What did you do in KSP1 today?

[AlamoVampire]

After getting back into KSP again and faffing about with testing out the mods I use, I decided to bring a pair of kerbals back home from the Mun, and then, I wanted to play with the new parts from the recent update. I also decided to do something a little special with this mission and honor my best friend and brother from another mother who passed away last month. This mission carries his spirit with it into the stars in our beloved Kerbal universe. I give you the SoMag mission or Solar Magnetometer Mission. 

 

http://

 

063309172020

[Grogs]

I launched the main body for the new Kerbin Station up to orbit. I'm sure I've launched taller things, but never this tall with just a single stack. I had to limit the angle of attack in the early phases of the launch or it would just tip over.

 

Here it is docking with the old Kerbin Station.

 

This completed the contract to upgrade the original station. Now I can deorbit the older bits.

 

Here's the station after everything was reattached. The old station is the part on the left.

 

The Icarus arrived a couple of hours later.

 

I grabbed the old station with the Icarus and pulled it along until it was on a re-entry course.

 

Once in the atmosphere, the Icarus released the old station to meet its fate and then concentrated on coming down near KSC.

 

Other than the loss of a couple of airbrakes, it survived re-entry without any problem. Since the Wolfhounds provide basically no thrust at sea level, I just burned off the fuel to minimize weight for landing.

 

Everything landed on the water intact, but rolling over caused the cockpit module to snap off. The crew was unharmed and I still got full value by recovering both halves, so no harm done.

[Guest]

been pretty annoyed at how KSP is not wanting to strut my spacecraft. So I am at 430 parts on this craft coming up, pretty sure it will be at 530 once I am done strutting this beast.

[RizzoTheRat]

I think I may have found a bug in my kOS landing script...

[DunaRocketeer]

I created a small, low performance aircraft for beginner Kerbals to start out on.

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

In Memorium of Giesel Kerman 05-05-2020 - 09-17-2020. Lost during a cowardly Kraken attack upon her post resulting in the complete destruction of the base. Missing, presumed dead. Fly Safe, Giesel.

A final picture:

 

 

(Seriously, this one stings a bit. She was the first Kerbal I recruited, and with my heavy use of engineers, probably the one I played most after Bill. First Kerbal I've lost, too, and it wasn't even in a crash. Pulled up to the site in a rover and it was just gone... Went back a couple real time days worth of saves and couldn't figure out when the attack happened. )

[Angelo Kerman]

I finished my launch tower parts for Mk-33:

[king of nowhere]

I took up the no contract career challenge. i cannot accept contracts, only take money coming from world first.

I have to say, this game has a lot of freedom, and that's normally good, but i got to the point where i'm skilled enough that i can do anything by brute force. and since i got isru, i didn't even need money anymore. in my regular career i'm at day 200 and i haven't yet reached any other planet, but i have a dozen vehicles traveling. and they are all reusable and refuelable, so i just need to wait for them. but with no contract, i cannot mine money, and this puts a real challenge.

so, first thing i did, i got science on the launchpad to unlock the first two techs. with those, i made an ssto to reach orbit and outer space (this one i've seen in a youtube video, i wouldn't be able to optimize so well). i also run as many experiments as i could. with that science i unlocked the docking ports, i made two small docking vehicle, launched and docked them to get the "rendez-vous" and "starting a space station" and "crew transfer" goals.

then i set off to make a low cost mun and minmus mission (this one all with planning of my own). I spent 26000 total for a lander and an orbiter. the lander would rendez-vous with the orbiter on mun orbit, getting the "space station around mun" goal. i kept bob on the orbiter and jeb on the lander, so bob could collect the data and refresh the instruments before and after landing.

it was a total nightmare.

atmospheric drag forced me to make a narrow lander. i only have the cheaper landing struts. i picked off a place that looked flat, but it actually wasn't. even 5 degrees were enough to collapse my lander. i reached the point where i landed my rocket perfectly, and the SAS system would keep it upright. but as soon as jeb got out, it would collapse. no way i would give up the "walk on mun" and "plant a flag" money. eventually i discovered to play with the landing legs spring value to keep the rocket upright, just like a guy putting some paper under a table leg to stop it from wobbling.

except for landing, i would have the orbiter carry the lander; the lander barely had enough fuel for it. "couldn't you just transfer fuel to it?" nope, it requires level 2 lab, which requires 400k, which i had no way of getting.

anyway, i went from mun to minmus. that required very little deltaV. unfortunately, on getting up and down from mun, i spent too much fuel, and i didn't have enough for a full minmus mission. i went down anyway. at least the greater flats allowed me to land at the first try even with the crappy lander. i missed 30 m/s to get orbital again, but i could get suborbital and use the orbiter to rescue. have you ever tried docking when one vehicle is completely out of fuel and the other has no SAS available? quite annoying.

at this time i also had basically spent the energy, because i hadn't unlocked the solar panels yet, and i only carried one battery. why not add more? because i was still limited to 30 parts.

Now i had enough money for a level 2 lab, i decided to use it, then pass all the electricity to the lander. the lander used the electricity to aerobrake, pointing retrograde correctly. i still lost the science junior near the end (plus the antenna), so a bit less money recovered, but the pilot and the experiments were safe. the orbiter had only enough energy to point retrograde once and fire the remaining fuel to slow down. if it reentered atmosphere tumbling, it would not survive. but this manuever needed to aerobrake a few times first, with the ship tumbling madly. during those passes i also lost the antenna and the battery, and maybe a couple more pieces.

utlimately, though, i was able to bring back everything that mattered. i had left 1% of my initial fuel and 2% of my initial battery.

i haven't had that much fun with this game in weeks. overcoming limitations is much more fun than being all powerful.

[A Fistful Of Double Downs]

I did my first kerbaled mission to something that isn't a microgravity moon and planted a flag in Duna.

 

 

It was meant to be a learn-by-failing trip because it's the same lander I've been using on tiny moons and I didn't think it'd have enough oomph for Duna's gravity, but it turns out that landing on Duna is virtually free so they had enough fuel to get back into orbit and rendezvous with the transfer stage.

[Grogs]

I launched another Giant MOFO XL tanker.

 

Fully deployed, it set off for Minmus where the ISRU rover will fill it up.

 

I also landed my ore tanker (smaller ship with the orange tanks) on Minmus to restock the tanks on Minimus Station.

 

And I got the sand castle image when I fired up the game.

[RizzoTheRat]

I've been developing my kOS scripts for interplanetary travel, so while this might seem a bit of an overkill for a Minmus lander, there is method in my madness

 

Quite a lot of pictures...

Spoiler

I'm making most of my cash from tourists, and had several that wanted to visit both the Mun and Minmus, plus traveling between 2 moons uses the exact same maths as travelling between planets, so a good opportunity to develop my kOS scripts for interplanetary travel, and get paid for it.  So I sent Bob and Val off on a round trip with 4 tourists.

Launcher is a 5 vector powered SSTO, and post launch it only need about 20m/s correction to match Minmus orbit

 

Separating the lander in LKO

Then on to Minmus.  Transfer and set initial Pe, it then does a midcourse correction, and another when it enters Minmus SOI

Bob admiring the self levelling suspension on a 7.5 degree slope on Minmus Slopes.  The landing function walks the landing point down hill from the input latitude and longitude until it finds somewhere with less than 8 degrees slope.

The transfer from Minmus to the Mun is pretty much the same as a transfer between planets, even has a plane change in there.  Great way to practice for interplanetary missions

Bob taking in the sights on the Mun

Plotting an aerobraking trajectory in to Kerbin atmosphere, the white orbits are plotted by the Trajectories mod as what the orbit will look like after passing through the atmosphere

Aerobraking with no heatshield is always a bit scary

Rendezvous with the launchernearly went wrong, for some reason the braking burn was a bit late and they missed each other by about 20m.

Typically docking happened at night

My landing script isn't set up to handle non-equatorial orbits yet, but fortunately I had enough fuel for a plane change before deorbiting.  Aerodynamic guidance trying to steer it towards the KSC 

But the guidance still needs more work.  Close enough for 98% fund recovery though

Overall pretty happy with the result though.

 

[Guest]

Download them here

https://kerbalanders.wordpress.com/2020/09/18/i-have-became-the-rainbow/

On the KSP side of things. Tylo Station if I can get it to work!

Edited September 18, 2020 by Guest

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

2 hours ago, Grogs said:

Fully deployed, it set off for Minmus where the ISRU rover will fill it up.

 

How do those hydraulic pistons as leg extensions hold up, do they wet noodle at all being loaded like that?

 

[JorgeCS]

2 hours ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

 

Sorry but it feels like the Teletubbies attack 

Edited September 18, 2020 by JorgeCS

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, JorgeCS said:

Sorry but it feels like the Teletubbies attack 

snip

oh no... 

change of plans @Lewie and I are working on rebooting the IVA challenge. So that's now the priority

Edited September 18, 2020 by Guest

[Grogs]

50 minutes ago, Kerbals_of_Steel said:

How do those hydraulic pistons as leg extensions hold up, do they wet noodle at all being loaded like that?

 

No, they seem really solid as long as I make sure they're locked. The launch stages normally land empty, but I did some drop testing with a full 3.75-meter stage and it handled 20 m/s without breaking. The gear gets a little bouncy on Minmus landings, but reducing the spring strength to near zero makes it pretty stable.

[Hotel26]

Nemo, under the capable direction of Kapitan Dantop Kerman, ferries a replacement crew out to the Marianas Neptune oceanic research base.  [click & arrows]

 

I woke up this morning feeling the "need for speed".  Dynamite cruises at M5.6 @ 24.2km. 

 

Edited September 19, 2020 by Hotel26

[Grogs]

I grabbed a mission to rescue a kerbal and his craft from LKO. Since I may be doing several of these, I decided to build a ship that can rescue multiple kerbals. I got the idea from a design someone posted earlier. It's basically 6 pods with a claw and chutes all mounted into the same fairing.

 

Launch was uneventful

 

Here it is deployed and rendezvousing with the disabled craft.

 

The carrier deorbited, released the top probe with the disabled craft attached, and then pushed itself back into orbit. Re-entry heating was mild and the descent was stable.

 

The chutes deployed bringing Philsy down for a nice soft splashdown.

 

Over at the Mun, the crew completed the weekly 'plant a flag' contract.

 

And on Minmus it was all about the fuel. A Giant MOFO got topped off and headed for orbit.

 

Then the S3 tanker came down from Minimus Station to top off. There are two more Giant MOFOs due in the next couple of days, so the ISRU rover crew is going to be busy.

[purpleivan]

Lozor and Tribro joined the team in search of scientific goodies, in my science game.

Lozor asked this thing if it had any scientific info to pass on... it wasn't talkative.

Tribro headed out in the Lil' Sciencer in search of Boabob.

This time it was the equipment that let the team down.

But at least she had some fun on the way home.

[RP1IsSuperior]

Today, Munus 10, 11, and 12 all launched on K-8 rockets. It was also to serve as a test for booster recovery of the first stage of a K-8 rocket, and also investigate the anomalies that occurred on the crew 8 and 9 missions, where the rocket that was rated for 1.8 tons to LKO failed to deposit the 1.3 ton spacecraft just shy of orbit(does upgrading to 1.9 have something to do with this?) Munus 10 lifted off without a hitch. A parking orbit was a established and the booster was recovered downrange a few minutes later. surprisingly just 4 radial mounted parachutes was enough to slow it down to a reasonable speed. when I recovered it, for some reason the recovery menu didn't show up so I had no idea whether it made a difference to cost or not. The mission went off without a hitch. We flew behind the mun, went up to apoapsis and did a retro burn to bring it into the atmosphere. A few days later we began atmospheric entry. I decided not to detach the OPS(orbital power station). I also decided to try a lifting entry, rather than ballistic. After around 30 seconds I saw that the probe core was overheating. The temperature gauge would go all the way up and then reset. I was lucky. This would continue until I hit 41km, where it just vaporized. Munus 11 would try and do it again. I got another encounter with the mun, but I didn't go where I did before(only L1 tracking station). I also recovered the booster. Again, no recovery screen.  So, it flew behind the Mun, we looped back around to apoapsis, where we did the retro burn. Once again, it vaporized at 41km. Munus 12 was my last attempt for the day. Everything went as planned. I decided to jettison the OPS this time. the probe core started to overheat again, and we had a reaction wheel failure. we passed through the atmo with no damage. I had to keep the probe core in hibernation to save power, because of the low charge on the onboard batteries of the probe core. We passed through again, and lowered the apoapsis again. The last pass was the one. For some reason the probe would orient itself heat shield first, something to do with aerodynamics I guess. We passed through. I deployed the parachutes. I was ecstatic. I had done it finally, I could complete this stupid contract and move on hopefully with surface mun probes. We splashed down-and then some. The probe sunk under the water. I saw the water wasnt that deep, and hoped it would hit the bottom and I could recover it from the bottom of the ocean. I jettisoned the heat shield and hoped it would help. It didn't. The probe continued to sink till around 300 meters, before reaching it's pressure limit and imploding. qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm

Here's an imgur album of the photos. Most of these are from Munus 10 and 12, I really didn't take any pictures of 11

https://imgur.com/a/aguknAE

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[Kerbals_of_Steel]

The recent outbreak of Kraken attacks has everyone looking over their shoulder, so Bill decided to do something about it, creating a cheap and compact way to commute around the Munar surface, or even up to Munar Station if the situation is desperate enough. Introducing the Kerbal In Space Simplest emergency ascender, the first rocket designed and built on the Mun:

Start with the landing rockets salvaged from a MSE-6 rover, add a reaction wheel intended to retrofit on some older rovers, and other parts salvaged from the rover Obbo wrecked and this is the result:

Jeb, self proclaimed king of the junkyard rocket, ready for the first test flight, a hop over to see Bob at the North Rim Outpost.

Bill, we've got a problem with the controls. Up is left, and radial is retrograde... Yeah, THIS is better!!!:

Coming in for the landing:

Missed by 300m, but it beats walking, and like Bob said when Jeb finished the hike over, "Suborbital rocket science is still rocket science, It's Hard, man!!!"

Bill brought the Watney Mk I rover up the hill the long way around, and threw the new rocket up on the roof rack before dropping it off in the hanger at the base:

 

 

[RizzoTheRat]

Using RemoteTech and kOS I am very reliant on having a good comms connection at all times.  

My original constellation of 4 KommSat 1's went in to LKO back before I first landed on the Mun, so somewhat limited in technology, but with enough range to talk to  constellations of 3 identical identical KommSat 1's around The Mun and Minmus.

 

Now I'm ready to move further afield the network needed upgrading, so Kerbin's KommSat 1's have been retired and replaced with KommSat 2's, these have a much longer range RemoteTech omnidirectional antenna, as well as a directional antenna that can reach Minmus.

 

The longer range omni means they can talk to the pair of KommSat 3's in a polar orbit, with long and medium range directional antennas

[Mitchz95]

Got a contract to recover a part from Ike orbit. I didn't know which part until I got there.

[Angelo Kerman]

I finished the last bits of my Mk-33 mod:

You can find it here:

 

[Goaty1208]

On 9/18/2020 at 8:34 PM, Grogs said:

And I got the sand castle image when I fired up the game.

Me too

What a coincidence...

Launched the Ares I station to Duna  

Started working on the VKK Korolev

(Version 0.1 in screenshot)

(version 0.3 in screenshot)

Sent refueling mission to Ares I station 

Sent a military space station in orbit