What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Goaty1208]

Designed and currently flying the GSS Nautilus, a cargo freighter that uses just a mod: FTL drive recontinued ( or something like that) reworked (at least I think) by @linuxgurugamer. It is a part of my Laythe program. 16 crew members. Maximum of 21.

Happy 2200 page, @Xeldrak!!!

 

[swjr-swis]

3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

it's not exactly the power cable that broke, but the connector of the power cable. the connector got oxidized to the point that the metal were all black and weren't making contact anymore.

I see the source of confusion now. 'PC' = power connector/cable. And I think you mean soldering instead of welding, which makes a lot more sense. The glue ... well, in this particular context just not a good idea. The mechanical wear and tear on that particular connector require different material.

It's not a solution for your current situation, but it's something I recommend everyone thinking of buying a new laptop: (1) get yourself a second power supply/adapter, right from the start. (2) Unrelated but for much the same reason: get yourself a second battery too; and put them both away until the inevitable moment the primary ones of those start failing.

If you treat your laptop with any kind of care, those two are the parts that by far and wide will be the first to go bad, and by the time they do, it's generally hard to find replacements anymore because 'obsolete' and 'replaced by next model'. Sadly this usually leaves people with a piece of equipment not being of much use anymore, when it could well have given another few years of service. Lenovo isn't an exception - it's a general problem with the industry that they design/build/stock with a much too limited lifetime in mind. Laptops in particular, being both expensive and inherently un-modular, are a major offender in this.  /endgripe

The laptop isn't much good if you can't power it anymore, so I understand the tinkering as a workaround, but be mindful of the possibility of damaging your laptop: the discolouring you mention to me sounds like the result of sparking - I've never once seen oxidized power connectors before. Sparking, or even simply an unreliable connection, of the main power supply = bad news for any kind of electronics. As inconvenient as it may be I strongly suggest waiting for the replacement to arrive, rather than risking the laptop itself.

 

[king of nowhere]

57 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

I see the source of confusion now. 'PC' = power connector/cable. And I think you mean soldering instead of welding, which makes a lot more sense. The glue ... well, in this particular context just not a good idea. The mechanical wear and tear on that particular connector require different material.

It's not a solution for your current situation, but it's something I recommend everyone thinking of buying a new laptop: (1) get yourself a second power supply/adapter, right from the start. (2) Unrelated but for much the same reason: get yourself a second battery too; and put them both away until the inevitable moment the primary ones of those start failing.

If you treat your laptop with any kind of care, those two are the parts that by far and wide will be the first to go bad, and by the time they do, it's generally hard to find replacements anymore because 'obsolete' and 'replaced by next model'. Sadly this usually leaves people with a piece of equipment not being of much use anymore, when it could well have given another few years of service. Lenovo isn't an exception - it's a general problem with the industry that they design/build/stock with a much too limited lifetime in mind. Laptops in particular, being both expensive and inherently un-modular, are a major offender in this.  /endgripe

The laptop isn't much good if you can't power it anymore, so I understand the tinkering as a workaround, but be mindful of the possibility of damaging your laptop: the discolouring you mention to me sounds like the result of sparking - I've never once seen oxidized power connectors before. Sparking, or even simply an unreliable connection, of the main power supply = bad news for any kind of electronics. As inconvenient as it may be I strongly suggest waiting for the replacement to arrive, rather than risking the laptop itself.

 

yes, i don't know the technical words there because it's not my field of expertise, but i guess soldering is correct, and sparking is also the diagnosis that my brother gave. he suggested i have to unplug the transformer first, wait a few seconds, and only then unplug the transformer from the pc. which i will do, once i have the new piece. good thing, at least the connector on the pc side is in good shape, it didn't get ruined by it. if it does get damaged, it can be fixed. my brother already did it on a previous laptop i had, and it worked very well afterwards. he also recognizes that glue is not the best choice, but it was all he had. the first time we tried with tape and metallic wire (again, forget my ignorance of proper therminology here) and it broke in a few days. at least this glue solution allows me to use the pc for most things. i need it for working too, i can't just shut it down.

and while you are correct that lenovo isn't an exception for problems with the power cable, at least with any other laptop i ever owed i could find a replacement quickly and cheaply when the problem arose. that's what i don't like, that they have their own transformers that you need to get from them, and they are very expensive, and not easy to find. also, the battery cannot be changed without opening everything - though i'm told that more and more companies are doing that.

[N_Danger]

I decided to do stuff involving asteroids today. I launched a sentinel instrument equipped satellite into an orbit between Eve and Kerbin.

And then I intercepted an asteroid passing through Kebin's SOI.

  I was able to park a probe 30 meters away from it for long term observation. 

 

[steve_v]

6 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

what was done was ordering a new connector, removing the old, broken connector from the power cable, and welding the new connector in place.  but the thing was frail and it broke within a few days.

Sounds a lot like the strain-relief on the new connector was not correctly used, or what you have is one intended to be injection moulded to the cable.
Generally speaking (hard to know without actually seeing it) rewirable/user installable connectors have a metal "tongue"  inside the connector housing that should be crimped over the outer sheath of the cable to take any mechanical loading away from the wires. Sometimes it's some other mechanism like a compression gland or the like, but a crimp is the most common.

If your connector doesn't have a viable strain relief mechanism, glue (ideally silicone or epoxy) is indeed a reasonable if rather messy course of action. Most people don't have an injection moulding rig at home to replicate what the manufacturer did.
 

2 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

I understand the tinkering as a workaround, but be mindful of the possibility of damaging your laptop

Replacing the damaged plug is a perfectly good plan, and it reduces the number of otherwise perfectly good power supplies that go to landfill. 
If all else fails, using glue (amazing what one can do with a little epoxy) as mechanical strengthening isn't a  bad idea either... So long as one watches the polarity and checks for fit so as not to damage the socket.


I know you're just advising caution, but the sheer quantity of good gear that goes to the tip because "don't try to fix it, you might break something" boggles my mind, and manufacturers cultivate this learned-helplessness whenever they can (e.g. Apple and the "replacing batteries is too dangerous" argument). "Having a go" is also a valuable hands-on learning experience.

On that danger note, there's a certain fairly entertaining video from Louis Rossmann floating around (too much profanity to link here) demonstrating iphone battery removal using nothing but a claw-hammer and a paint scraper. Guess what Apple, nothing explodes.

 

2 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

those two are the parts that by far and wide will be the first to go bad

This is actually the one single thing that Apple does right on their laptops, that magnetic power connector. The rest of the machine is usually garbage, but at least they don't tend to go through power cables as fast as everything else.

 

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

he suggested i have to unplug the transformer first, wait a few seconds, and only then unplug the transformer from the pc.

Good advice (discharging the power supply), if possibly a little over-cautious. So long as it's unplugged from the wall and you're not opening the power supply itself, the voltages involved should be quite safe.
That said, I have seen shoddy supplies that will give you a mild bite from the unplugged mains end if you don't leave them a while before touching it. The laptop end of the thing ought to be safe as houses at any time though, as it's likely not more than 30v.

 

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

the battery cannot be changed without opening everything - though i'm told that more and more companies are doing that.

More and more companies are not only making it so you have to completely dismantle the machine to get at the battery, they're gluing it in as well. Because they'd prefer you bought a new machine than replace a consumable part. The same goes for soldered in SSDs and RAM.

Repairability is right at the top of my checklist before I buy something these days.

Edited October 25, 2020 by steve_v

[RoninFrog]

9 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Wow, nice! Any chance you could put the craft file up on KerbalX? I'd love to try it out!

Here you go. http://kerbalx.com/crafts/65188

I fixed the engine thrust problem and another issue with the airlock.

[swjr-swis]

1 hour ago, steve_v said:

I know you're just advising caution, but the sheer quantity of good gear that goes to the tip because "don't try to fix it, you might break something" boggles my mind, and manufacturers cultivate this learned-helplessness whenever they can (e.g. Apple and the "replacing batteries is too dangerous" argument). "Having a go" is also a valuable hands-on learning experience.

Quoting this for truth. This is my personal stance on the matter as well.

I am entirely self-educated in electronics, just enough to be dangerous I guess. I've taken it upon myself to keep most of my devices running well beyond what was clearly the intended lifetime of them. Often involving disassembling non-user-serviceable parts, soldering irons, inter-continental part orders, and -sometimes physical- firmware replacements.

The sole reason I advice more cautiously here is that the description paints a picture of uhm ... sub-optimal voltage/current stability... let's put it that way. If that is a constant for too long it becomes more a question of which internal component will fail first, rather than IF any will.

If I had it my way, we'd all be thwarting this imposed consumerism by learning to self-service, maintain, and upgrade our devices into pseudo-eternity. There could be an entire industry around this, if we'd just choose to do so on a fundamental level.

[panzer1b]

Well, the ktraken strikes again, and it just ruined such a beautiful warship :(

Sadly, dis happened after attempting to dock a second viper, and it resulted in the entire save breaking (as in permanently corrupted, ship duplicated itself or some other BS kraken attack)....

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

At least i managed to get a new desktop worthy screenshot of this thing before it bought the farm :)

[Fraktal]

22 hours ago, Fraktal said:

When fully fueled, the orbiter's dual Poodles will have slightly over 3k m/s of dV, while the lander's dual Thuds will have 2k m/s. Both have RCS and the lander docks into the front of the orbiter aft-first. I know I'm massively overengineering it, but I'm doing that on purpose due to the fact that I can't quite make bi-weekly trips to Duna like I could to Minmus (hence why the orbiter is bringing no less than four experiment storage units plus antennas, to make sure I get everything from whatever biome I end up landing in). That and if I'll have enough spare dV upon taking off from Duna, I'll attempt a visit to Ike as well for more juicy science.

Still a bit uncertain about whether I'll be able to pull off aerobraking at Kerbin upon return without a heat shield, since the orbiter is using a triple 2.5m fuselage and the lander can't mount one to its rear either because it'll block off the docking port's crossfeed.

On that note, I spent today's session preparing for the Duna mission.

• Redesigned the orbiter completely. It's single-fuselage two-tank now rather than triple-fuselage three-tank, I tacked on a heat shield to the rear, replaced the dual Poodles with quad Terriers and angled them to diagonally fire out from behind the heatshield, their thrust vectors narrowly missing the edge of the shield to provide propulsion while still being shielded during reentry and only losing a few hundred dV (it actually has enough thrust that the whole orbiter could land and take off from Duna by itself, it just doesn't have landing legs). Didn't test how much dV I'll have once the lander is docked, but it should be more than enough enough for the return trip and possibly even refueling the lander for an Ike visit. I'm more concerned with the lander's dV: it has enough fuel to get back up into space, but might not have enough for a rendezvous if the orbiter is too high up. Oh well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it (and the orbiter has its own RCS, so it can go fetch the lander if need be).
• With the design finalized, I wrapped the orbiter into a fairing and launched it with roughly 2/3 of its maximum fuel load so that my currently largest booster (5x Skippers on the first stage, 1x Skipper on the second stage) can lift it into orbit in one go. It circularized before control signal was lost (I'm playing with DSN off).
• Next, I designed a tanker. I originally intended to lift two X200-64 tanks but decided that probably won't be necessary and in any case, lifting that and a third X200-64 into orbit for actually getting the other two tanks to where they're needed is beyond my lifting capacity at the moment. So I dropped one of the payload tanks, which turned out to be a good decision down the line. This craft too only managed to circularize before dropping out of contact.
• By this time I was starting to be really miffed by the constant connection interruptions making me unable to make the two craft rendezvous (they were in fast 86km orbits), so I took a detour and launched three relay satellites in one go and boosted them all up to 1000 km altitude in a crude triangular formation. Need some adjustment for aesthetic purposes but for now, I've got permanent 100% signal strength in Kerbin orbit.
• With the connection issues debugged, the tanker rendezvoused with the Duna orbiter which docked into the tanker (the tanker doesn't have RCS). At which point it turned out that I brought just the right amount of propellant: of the 1440 liquid, 114 was left once propellant loading was complete.

The game had its daily crash at this point so I couldn't continue, but the tanker stayed docked with the Duna orbiter for now so that once Jeb and co. return from their test flight to the edge of Kerbin's SOI with the Duna lander prototype and launch in the actual lander, I'll use the tanker's remaining fuel to top off the lander as well before returning to Kerbin and awaiting the Duna transfer window.

I originally wanted to launch the mission from my orbital station and even fitted the station with docking modules for that purpose (with each module having two spaced-apart dorsal and ventral docking ports each, aligned normal/antinormal to make lining up with them easier), but hauling the fuel up to geostationary orbit would've taken a lot of delta-V. Maybe once I'll have nuclear engines.

Things are looking very good. I'm starting to get a bit excited that I might actually put kerbals on Duna for the first time tomorrow.

[Vezbot]

Malvin Kerman requested 6 Dragonfly ion scooters to be delivered to his landing site (his lander is destroyed) on Minmus. Mission control is scratching their heads in confusion before checking his files and finding he has been stranded there for 58 years and 34 days.

Guy has literally gone insane, but buying in bulk is always good.

Delivery for Minmus

[jimmymcgoochie]

Spent an hour flying to the North Pole to deploy a probe for long-term gravity studies, but when I got there I realised that the probe had no antenna . Then I tried again with an antenna attached and crashed the plane the northern ice shelf due to a sticky nose wheel (should’ve turned the friction down, oops). All that left me with less than 3000 funds.
 

@panzer1b try pulling one of the backup persistent files from the backups folder (saves/your-save-name-here/backups), renaming that to persistent.sfs and overwriting the corrupted one, it might just salvage the whole save.

[king of nowhere]

14 hours ago, steve_v said:

Repairability is right at the top of my checklist before I buy something these days.

i wasn't aware of big differences between companies, but now it will be my top priority too.

working to produce useless stuff that's rigged to break so that we can continue producing it is not the utopian future i signed for. i don't have much decisional power to affect the world, but i can at least choose what to buy

[Goaty1208]

23 hours ago, Goaty1208 said:

Designed and currently flying the GSS Nautilus, a cargo freighter that uses just a mod: FTL drive recontinued ( or something like that) reworked (at least I think) by @linuxgurugamer. It is a part of my Laythe program. 16 crew members. Maximum of 21.

Happy 2200 page, @Xeldrak!!!

 

Launching some cargo modules for the Nautilus

[Corona688]

My usual thing once I get enough rocket power:

burningsmell.org/images/ksp/screenshot7.png

The forum is broken today and refuses to embed perfectly good images, and also broken today no longer supporting img tags.  So you're probably not going to see any screenshots from me for the forseeable future.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Corona688

[Zosma Procyon]

So I've been tinkering with flying base concepts large enough to hold a small rover in a cargo bay, and haven't been having much luck. The wing designs I've been messing with were not very good. So on a whim I decided to build one based on the design of what I as an IRL astronautics engineer think is the best fighter of WW2: The P-38 Lightning. Of course swept back wings are better than straight, so it ended up looking more like the De Havilland Sea Vixen.

I moved my new favorite propulsion system, ducted fans, to the front, put the science labs, batteries, NUKs, and reaction wheels, out in the booms. The main fuselage only contains two cockpits and the cargo bay. And guess how bad this flies? Not bad at all. It is 15 to 19 m/s faster than my current flying Eve base. More maneuverable, more stable in a straight line. And the weird part; as is in this test version it can take off from "water" without issue. Every other flying base I've deployed uses floats and hydroplane fins to help it take off from a wet surface, but this mongrel doesn't need them. I'm going to push this design forward.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Zosma Procyon

[RP1IsSuperior]

trying to figure out other resources mods I want, LF/OX seems a little bit bland, yet im not sure. Also trying to find a realistic offworld assembly mod. I already have KAS but that might be difficult when I go interstellar

[Fraktal]

Assembly and fueling of my Duna exploration vehicle is complete, with ten days to go until launch.

Ten days later the engines come to life and the journey begins.

The maneuver node ends up some 140k kilometers off, forcing me to manually adjust trajectory. Sadly, I still ended up missing Duna by more than 3 million kilometers due to KSP's compounding floating point errors making a huge amount of dV vanish into the ether once I engaged time warp, so now I have to load my previous save and start over.

 

On second try, though, our efforts are met with success as Bob finally catches sight of the ship's destination in the distance...

Another complication that comes up is KER's maneuver assist readouts having miscalculated dV expenditure for the rendezvous maneuver, resulting in the maneuver using up a LOT more fuel than displayed. Like, I had less than half of my total fuel remaining, not counting the lander, so an Ike rendezvous was out of the question. Luckily, I did design the orbiter with aerobraking capability, so we have that.

 

Fellow KSP players... I have officially arrived to Duna for the first time.

Edited October 27, 2020 by Fraktal

[panzer1b]

YES, I FIXED MY SHIP!!!!

 

Luckily ive mucked enough in .craft files to actually de-kraken the battlestar i spent a whole 6 hours making :)

Its so pretty even if it lags like mad with 4 vipers inside...

Action stations!

This is just so bloody perfect, finally a rather decently close replica that is actually "viable" in a real KSP scenario and not purely for show.  Its armored, it nolonger corrupts save games (at least during an hour of testing thusfar), and its got enough firepower to at least make basestars rethink the point of their existence (albeit not much ammo capacity as i cant make the frames go to 2FPS).

And ofc what battlestar is complete without its counterpart.  Not a very good replica since its actually a SK-VIII Starlight class assault carrier and not a real basestar replica, but i sorta took the basic idea of 2 3 point stars attached together to make AKS's main true carrier ship (cruisers can also carry starfighters but not really dedicated for it).  Maybee if i get some time (after making a few more QOL tweaks to the battlestar), ill make a real basestar replica and not just use something vaguel inspired by it (had to use it for the screenshots though as its the closest i got).

 

So yeah, not entirely perfect, and ill work on it during weekend, but its there, it doesnt crash game anymore, and it looks insanely pretty given the fact that its stock and i had to cut a few corners to limit the lag issues.

[Vezbot]

I am planning to construct the next generation of heavy lift rockets after Saurus VI. I am also going to use a new size for the rocket, with mammoth engines, if I design it right then it will have good delta V. This will enable large payloads like a 30 ton nuclear asteroid harvester or I can ship atomic planes to Eve for rescue missions or I can make a Duna lander for land and return missions. Either way, it will enable a greater amount of mass to orbit, and the Saurus VI will go from being a primary lift vehicle to a backup lift vehicle.

Edited October 27, 2020 by Vezbot
Spelling fixes

[Kebab Kerman]

Launched a station into orbit of Minmus without even using the third stage. Also posted the rocket I used to KerbalX. Don't have a screenshot of the station, but I do have one of the rocket before launch.

https://kerbalx.com/KebabKerman/giant-boi

[RealKerbal3x]

I launched a probe on its way to Jool! It's the first time I've ever done this - in fact, there's still quite a few things I haven't done in KSP despite playing for so long - but that's what the career I'm currently playing through is intended to fix!

Fairings away. The fairing for this payload was very large (because of all of the deployable probes hanging off the sides) so I was half-expecting the vehicle to flip during ascent, but I kept it under control.

The probe separates from the reusable SSTO launch vehicle. Time to bring that booster back!

I probably would have had enough propellant to land the vehicle propulsively SpaceX style had I not wasted too much on the entry burn. Margins were way too tight for my liking, so I just popped the chutes instead.

Next up was the Jool transfer burn. I split this into two parts, the first burn taking me into an elliptical orbit grazing the Mun's, and the second completing my trajectory to Jool. Two drop-tanks were emptied and jettisoned during the second burn, leaving them as space debris orbiting Kerbol.

So this probe is on its way to the outer Kerbol system! It's got a couple of small course correction maneuvers to do along the way, and it'll take about 3 years to get there. Go Moonraker!

[Commodore_32]

Today I made a fully stock, accurate Saturn V!

Check it out here: https://kerbalx.com/Commodore_Gamer118/Saturn-V-Stock

[Popestar]

Well, what I WANTED to and what I actually got done are 2 separate things.  I wanted to build a rocket, put a satellite in some fairings on it, and launch that puppy into orbit so I could collect some sweet funds and do a bit of science gathering.  Unfortunately, every time I started to do that, this little thing called "work" decided it needed attention.

There's always tomorrow!

[Zosma Procyon]

I've been tinkering with a small buggy for my next Eve crew to use when deploying science equipment. And as usual, I made it over elaborate.

The headlights are on piston so they can be extended to serve as work lights.

https://i.imgur.com/aFC50aA.gifv

[RoninFrog]

I calculated the Isp of a decoupler.

Heh heh heh...  I can just feel the power...  Valentina looks uneasy.

BLAM!!!!  Here we goooooooo!  Jump to hyperspace!  Zero to thirteen hundred in less than half a second!

ln(13.74/0.94)*9.8*Isp = 1347

The Isp of the radial decoupler is a whole 51 seconds!  Okay, maybe not great, but the TWR is absolutely, gloriously, mind-bogglingly kerbal-flattening.

Oh, and I built a ISS replica.

Spoiler