bring it to a stop over the target and then burn engines the whole way down while aiming at the target. I was able to get within 100 meters of the seismometer and impact at over 600 m/s.

 

Yes, 216 science! That's over 50% of the total for the seismometer. That's so much better than the 0.5% I got the first few times I tried. I don't think Jeb and Bob, who were right next to the science station mining ore, found the impact too amusing. But then again, they're pretty used to things going boom on their spacecraft.

 

Back on Kerbin, I launched a new module for Minimus Station. This will go between the main body of the station and one of the clusters of docking ports by the cargo bay where the fuel tanker is docking. It will give the station larger fuel reserves and also give enough standoff that the solar panels won't blocking the docking ports. After it docks, the little engine section on the back will become another impactor for the science station on the surface.

 

[Hotel26]

I've been meaning to do this for a while: I've finally launched a 4-sat pod to deploy a tetrahedral relay formation.
 

 

Three RA-2s and the polar relay is an RA-100 to link to the interplanetary comms system.  For Kerbin, system uptime is 41d with a brief "maintenance" mode lasting less than an hour.  Drift over time is of the order of a second or so per 41d.

[FezCool]

Today and yesterday I kinda realized that the launch window to Duna was open so I assembled the "Starship Armstrong" in LKO to eventually fly to Duna.

Basically the idea was to send the mothership to Duna where it would serve as a spacestation. We would bring 2 landers along, one with crew capacity, and one with a refinery. When everyone is set up we would have a functional resupply station and surface outpost.

I kinda forgot to take pictures of the core being sent up so here's the core with the gravity ring attached.

After Assembling the Mothership I sent up the lander with some more crew for the ship, as well as the Mining Ship.

After everything was docked I sent up a tanker to refuel everything for the journey.

After refueling everything the ship set out to execute its burn to Duna. However, I encountered a bit of a problem with the radial docking ports. Since I had made the docking arms extend via hinge, they would very easily wobble with the heavy landers attached. So when we started to burn with the Nuclear engines, the arms would flip out and clips through the rest of the ship.

In order to "solve" this issue I basically decided that I could just leave the mining ship behind and have something ship it to Duna sometime later. We would keep the Lander, but put it on the front shielded docking port. With these changes we finally set out on our mission.

[N_Danger]

 I sent a probe to Duna.

And for a first I got the required orbit on the capture burn. No fine tuning.

I was so proud of myself until I switched over to reposition the Jooldiver probe over Laythe and found the orbit was not as I left it due to a close encounter with Laythe while time warping my Duna mission. I didn't get into a orbit for the contact but I did get some science at least.

 

[Grogs]

Over at the Mun, my crew shuttle arrived at Munar Station. I sent a load of tourists and newbie kerbonauts down to the surface and planted a flag.

 

Meanwhile on Minmus, Jeb and Bob are getting tired of making runs to the surface to mine ore. I also realized that in the science base behind the miner, the fuel tank is nearly exhausted from running the fuel cells to keep the lab going at night. Once the tank runs dry the research will drop to half speed.

 

I put together a nice ore harvester that can attach directly to a tanker or the science base and fill it on the surface.

 

Now all I have to do is attach it to a rocket and send it to orbit. Simple, right?

 

Or not. This thing had me seriously questioning my ability to play KSP after a couple of hours of trying. MechJeb couldn't fly it. I couldn't fly it. It wouldn't hold prograde, or even fly straight up without eventually flipping or breaking somewhere. I tried every trick I could think of - put autostruts on every single part, added real struts, added fins, removed fins, moar boosters, less boosters, and on and on.

 

What finally did the trick was rebuilding the fairing and making it as wide as possible. I can only surmise that even though all the parts were inside, somehow the game was registering the rover wheels as sticking outside the fairing and the drag was flipping the rocket. With the new supersize fairing I had no problem getting to orbit at last.

 

Success! The rover is in space and headed off towards Minmus. I feel a bit like Elon Musk now.

 

[Angelo Kerman]

I added a couple of engine coupler parts to the Mk-33:

Twin and Quad couplers:

[DerekL1963]

Testing an Apollo style Munar mission...  While approaching to dock, accidentally separated my CM, which shot across the gap and docked as pretty as you please.

I think this is the universe's way of telling me it's time to get off the computer and go to bed...

Not that I'm going to.

Edited August 13, 2020 by DerekL1963

[ElWanderer]

1 hour ago, DerekL1963 said:

Testing an Apollo style Munar mission...  While approaching to dock, accidentally separated my CM, which shot across the gap and docked as pretty as you please.

I've done that too many times

I wish there was a special stage lock that prevents a heat shield from being uncovered unless you're on a re-entry trajectory.