What did you do in KSP1 today?

[kedrednael]

1 hour ago, eatU4myT said:

Question - I was surprised when the radiators got up to about 75% during engine burn, despite resting at 16% with the reactors just generating EC.  Does that mean the reactors get hotter when under higher load (despite unchanged generation amount), or does it mean the engines are getting hot enough to need their own radiators?  Either way, I'm glad I put two radiators on each reactor even though I only expected to need one!

Yes the lithium engines produce a lot of heat, and will blow up after a while if they are not cooled

[DunaRocketeer]

I put a Duna mission onto the red planet. Quite happy with what I manged to pack into a fairly small spacecraft:

[Spartan Nat]

Well it's been quite a while since those Ion probe missions... no clue what a "transfer window" was. Funny enough, I was at a Duna transfer window then

 

Now, it's been Career 2 (Actually No. 4, first save was career, no clue what I was doing, second was on a separate computer, and I left that there. No. 3 was where modding came in starting with Kerbal Alarm Clock and SCANSAT, doing that on 2 different computers via hardrive. I'm on No. 4 now)

 

Career 2 is a separate save, but has all the same mods as Career 1 (Modded). Difference is I'm starting with all of the mods instead of adding them over time. Right now, I'm trying to complete a Mun Flyby for a contract.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Ran a mission using an SSTO with a load of passenger cabins to record it for KSTS and later re-use; ran out of fuel on the way back down and had to glide to the Island Airfield; forgot to hit ‘stop and save’ on the KSTS panel so I then had to fly the whole mission again .

[Popestar]

After starting a new career, I upgraded Mission Control and Tracking Station (as well as the Launchpad and the Astronaut Complex), and then decided to take on the contract to get into Orbit.  Built the rocket, made sure I had enough fuel, circled the planet twice...and then realized my Pe was < 70k.  So I get to do that again tomorrow.

[Guest]

Going for that Retro-Medieval-Black&White styled base. For Eeloo, The big spacecraft takes about 440 parts. Which is ok for now but when the tanks are attached it will be higher. This lab is not the final draft though.

The Good

Looks Kraken amazing! People I have shown this to are blown away. I love how it turned out. It works just so well.

It also has no DLC, which is something that's required for Upsilon

It also is unique in many ways

Nothing atmospheric fragile, meaning it will be tons easier to launch

The Bad

Landing legs look like they might not be something that will survive a high velocity landing. So I will probably have to fix that.

The Aerodynamic surfaces will make launching this interesting

The Ugly

Power!!! I need to work on the power, the whole base is runned by RTGS (8 of them.) They make up half the cost, but the main problem is that I don't think I have enough power to keep the base alive. I will need to do checks on this.

---

Anyway I love the base so far I would love feedback.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Guest

[Commodore_32]

Mün lander launching to Gateway station in LMO

 

[GDJ]

Flew this little gem around a bit. Might be a challenge inspiration based on real life.

This plane is based on the Aero L-39 Albatros.

[Commodore_32]

Today was a busy day on my save, that because lately it didn't crash.

I tried to launch a Delta IV Heavy

I tried.

[Sarxis]

I setup a high atmosphere orbit over Kerbin at ~56km, and I used Mechjeb's Translatron to maintain a prograde velocity that would overcome the low drag from that atmosphere to keep my periapsis and apoapsis consistent.  Required a bit of fine tuning to get as much eccentricity out of the orbit as well as balancing acceleration with drag. 

 

[Popestar]

Today, as part of the new career I'm doing, I successfully put Valentina Kerman in orbit (satisfying that contract).  Reached an Ap of ~295k, with a Pe of ~90k.  Was also able to successfully return her and the craft to Kerbin, which is what I aim to do with every flight at this point.  Doing this gained me a bunch of Science and some Funds, and leveled Valentina up to 1!  I have been switching between her and Jebediah for flights to get them about even, so I get to use him next until he levels up.

Due to the increase in Science, I was able to purchase both Advanced Rocketry and General Construction, adding to the growing list of parts I may never use.  Anyhow, I saw in another thread about building outwards instead of upwards, so I'm changing directions with the tech tree at this point so I can do that.  I want to add science modules and crew quarters and such, so Construction and Rocketry are needed.

Next up - tutorials on the Mun.  I've got the contract that awards for a fly-by, so I want to go through the tutorials and see about building a rocket and getting it to the Mun (I know you have to do maneuvers and adjust for orbits and such, and I want to make sure I fully understand that before I just launch one of my lovely green men or women up there).  I've also got some reading to do on the Kerbin biomes; I've got contracts available for doing science-y stuff at different areas on Kerbin, but I don't know where those areas are.  So, reading!

[eatU4myT]

45 minutes ago, Popestar said:

...where those areas are...

SCANSat is one of the most immersion-enhancing mods out there, I think. Rather than reading up on it, send up a satellite to make yourself a lovely colour map showing where the biomes are!

[Commodore_32]

@Misguided_Kerbal said "build a NOVA rocket"

I did.

 

[Tweak[Box]]

 Ariane-Centaur-Venera Eve Explorer (ACVEE) (Stock KSP + DLC + Visual mods)

Max Q (Dynamic Pressure)

Side Boosters Dropped

Circularization Burn

100Km Parking Orbit

Eve Transfer Burn

Payload Deployment

Eve arrival @ 500Km Periapsis

Circularization Burn and Reduction of Periapsis to 75Km

Lander Deployment

Prograde burn to increase Periapsis to 120km

Lander Atmospheric Entry

Drogue Chutes Deployment

Primary Chute and Shell Deployment

Heat-shield dropped

Touchdown!

Orbiter relays Lander's signal back to Kerbin

 

Edited October 2, 2020 by Tweak[Box]

[Popestar]

So, I took a look at 2 of the 3 tutorials for the Mun (orbiting and landing).  The whole thing with SoI and escape and stuff...that's gonna take a whole lot of lost parts and probes to get right before I send Jeb or Valentina up there.  The landing...I did not stick.  Put the craft down on its side, then accidentally throttled up with Z, and BOOM!  Thankfully it was just a tutorial.

[Vezbot]

Warning: this will be a long story, it describes a Mun landing Odyssey of two kerbals, and a robotic Mun lander.

I created a new lander prototype for my Mun lander city, the lander is controlled by probe core but it has a habitation module that can house 3 kerboanuts. The reason its a Mun lander city is because I have a ton of different landers in a 2 km area of each other, and I sent a rover that docks with landers and transfers fuel between them, also its good for crew rotation, especially with the geriatric kerbals who spent 200 years on the Mun and just want to end their mission and get home on another fancy new lander. I started the mission with Sidnard Kerman to test the utility crew module, and the ship is fully remote controlled with no command pod to prevent two control points from interfering with each other. The plan was to send Sidnard to Mun orbit and undock with the robot lander and have it land near the other Mun landers. What made the mission more interesting is that when the rocket carrying the lander reached orbit, it was only 15 km away from a nearby stranded astronaut named Jeblong Kerman. Since rescue missions don't happen often, I rendevoused with the poor kerbal and let him in, then the rocket did the transfer burn to the Mun and then they parked in low Mun orbit. I changed the plans up and Sidnard stayed in the ship and Jeblong went down to the Mun with the lander. This is when I discovered how many issues there were with the landing part of the mission, unfortunately no amount of quickloads would save Jeblong from the horrible landing gear and how it would tip over every time, and how there was no rcs to correct it and have it point radial out. I gave up and it bounced off the surface and crashed on its side, losing both xl solar panels in the process. After this happened, Jeblong got out of the doomed lander and flew 1 km to another one. Once the ship passed above in orbit, Jeblong's new lander took off. The lander only had 700 m/s, enough to get into orbit but not enough for me to rendevous with precision, after burning all the fuel the ship was travelling at 400 m/s in the direction of the orbiting ship, I knew it wasn't enough so I got the kerbal out and flew him the rest of the way. I watched as the lander went down into the Mun and exploded as I got Jeblong into the cabin. 

The trip back was uneventful and the ship decoupled to the point where it was only a capsule with retro srb rockets and parachutes. The ship touched down in some mountains and landed safely. I went into the map however to see stuff passing overhead and then the  camera broke, it was fixed by me panicking and putting the capsule into a spin, destroying every part but the capsule and then the kraken took over. I phys warped to x4 but it only spun faster. I tried to get Sidnard out but he was instantly killed, I knew the kraken was gonna destroy the capsule, but the capsule hit the ground at an angle where it slowed down the spin, then I turned on SAS and turned on radial out to have it stuck pointed to the sky and it slowed down all the way this time.

Overall it was a fun mission and I got more than I expected even if the initial mission was a failure and the original pilot was killed.

 

TL:DR: I launch a lander mission to the Mun but constant detours lead to the destruction of the lander and the death of the pilot kerbonaut on the way back.

[James Kerman]

1 minute ago, Vezbot said:

I launch a lander mission to the Mun but constant detours lead to the destruction of the lander and the death of the pilot kerbonaut on the way back.

Hello brother.

[Vezbot]

2 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

Hello brother.

To think that the kerbal that was rescued after 10 years stranded in orbit survived the mission rather than the trained pilot that launched from the KSC, lol

[Grogs]

I launched a new rescue pod carrier for grabbing stranded kerbals and their crafts from LKO.

Spoiler

 

The new rescue pod carrier builds on the lessons of the previous two. The biggest difference is that I added a claw and parachutes on the main body of the carrier. This will let the carrier rescue a total of 7 kerbals and bring the transport stage/nuclear engines down with the last kerbal rescued. Ronard Kerman was the first rescuee with the new craft.

 

I've found that lowering Pe to 25 km gives for a nice reentry with little danger of overheating. Ronard was brought safely down in the desert and joined the space program.

 

I also worked on designs for a high capacity Mun lander that has enough dV to go from equatorial orbit, land on the poles, and return. Here's a test of the landing legs with the lander as high as I could get it on clamps.

Spoiler

32 m/s was no problem. Hardly even a bounce!

 

I had to use the ALT-F12 menu to go higher that the height of the VAB would allow me to extend clamps. Here's 43 m/s. How will that go?

Spoiler

Got a pretty good bounce and nearly tilted off the launch pad, but nothing was damaged except maybe the kerbals.

 

And a final test at just over 50 m/s...

 

Spoiler

Looks like I finally found the failure point. Well, if I can't manage less than 50 m/s for a Mun landing I have a lot of problems other than landing legs.

 

[RizzoTheRat]

I had contracts for stations in Kerbin, Mun and Minmus orbit.  Putting all the requirements together it needed space for 20 kerbals, a lab, an ISRU, and 6000 units of liquid fuel.

In my current game I don't really have the technology to launch that yet, so I put it up in 3 launches

SSTO carrying the fuel module about to dock with the main station

 

The third launch was for a "Tug" to push it to the Mun

 

And then on to Minmus where the tug detached (possibly hitting 2 solar panels as I can't see what else could have happened to them)

 

before the Tug headed back to Kerbin where it aerobraked in to orbit and is now ready to be refuelled for another mission

[Commodore_32]

Today I landed on the Mün as part of my Artemis program!

 

[N_Danger]

After a break from KSP I decided to try a JNSQ install. After adventures in troubleshooting and 5 hours later, I sent Jeb up for the first flight in the save.

Totally worth it.

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

After building a big base to land on Gilly (which will eventually be the interplanetary mission in my current Kerbalism career) but completely ignoring the whole ‘getting to Gilly in the first place’ bit, I created a huge transfer stage complete with 3x ‘Cherenkov’ nuclear engines (the 2.5m super-NERV from Restock+, it’s 4x the mass and cost of the NERV but 5x the thrust and less than 3x the radiation output), built that in orbit beside my LKO space station using KSTS, then took the escape pod from the station with an engineer and one of several spare docking ports, docked it to the transfer stage and moved it to beside the Gilly base (obviously, it was on the other side of Kerbin from the station) then stapled the spare docking port to the bottom of the base’s engine, docked the two together, went on an EVA to try and secure the connection using some KAS tow bars and- game crash.

I have no idea when the last save happened or what state they’re going to be in when I reload the game tomorrow. Hopefully they’re docked and undamaged, but the last version of that same base had a tendency to do MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS or else mangle itself into a barely recognisable mess and eventually I swapped it for a new one which has so far been fine. So far...

And I finally managed to make a passenger version of the SSTO I found on KerbalX and fly it to orbit and back without anything exploding or falling off- well, almost everything, but it’s my fault for sticking solar panels in the path of rocket exhaust. Even if the solar panels were right at the back and the rocket engines are right at the front.

[Popestar]

So last night I couldn't sleep, and decided to fire up KSP and work on getting a Kerbal into a polar orbit.  Shouldn't be too hard, I thought to myself as my sleep-deprived brain began working out ship designs.  I got one built, put Jeb in the cockpit, launched...and when I went to set my first maneuver I realized I hadn't designed with enough fuel.  So I decided I would go to bed and try again in the morning.

I got up today and, after a morning's worth of chores, and fired up KSP...with the thought of putting a Kerbal into a polar orbit.  I built a craft, and went to check crew...and no Jeb.  Where was Jeb?  I look around and remembered last night.  But wait - I didn't save anything.  Or so I thought.  Checked the tracking station, and sure enough, he's up there just floating away.  So I had to bring him home first.  And of course, the ship I designed today I didn't save, so that's lost.

Now, you'd think that would be enough.  Well, you'd be wrong.  I get Jeb back and go to check the amount of Science I have.  71 points.  Not quite enough to get those sweet electrics, but I'm getting close.  And while I'm in R&D, let me just look at the tech tree and check out what parts come with what.  Great idea...until I accidentally purchased Aviation.  Sigh.  45 points gone, and now I have to work out how to build and fly planes.

Lesson here is to not play when you really should be sleeping. 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Popestar

[RP1IsSuperior]

I actually designed an RTLS booster at 1am once. It could carry  10 tons into LKO, and it functions without mods like FMRS. I still need to do further payload testing because i may be able to expend more fuel going sideways in my ascent