What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Neil Kermstrong]

So, I have upgraded my mun station (It looks really weird i know) and I have docked a Miner with it, this time it will be permanently (or until I don't need it anymore).

For some reason some solar panels have disappeared from the station, I wonder why. Guess I'll have to bring some solar panels with KIS in my next launch Landed it and now the long extraction has started. It will take a LOONG time until they two see another kerbals. Also I have landed kinda close to my mun rover too (at least I consider 10km close)

I'll see if I can get a screenshot of my rover by the way

 

Overall, this was my best rendezvous, docking and landing. I somehow managed to encounter my station, (only 100m away from it) without having to burn in to the Target, I docked without RCS and the landing only took 2 tries (the first one it accidentally fell over after landing) I am improving at this game

Why are the images so close to eachother? Looks like the station is just some meters above them 

Edited August 25, 2020 by Neil Kermstrong

[SparkyFox]

i did that

 

no, its not the Shepard landing leg...not anymore...

Edited August 26, 2020 by SparkyFox

[N_Danger]

While moving some old satellites around, I got a family photo of Kerbin and it's moons. 

 

[Pipcard]

Y107, D422 - The Negi Maru's final mission: landing a Kerbal on Eve and returning them

Eve Rabbit 1 descending into the atmosphere

Camlorf Kerman on the surface

 

[DerekL1963]

Fiddling about with airships for the first time in a couple of years...  It flew, but not well.  Need to relearn design and flying...

[Grogs]

I got a contract to plant a flag on the Mun. Leeden and Malden took the lander down from the station to fulfill the contract.

 

I never bothered to put ladders on the lander since it's just the Mun. Malden exited the ship by simply letting go of the hatch... and then had a run-in with the landing leg. Low gravity or not, ouch!

 

Malden's a professional, so he shook it off and got the flag planted. He made a little speech (in a soprano voice) and then as soon as the cameras were off he took down the flag and headed back inside to look for an ice pack. The 126,000 funds from the contract should pay for lots of ice packs.

 

Back on Kerbin, I saw that a Moho transfer window was coming up in a few days. I put together a probe and launched it into orbit. The probe is fairly large since I stuck with chemical engines to keep the costs low. It should have enough dV to make Moho orbit and get some science while it's in orbit.

 

Finally, I recovered a couple of lifter stages from previous launches to clear the clutter out of LKO and get a refund of the costs.

[Neil Kermstrong]

11 hours ago, Grogs said:

[snipped for brevity] 

Those landing legs are really creative, good job!

Edited August 26, 2020 by Vanamonde

[Grogs]

23 minutes ago, Neil Kermstrong said:

Those landing legs are really creative, good job!

Thanks! I think I got the idea from someone else's pictures here, so I can't claim the original credit. They really make a huge difference when landing something tall and skinny on uneven terrain. That S3 booster stack in the second-to-last picture has a similar set of legs because I got tired of landing them near KSC, only to have them fall over and explode before I could recover them.

[Bigbootie]

When I arrived at Eve I realized I had already sent a Scansat probe there in 2016 or so. Moved the rig to Gilly to land all the probes there.

 

[Okhin]

I've added rings to a Munar station, which I did not planned to upgrade in the beginning. That's why the rings are stuck on the side I guess.

Boring launch. but i used rotors instead of Servos for this station (and I stuck the rotor on engine plate). It makes for a better control of speed, but at those speed, using a servo and a controller on loop might make no differences. I need to check specs and benefits in details for both solution.

Then I've been hunting asteroids (I have a lot of contracts about them). And since once D-sized one was going to enter Kerbin SOI, I decided to rush and catch it before it gets to it's periapsis.

The crew is Val, Jeb and an engineer whom I forgot the name. yes, two pilots, but Jeb do not have his 3 star yet, so that will do. Yes, the asteroid mover is upside down. That's because I started building it from the pod, which  wanted to be able to detach itself for reentry into Kerbin atmosphere which eventually won't work as planned. But that's how engineering works, right ?

That's also probably one of the biggest thing I launched until now.

Orbit is made and the Mamoth and their associated tanks are now becoming plasma. Planing intercept to the asteroid.

Here it is! But it's not a magical one.

Docked and locked. The four drills and the convert'o'tron are going to fill the almost empty tanks. I still have 0.3 dV for this class D asteroid of almost 800 T.

It took a full burn (of 525 m.s dV) at the asteroid Pe and another 100 m.s one at kerbin Pe to reach orbit. Draining 40% of the mass of the asteroid in the process. But a single asteroid in orbit of kerbin is a bit sad, especially since Val wants to dock one to the spacebar for ages. And there's plenty of fuel. And we're almost on the equatorial plane (well, if -105° of inclination is a valid definition of "almost"). So Let's do it. Let's put an asteroid on top of the space bar.

The Eve tug has been undocked for easier maneuver, and the space bar is close to the asteroid now. Val is gently pushing the asteroid toward the station.

But then the kraken finally woked up. The station will broke after warp, no matter the autostrut I put or not. It loads fine, but there's some integrity issue with the hand that makes part colliding and everything explodes.

I located the issue (the surface mount wildly rotated between a structural tube and a MK-2 cabin), and decided to fix it. The easiest way was to redo the hand, send it to rendezvous with the station and proceeded to a lot of docking and orbital maneuvering to fix what needed to be fixed. Also, I installed some piston under the claws, to be able to grip the asteroid with all for klaws.

However, I got lazy, so I cheated the hand into a rendezvous with the station (I already launched one once, I can do it again), and then reassembled everything and finally docked. I also noticed that, somehow, the kraken have bend my station (one servo and the reaction whee it is attached to (attached through a node), are now angled. It explains the loss of stability I've been experiencing. And It cannot really be fixed (except by launching another set of rings).

Anyway.

Kraken is asleep again. And I can dock spaceships again, while being sure that, this time, the top of the station won't bulge. Also there's not a lot of clearance, but that's how I like my docking. I just have to remember to retract everything before docking.

And now I have a contract to extend this station. So maybe I'll work on the rings again. I've learned a lot since I built those one, so they can probably benefit from some new found expertise. And finally move to the bigger docking port for the station modules.

[Pipcard]

[To conclude the sandbox save I started in 2013, I did my first Eve return mission]

Y107, D426 - Eve Rabbit 1 lifts off

Rendezvous with the Negi Maru

[Bigbootie]

Went to Jool system and screwed around with different mods. Only broke the game twice. Persistent stupid pink square is still there a lot though.

Sent out probes at various orbits. Gonna scan Tylo too and attempt to land one of the smaller probes there later. Kerbals look so happy to be trapped in the Jool system possibly forever.

[Hotel26]

On my way to a new adventure, I came across Sawtooth Mountain Ridge

 

This great big seabird is a Long Umpire and was designed and built by @Brikoleur...  it's been especially set-up for oceanic research.

Approaching the target area.

  

It's Heavenly Valley!

Our cargo is air-dropped over the middle of the lake...

A refueling station (with a one-kerb capsule at the nether end); and a 4-kerb submersible, called Cousteau...

I'm excited about exploring the depths of a good-sized lake.  We'll see how deep it is.  That's all the science we need.

I forgot to load any crew in either of these, but my Heavenly Valley base is not far away and has a Tern-R VTOL that can drop a couple of frogkerbs into the water.  The Long Umpire is already safely parked at the HVN base.  So far, so good.

Edited August 27, 2020 by Hotel26

[Bigbootie]

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

On my way to a new adventure, I came across Sawtooth Mountain Ridge

 

This great big seabird is a Long Umpire and was designed and built by @Brikoleur...  it's been especially set-up for oceanic research.

Approaching the target area.

  

It's Heavenly Valley!

Our cargo is air-dropped over the middle of the lake...

A refueling station (with a one-kerb capsule at the nether end); and a 4-kerb submersible, called Cousteau...

I'm excited about exploring the depths of a good-sized lake.  We'll see how deep it is.  That's all the science we need.

I forgot to load any crew in either of these, but my Heavenly Valley base is not far away and has a Tern-R VTOL that can drop a couple of frogkerbs into the water.  The Long Umpire is already safely parked at the HVN base.  So far, so good.

That is really cool. I think I have been to that lake before and it's really neat for exploration.  I think this was it, is it? You have a much better submersible than I did. SPOILER (I was on bottom with a probe in one of the posts if you don't want to see the depths then don't look at the original posts. )

[KeaKaka]

9 hours ago, Bigbootie said:

Persistent stupid pink square is still there a lot though.

I'm pretty sure that's a problem with planetshine, so make sure you have the latest version I guess.

[RyanRising]

I found out you can grab the sliders on the fuel display. Not really sure what it's for.

 

Edited August 27, 2020 by RyanRising

[Bigbootie]

After probably a dozen attempts (quicksave) I landed a probe on Tylo.

Learned that once you turn the engines on there that you don't turn them off.

[JorgeCS]

2 hours ago, RyanRising said:

I found out you can grab the sliders on the fuel display. Not really sure what it's for.

Huh... bug maybe? 

[Neil Kermstrong]

At the moment I am trying to land my first stage SpaceX style, but I am failing so much lmao

[DerekL1963]

Having longitudinal control problems with my airships.  Then my brain dredged up memories from a couple of years back and I remembered you had to statically balance your ships to minimize control issues.  Took a couple of hours to remember how...

Still having control issues, ones I don't recall having before.  Either I am forgetting them, or something with the game/mods has changed in the interim.  OTOH, this is about the smallest practical airship, and I never built one that small before, so that may be the source of my problems.  Still, having fun even while being annoyed.  It's fun to just float over the landscape....

[ElWanderer]

I finally managed to get a good transfer burn to Moho, such that I could circularise with plenty of delta-v leftover. My previous efforts have either missed the planet entirely or flown-by at such velocity that I didn't have enough delta-v to enter orbit.

Having made orbit for the first time, I flew over the Mohole for the first time, then landed a probe for the first time. I'm now wondering if I have enough delta-v to do a sub-orbital hop that'd take me into the Mohole itself. That'd be one way to dispose of the lander!

[Grogs]

The crew shuttle returned to Kerbin with 19 aboard after its 3-week mission to the Mun, Minimus, and the Kerbol SOI. First up was some powered aerobraking.

 

While the crew shuttle was heading back out towards apoapsis, Val took the Winterlance up to rendezvous with Kerbin Station.

 

Val really nailed the ascent and got an intercept of less than 100 meters.

 

Uh, wait, that's not Kerbin Station! I must have accidentally targeted the probe carrier for the Duna mission. It's about 30 km away from the station on the same orbit.

 

A few orbital burns and one orbit later, Val finally reached the right target and got docked.

 

A couple of orbits later, the crew shuttle finally put into the station.

 

Val took the first load from the crew shuttle down, consisting mostly of tourists and two kerbonauts who had been rescued from around Minmus. Completing all those contracts brought over a million additional funds into the KSP coffers.

 

Finally, I accepted a contract to build a base on Gilly. A mission to Eve is already in the planning stages, and I'll surely include ISRU on Gilly. All I have to do is add a couple of extra parts to the ISRU rig and this will pay for a good portion of the mission.

 

[Bigbootie]

Visited Pol. Unlike Tylo I could bounce around to a few different landing sites.

i

 

 

 

[Okhin]

So, I had a contract to upgrade the Gateway Plexe, aka the Space Bar. To increase it Kerbal capacity by 4 (which makes it totally stupid, I'm able to host like 127 of them right now, why do a contract for only 4 of them ?). I also wanted to rework on the docking spar I setup there initially, to allow for double docking my Fuel tankers when needed.

So, that will be the first launch to this expansion (yes, I know, multiple launch for a simple expansion. I don't really care.). I've also updated my Heavy Payload Delivery Sytem by replacing the mamoth with 7 Vectors. Which in turn allow for a bigger first stage, without needing boosters. It can now send 70t to LKO (and then still have a bit more of fuel for maneuvering and rendezvous).

So that's the expansion of 4 Kerbal space. That would be the fourth ring for the whole station.

Second launch. Basically a docking bay and fuel to transfer to the final destination of this small expansion.

I need to learn that I do not necessarily needs gigantor solar panel for such low EC consumption. But I like them a lot. The fuel tanks are each connected to a Vector engine. I didn't felt like long burns on Nerv.

The new station in LKO is opened. Except it's just supposed to be a small augmenation on crew capacity.

Anyway. Burning, rendezvous, docking and....

Tada!!!

That's still a class D asteroid up there. All rings are rotating nominally, and the kraken is still at bay. That was an overdone contract.

[SparkyFox]

I tried to build the KC-135R Statotanker and the engines were a flop...

 

sooo....