What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Corona688]

Built a functional stock+ autopilot out of a KAL-1000.

To go to space, hit T, Z, space, then wait four minutes.

Now, a KAL-1000 can't give instructions to a control pod.  There's no action group coupling for "yaw right ten degrees".  The best you can do is set it "prograde" and produce a lot of drag in the direction you want to turn, which means programming the bare fins and counting where you end up by trial and error.

Except.  Except.  There's a loophole.

A KAL can lie to a control pod -- by moving it!  If it's set to stability assist, it will turn your craft "back" onto a "straight" line exactly the amount you turned it.

THIS MEANS I CAN PROGRAM TEN DEGREES AND GET TEN DEGREES!  YES!

There's a few catches.

1. Once you go past 45 degrees, it starts acting wonky.  Stability assist doesn't like sideways-attached engines!
2. It measures absolute angle.  Meaning, it will be slightly loopy by the time you begin your gravity turn, and completely out-to-lunch after it.
3. To compensate, I must turn off engines and heel the pod over so fast that stability assist loses track and "lawn sprinkler" it back into line with the rocket.  That's the "fish-hook" halfway through the motion graph.

Only in Kerbal Space Program, right?  Well...  Not entirely.  They call that problem "gimbal lock" and, hardware or software, it still takes a lot of effort to deal with in the real world.

[edit] Craft file https://kerbalx.com/Corona688/STOCK-AUTOPILOT-Valens-PRO2

 

Edited November 26, 2020 by Corona688

[IncompetentSpacer]

Since I stranded two kerbals due to loosing frontal landing wheel on their aircraft when landing on a island on Laythe, something I have written about earlier (kraken attack in WARP forces reconfiguration of the rocket on the fly), I have decided to build VTOL "SSTO" combo which I will send for rescue.  Not a true SSTO because it will hitch a ride to Jool system with ordinary rocket but will land and reach orbit in

Also inspired by @Corona688 and his post above me, I was thinking about using rotator and KAL-1000 to change configuration of the engines on the fly.

I have managed VTOL...

I have managed SSTO in Kerbal orbit...

But not the two together...

Regardless, it was interesting and learning experience - KAL-1000 was bit disappointing though but did what I needed to do.

[vv3k70r]

10 hours ago, Corona688 said:

A KAL can lie to a control pod -- by moving it!

Briliant!

 

[Delay]

10 hours ago, Corona688 said:

A KAL can lie to a control pod -- by moving it!  If it's set to stability assist, it will turn your craft "back" onto a "straight" line exactly the amount you turned it

So you're rotating the probe core to turn the rocket since SAS will aim to align the core to whatever attitude it was set to?

[Corona688]

1 hour ago, Delay said:

So you're rotating the probe core to turn the rocket since SAS will aim to align the core to whatever attitude it was set to?

Exactly.  It is sitting there on a single small hinge, because the only control axis I needed for equatorial orbit was yaw

1 hour ago, IncompetentSpacer said:

Since I stranded two kerbals due to loosing frontal landing wheel on their aircraft when landing on a island on Laythe, something I have written about earlier (kraken attack in WARP forces reconfiguration of the rocket on the fly), I have decided to build VTOL "SSTO" combo which I will send for rescue.  Not a true SSTO because it will hitch a ride to Jool system with ordinary rocket but will land and reach orbit in

Also inspired by @Corona688 and his post above me, I was thinking about using rotator and KAL-1000 to change configuration of the engines on the fly.

I have managed VTOL...

I have managed SSTO in Kerbal orbit...

But not the two together...

Regardless, it was interesting and learning experience - KAL-1000 was bit disappointing though but did what I needed to do.

That is wonderful.  I'm a bit sad that you hid the navball, I'm quite curious how you're flying it.

[IncompetentSpacer]

40 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

 

That is wonderful.  I'm a bit sad that you hid the navball, I'm quite curious how you're flying it.

Not very complicated - in theory. Below I am hoovering - since CoL, thrust and CoM are perfectly aligned (fuel consumption moves the center of mass only few mm) it can hoover with no input from me, although it drifts bit backwards during the launch.

 

Lets say I want to drift forward i will pitch the aircraft bit forward but never more than 5 degrees.  Same princaple backward or to side movement.

But what happens is that I have horizontal drift induced by doing this and when I below tried to compensate for it I end up loosing 100 meter of height as shown example below, where I ended up bit to the right of the runway.  Also the engines have delay before reaching a certain output (up or down) which means that you have to plan things ahead if it involves reducing or increasing height).

This is not an easy aircraft to fly in VTOL mode in reality since it has zero margin for error.

This aircraft has a inline docking port pointing below (although I haven aligned it with thrust vector - it was left for future iterations of this design) so by changing to it as a point of control you end up with same POV (and NAVBALL controls) as you are used to when flying rockets.

Technologically it seems to be a dead end since servos seem to be wobbly, both increasing the problem of control and limiting this design to 250 ms speed.

[EchoLima]

I tried sending a Voskhod style vehicle to a station in LKO, but the craft got damaged along the way in true Soviet style.

The interstage fairing that covered the service module broke off the solar panels during separation, and I forgot the decoupler below the service module failed to detach.

So now the craft was stuck in LKO with excess mass and no power generation. But I pressed on!

The crew managed to rendezvous with the station, but ran out of monoprop attempting to dock.

Val made an emergency EVA over to the station and attempted to dock it to Voskhod.

Unfortunately though the station was almost impossible to control, so the docking attempt was aborted and Bill EVA'd over to join Val. 

Now to wait for a rescue mission...

Playing without reverts is a lot of fun!

Edited November 26, 2020 by EchoLima

[Corona688]

13 minutes ago, IncompetentSpacer said:

Not very complicated - in theory. Below I am hoovering - since CoL, thrust and CoM are perfectly aligned (fuel consumption moves the center of mass only few mm) it can hoover with no input from me, although it drifts bit backwards during the launch.

Hmm.  I'm not out of tricks just yet.  First, good enough pilots or probes know hover-mode!  They call it "radial out" -- specifically surface-mode radial out.  It will keep a craft rigidly at vertical orientation and never lose track.

Second, you can autostrut moving joints in grandparent mode and have them still rotate.

Edited November 26, 2020 by Corona688

[vv3k70r]

38 minutes ago, EchoLima said:

but the craft got damaged along the way in true Soviet style.

+

38 minutes ago, EchoLima said:

and I forgot the decoupler below the service module failed to detach

Soviet style... did You wrote down Your last will and speak with family? Gulag at least if You have conections, but I would expect execution.

40 minutes ago, EchoLima said:

Unfortunately though the station was almost impossible to control, so the docking attempt was aborted and Bill EVA'd over to join Val. 

But You can EVA? And move to other vessel?

 

I have swarm of landers and performing some agresive assists to get speed cheap.

Next assist on da Mun in over a week.

 

[N_Danger]

 I went to Jool.

Time for a long coast to the course correction.

Jool looks really good up close.

Now it is time to scan down Pol. And after that, head to Bop.

 

Edited November 26, 2020 by N_Danger
Grammar stuff

[IncompetentSpacer]

5 hours ago, Corona688 said:

Hmm.  I'm not out of tricks just yet.  First, good enough pilots or probes know hover-mode!  They call it "radial out" -- specifically surface-mode radial out.  It will keep a craft rigidly at vertical orientation and never lose track.

Second, you can autostrut moving joints in grandparent mode and have them still rotate.

Honestly, I never thought about it, since I consider problem with high speed level flight to be the biggest issue but in my case it rotated the aircraft to the north. Autostruts dont cut it...

I have created separate thread about the problem so we may move discussion at to not pollute this thread with my problems

 

[Caerfinon]

A little Air/Sea test flying...

[Astrionix]

I made my first video!

 

[Popestar]

As part of working on the Caveman Challenge, I put the beginnings of a space station into orbit!  It's ugly as sin, and I'm sure that someone out here could do a far better job designing something to get up into orbit in the constraints put forth in the challenge, but I'm pretty darned happy with the accomplishment.  Now I just have to get some command pods and fuel tanks up there so I can send someone to the Mun!

Venture is a go.  I repeat:  Venture is a go.

Edited November 27, 2020 by Popestar

[DunaManiac]

I've been working on creating a Laythe colony, and I've designed an interesting versatile exploration vehicle.

It seems like a plane at first - albeit with wheels.

\

It can fly like a plane as well, however, once landed...

Instead of designing a rover and a plane, why not make them both? The design was motivated by having an easy transportation system without having a large cargo plane or barge to transport the rover.

The lower half is a drone and has mining equipment. It can also fly independently. They can dock and redock at will. The cockpit can function as a rover, being able to drive long distances.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Landed rovers on three moons of Janus (Beyond Home’s Jool)- two failed because “wheels aren’t touching the ground” so neither I nor Bon Voyage could drive them, and the third worked but drove itself inside a mountain and exploded. On the plus side, I landed an interstellar mission on Dynasty (Duna but with 0.8g, oof) and got another rover plus a deployed science cluster set up and running/roving.

[djr5899]

Hadn't played much in the past few months, but over the past 2 weeks, I've really got back into playing, with the goal of developing a craft that can get me to most places in the stock game.  For having played this game for 4-5 years, I've still never been to most of the planets.  I always spend the few hours a day/week I have playing KSP trying to build something, only to have it fail, and my available time is up.

So, last week I built a craft with about 9500 dV that should be able to get me to every planet/moon except for Eve, Jool, Laythe, and Tylo.  I built one version with a detachable lander to go down to the planet/moon surface, and another version that is an unmanned refueler, with an unmanned refueling craft (that has the ability to land on a surface and mine for more fuel if needed).  I need to build a 3rd variant that can deliver a rover to the surface as well, but, I'm really happy with the results.  It is time for me to see all these planets/moons in my own game, not just screenshots.  A few of them like Jool and Eve, I've never even made an attempt to get into their SOI.

This week, I tested out my main manned craft build, and sent crewed missions to Duna, Dres, Eeloo and, just because I had a good intercept...sent one to the Jool system.  Next is to port these over to a new career game (will likely wait for 1.11 release), mine science like crazy from Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus....and FINALLY check out all these places I never tried to get to before.

Here is the return craft and lander variant sitting in the Jool system:

 

The refueling version getting into orbit around Kerbin:

On the pad, ready for launch (believe this is the refuel version, but they are almost identical with the fairing on)

Edited November 28, 2020 by djr5899
left out a word

[panzer1b]

Well, i sorta revamped my earliest successful KSP creation i made ever.  I guess i went masochist mode when i got the game, and was obsessed with SSTOing, so instead of like going to the Mun (or even achieving orbit), i decided to make a laythe capable SSTO.  Made that around 1.0 initially, and believe it or not, with a few tweaks here and there, it still works in 1.10 despite the aerodynamics changing so many times.  Havent tried to SSTO it to laythe yet, but im pretty sure it can be done with aerobraking since i got into LKO with 4600dV leftover in its nuclear engine.

This was the old one...

And this is what i finished revamping today...  Same basic shape and design (although i made the rear a little bit different as i like the look of the new tail better and used the ram intake), and like the original, it does carry weapons too inside that crammed bay.  Sadly, there was no way to achieve such range without clipping 30 fuel tanks into the bomb bay .  I will defenetely give this another try with the new model (stripped weapons ofc as i need every gram of fuel i can drag up onboard this thing), since i havent actually done a SSTO mission in years ever since i got more into space combat then SSTOing.  Might as well do one tomorrow if i get the time for nostalgias sake (and to see how much harder it is with aerodynamics being slightly less janky, not to mention actual heat effects so no more hitting laythe at 6km/s in retrograde orbit).

 

And yeah, im starting to work on another graphics overhaul, SVE and SiFiVE are good mods, but nothing beat whatever mod pack i used since the 0.25 days, and i will do everything i can to make my newest version of SiFiVE look like that first screenie).

[IncompetentSpacer]

After earlier attempts at VTOL/SSTO combo were getting nowhere (rotatable servos from Breaking Grounds DLC simply are too weak to hold several engines together and M25 servos which manage to do that  are too heavy) I shaved over 10 tons of weight of reducing number of engines to 2 for horizontal travel and installing two airspike engines in a cargobay.

This worked of course but it is a lazy solution which guzzles fuel.

Sorry for bad pictures during landing, the screenshot was an afterthought.

 

Since I released the brakes by accident when taking picture, the attempt below were failure because the aircraft rolled off the roof of the VAB when I went for the coffee.

After 40532 more attempts I finally managed to land on the helipad on the roof of the VAB AND stay there!

Edited November 28, 2020 by IncompetentSpacer

[The Aziz]

I'm over three Kerbin years into my current save, and you'd think everything is possible now - nah, I just sent my first Kerbal into Duna orbit, there's no rush. However, my surface experiments on the Mun stopped sending science (like if I needed it, I'm already done with the tech tree) so I decided to do a routine mission to dismantle the base and go home.

There's never a routine mission. Of course I had to get out and push to save the crew and then catch the lander with the CSM at ~7km ASL. I hate the Mun.

[Goaty1208]

On 11/18/2020 at 8:40 PM, Urus28 said:

After a long break I'm returning to KSP.... I'm starting a new career, I don't really know what will be the goal of this one. But I'm having fun =)

 

Ok driving these rovers is sometimes a nightmare due to a bug making everything slides like crazy....

First landing on Minmus !

what graphical mods did you use apart from parallax (and astronomer's visual pack I suppose)?

Planning to start a career save

[Urus28]

2 minutes ago, Goaty1208 said:

what graphical mods did you use apart from parallax (and astronomer's visual pack I suppose)?

Planning to start a career save

You are right it's astronomer visual pack, I also use texture unlimited with Magpie textures and planetshine.

My screenshots are also treated with Photoshop for an even better aspect so the actual result in game is a little bit different (in general darker).

[Goaty1208]

Just now, Urus28 said:

You are right it's astronomer visual pack, I also use texture unlimited with Magpie textures and planetshine.

My screenshots are also treated with Photoshop for an even better aspect so the actual result in game is a little bit different (in general darker).

Oh ok, could you post a non edited screenshot please? I like this mod setup 

[Urus28]

3 minutes ago, Goaty1208 said:

Oh ok, could you post a non edited screenshot please? I like this mod setup 

As you can see it's mainly darker in dark areas... Since I'm using reflective textures they often reflect the black space making them darker than in the original game.

[Goaty1208]

Just now, Urus28 said:

As you can see it's mainly darker in dark areas... Since I'm using reflective textures they often reflect the black space making them darker than in the original game.

ok, thanks!