What did you do in KSP1 today?

[OrdinaryKerman]

Spoiler

After deciding I didn't like KSR's Baikerbanur expansion, I put together my own:


It's a lot smaller than KSR's (and just tiny compared to original KerbinSide's) and honestly feels more like fleshing out the site rather than expanding it, but it's ok I guess.

Statics I used as 'retrofit baseplates' for the existing buildings:
Launchpad: OSS Landing Zone 2 
VAB: OSS Heliport
Tracking Station: KSR Single Dish Base, at 0.7 scale

EDIT: razed to the ground after the mapdecal kept not doing anything

EDIT2: Turns out it’s the KSR mapdecal’s fault being in the same place. Will make a new version of this sometime in future

Edited November 20, 2021 by OrdinaryKerman
Oh look, new page

[Axelord FTW]

Did some testing today to fine-tune the rules for an upcoming challenge I'm cooking up.

I also got all the kerbals on the trainer mission home, after a quick jaunt out of Kerbin's SOI. Both orbiting labs got around 100+ new experiment results stored from their mission in passing. Everyone is level 3.

[TheSaint]

Testing out the new and improved base system. So far, so good.

Edited November 10, 2021 by TheSaint
Clarification

[Alien21]

22 hours ago, OrdinaryKerman said:

After deciding I didn't like KSR's Baikerbanur expansion, I put together my own:


It's a lot smaller than KSR's (and just tiny compared to original KerbinSide's) and honestly feels more like fleshing out the site rather than expanding it, but it's ok I guess.

Statics I used as 'retrofit baseplates' for the existing buildings:
Launchpad: OSS Landing Zone 2 
VAB: OSS Heliport
Tracking Station: KSR Single Dish Base, at 0.7 scale

Hello from Alien21 Space Agency! Is possible unlock also this space complex? Or you need a mod for doing this? I know that there are hidden space complex, but some of them I have already discovered them.

 

 

Anyway,  mission Kerboyuz MS-1 has reached successfuly from Desert space complex our space station after 32 minutes of flights and 1 orbit, and docked after 40 minutes since liftoff! Definetely our record. The crew will support the other 3 kerbalnauts already on station for achieve more Science discoveries.

[OrdinaryKerman]

1 hour ago, Alien21 said:

Hello from Alien21 Space Agency! Is possible unlock also this space complex? Or you need a mod for doing this

The stock site isn't usable, unfortunately. It also doesn't have any roads or that airfield (those were added through mods)

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

The Duna Colony team has been very busy for the last 2 months performing geo science of all types including some prolonged multi-biome rover trips:

Kathcas then set up the rover as a seismic monitoring "thumper truck" with deployable sensor pods and a really big hammer:

Followed by some focused core samples of interesting locations:

And a wide-ranging laser surface ablation survey:

Time to catch a ride home:

After a couple hundred days in transit, the entire crew was crowding the observation cupolas as Kerbin slowly swam into sight:

Safe and sound above the green, green hills of Kerbin:

This is going to conclude this particular career, after a couple years of constant modding and tweaking I need a fresh install to quell the Kraken attacks and bring the gameplay back up to snuff.

Off to fresh adventures in tiny rockets and large explosions!

 

KoS

[Alien21]

2 hours ago, Kerbals_of_Steel said:

The Duna Colony team has been very busy for the last 2 months performing geo science of all types including some prolonged multi-biome rover trips:

Kathcas then set up the rover as a seismic monitoring "thumper truck" with deployable sensor pods and a really big hammer:

Followed by some focused core samples of interesting locations:

And a wide-ranging laser surface ablation survey:

Time to catch a ride home:

After a couple hundred days in transit, the entire crew was crowding the observation cupolas as Kerbin slowly swam into sight:

Safe and sound above the green, green hills of Kerbin:

This is going to conclude this particular career, after a couple years of constant modding and tweaking I need a fresh install to quell the Kraken attacks and bring the gameplay back up to snuff.

Off to fresh adventures in tiny rockets and large explosions!

 

KoS

these photo are amazing. really!

[Grimmas]

Played some JNSQ/Kerbalism - set up a relay network around both Kerbin and the Mun to support future missions, did my first unmanned JNSQ Mun landing, started on a relay network around Minmus, then wrote a bunch of new patches which ate into the remaining play time. Also caused the heat death of the Kerbal universe (fixed by restarting KSP).

Spoiler

 

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

All I did was clear some debris in the Tracking Station and focus on a space shuttle recreation

 I have tried making one LOTS of times, but none were successful. Now I made it into a circular orbit. But DISASTER!!! AS I WAS CIRCULISATING, THE BIG BOI ORANGE TANK CRASHED INTO A PART OF THE LEFT WING (even though I put it there for the sake of the looks).

I have attempted re-entry around 10 times, still didn't make it into a landing(made a quicksave where the cockpit SOMEHOW survived after a 40m/s impact)I always get into an uncontrollable spin at around 20km. Now Jebediah, Bill, Bob and Jedny Kerman are in an LKO. BUT the shuttle has a docking port, so I can launch a 5-seater to save them? (One seat for a Pilot until rendezvous).

Pray for dem kerbals! First time I left kerbals in orbit. Stranded. Probably forever.

Oh and that reminds me of the Bl-

On a lonely planet, slowly spinning its way to damnation

 

Amidst the incompetence and unpreparedness of lesser space programs

 

One team stands resilient against the herds!

 

Putting their lives on the line to aid players

 

Who were previously unaware of the Quicksave option!

 

Yes it's the incredible adventures of Jebediah

 

And his crack team of Kerbonauts!

 

They are... THE BLUNDERBIRDS!

 

Saving the Kerbin race one stranded explorer at a time.

 

 

 

 

Bad bad thing is im on console so I can't share my save

 

Note: I have a save where I haven't dumped the orange tank. 

Note2: The Space Shuttle keeps spinning onto the SAME SIDE, and its the side of the broken wing. COINCIDENCE?!? I THINK NOT

Edited November 12, 2021 by Aerodynamic Kerbal
hehe reference go brrrrrrrrrrr

[ColdJ]

9 hours ago, Aerodynamic Kerbal said:

Note2: The Space Shuttle keeps spinning onto the SAME SIDE, and its the side of the broken wing. COINCIDENCE?!? I THINK NOT

No one would worry if you installed parachutes that opened 1 km above the ground, afterall the Space Shuttle had parachutes to slow it down when it reached the runway.

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

17 minutes ago, ColdJ said:

No one would worry if you installed parachutes that opened 1 km above the ground, afterall the Space Shuttle had parachutes to slow it down when it reached the runway.

Nope, forgot parachutes...

[ColdJ]

3 minutes ago, Aerodynamic Kerbal said:

Nope, forgot parachutes...

Next build.

 

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

1 minute ago, ColdJ said:

Next build.

 

Might save the kerbals with another craft at first, and then change the design

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

So thats where the problem is:

Other stuff I made recently:

(forgot to take a pic of the SLS itself)

[Axelord FTW]

Got a few things done today, but the biggest achievement was probably landing the main lifting stage for a C-Class redirect mission back on Kerbin. Nuclear engines aren't cheap.

[Admiral Fluffy]

On 4/7/2021 at 4:15 PM, Admiral Fluffy said:

I landed did a manned landing on Eve for the first time. 

Approach

Aerobraking

First steps on Eve

All of the Crew- (Left to Right-Pilot, Scientists, and then Engineers)

They are still there.

(sent them a rover though)

[Axelord FTW]

Oh, started fiddling more with Far Future Technologies stuff. I tested a version of this antimatter scoop craft with a fusion reactor but they're kind of hella expensive. I understand what they're for but at this point it would just be wasteful. Giant solar panels for now.

Spoiler

Antimatter scoop in mid-high kerbin orbit. Also comes with two small RCS tugs if I ever need help docking with it.

Kaneda, what do you see!?
Launched a Vernier propulsion stack (Far Future) on top of a single stage. Had enough dV to deorbit, and I tried to land it, considering how much it cost. It broke apart on landing but I was able to recover 80% of it.  20 Mainsails at once is a pretty (and loud) sight.

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by Axelord FTW

[eddiew]

Debating a career using JNSQ and whether I want to keep it at default size or shrink it down. My general love is making things that shouldn't fly, fly... so the higher orbital speeds and higher re-entry heating might be counterproductive. Meanwhile the larger planetary surfaces will make my overland expeditions take a lot longer - although Bon Voyage might take care of that for me. That said, JNSQwould almost force the use of mods that are deeper into the tech tree than I usually get before considering a game 'finished'. While it's not impossible to build a large stock-ish SSTO with Tweakscale...

...it was quite painful. This thing didn't carry any cargo and only had 200m/s left in orbit. I spent another couple of hours trying to get a cargo carrier with no success. This was actually the best of all the designs, and it was pretty bad 

So stock parts aren't going to satisfy. But what about modded spaceplane parts? Turned out that OPT has us covered for larger-than-stock homeworlds. I suspect it may stand for Over Powered Technology, but that's fine. It'll be late in the (community) tech tree and by the time you get there, you'll have earned it.

Working out how to fly with OPT's shcramjets took some experimentation. Static thrust on the runway is low, these feel like 2.5m rapiers more than anything. But once you can get them past 500m/s, their turbojet mode develops a lot more power, and that will carry right on up to ~1600m/s (maybe beyond, didn't test it). This is plenty for any stock-scale spaceplane; you'd be about 45-50km up and possibly have an AP outside the atmosphere already. Not in JNSQ; here you'll still be very much atmospheric. That's when you need shcramjet mode. The power band for this starts somewhere around 20km and 1200m/s, but faster is highly recommended for a smooth changeover. When done right, you get a few seconds of low thrust, then jump from the fizzling 1.1 TWR of turbojet mode up to 1.5 on shcramjets, and they just keep pushing harder the faster you go. These eventually hit their ceiling around 2.1 TWR. This is indeed a bit absurd, but it is also the sort of thing you need at ~2.5x scale. 

Ascent was handled mostly on canard deployment angle; 20-30 degrees in the lower atmosphere, down to around 8 at the higher stages of ascent. Because it's such a long climb, you'll spend a lot of time in that slippery zone where you don't really have enough air for your control surfaces to work with, so the less manual input you have to make the better the whole flight will be. Too much fiddling will drop the nose, and even though this design is aerodynamically stable and won't flip, it can end up being a fight to regain your AoA if you lose it. (Side note; I found my rear elevons were working against the canards when the former were deployed; I disabled pitch control on them during ascent and things got much easier. Not sure where that behaviour comes from.)

I'm not entirely sure what the true maximum speed of an OPT shcramjet is; I don't think I hit it, but I was struggling to keep the nose down by this point and the Optimus J3 just bounded on up beyond the engines' flight ceiling. Flameout was asymmetric, with a steady drop in power on the right side - I'm not sure if this is KSP or OPT, thought we'd fixed that sort of thing way back in 1.0.2 but here we are. My advice is that the moment you feel the nose start to turn, cut the shcramjets and turn on the ARIs again.

Even at this altitude, the ARIs operated in air-augmented mode, delivering over 900 isp with good thrust. Not sure where they fizzle, seems like they may go right up to the edge of space. Either way, they are powerful enough to push your AP past 100km with plenty of fuel reserves remaining.

Be warned; the OPT engines suck electricity. It's basically mandatory to have some form of advanced modded generator on board, else you'll run out of juice long before you run out of fuel.

Anyway, point is, nearly 20 tons of cargo delivered to 120x120 orbit with plenty of fuel to spare. Could very easily rendezvous with an orbital structure and deliver components (or life support supplies if you do that). It should also be very possible to add a docking module or perhaps even a bit more cargo bay+payload and still make the ascent. I will investigate whether it's possible to pass the classic 'big red tank' SSTO test with the J series parts; if not, that's fine because this is the smallest fuselage that OPT offers. There is a bigger one that I haven't touched yet.

I've seen videos+posts recommending a very shallow descent in JNSQ, setting an atmospheric PE above KSC; this might still be true for stock parts, but I found the Optimus J3 was happier with a steeper route. OPT parts seem to handle burst heating very well, but if you come in too shallow you'll end up with a very long, sustained heating that eventually overwhelms something. A moderately aggressive AoA helps distribute the temperatures around and provide decent braking. By the time you're under ~2800m/s, everything will be fine, OPT parts can take those kind of thermals at high altitude, and this particular craft drops below 2km/s at 30km up.

Which is almost a bit of a trap; because it's a relatively long descent vs stock, you feel like you're lower and slower than you actually are. Manoeuvring at 20km still doesn't work very well and it's best not to try, lest you end up fighting the stick all the way down. Passing 10km, and particularly below 7, handling firms up and you can do a very conventional glide back down to the runway. I needed to find about 50km extra after my eyeballed descent, but there was a big reserve of fuel left over. With this particular cargo, it's possible to sacrifice about 2000 units of oxidiser and the same again of liquid fuel and still have a little bit spare on landing. The weight difference has very little effect however, and I left it there to give some scope for pumping fuel around and changing craft balance if needed (top tip; OPT cabins have a small fuel tank - set it to low priority to keep some weight in the nose as long as possible). I'm a little suspicious that this plane could do a double ascent, if it was empty both times... the problem with OPT+JNSQ doesn't seem to be fuel efficiency, it's about getting enough engines onto your craft to keep your TWR above 1 all the way.

So there we have it. A few mods and spaceplanes are back on, to some extent at least. Probably can't do the silly things you can in stock, but basic satellite lifters are entirely viable. Late in the tech tree.

As to whether I will run at JNSQ's default scale, or apply the mod to shrink it, I'm still not quite sure. On the one hand, I'm not entirely certain how to get started when it takes this much more to get to orbit. On the other hand, I rarely found a need for 10m modded rockets in stock scale systems, even though they look cool. JNSQ is likely to force my hand and insist that I build things with those late-game parts if I want to reach the outer/bigger planets. I can of course lower the atmospheric heating if that turns out to be a barrier; it's entirely about how viable it is to get fun things into orbit. Shall continue to ponder.

--

In other news, what do people use for image hosting these days? I used to use imgur, but it's UI is so incredibly painful now... spent 20 mins working out how to create an album, and I still can't find a way to re-order or make things public without "sharing with the community"...

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

Huge thanks to @Admiral Fluffyfor giving an idea for a crew pod for the Rescue Mission. The brave Samantha Kerman made it close to the Shuttle, but couldn't dock, because:

If the docking port of one of the vessels is mounted on the side, the whole vesell wouldn't turn at the docking port (well it does, but when its 10 meters away it just turns away. So because of this I just said to myself "Screw this, imma just move them through EVA!", but still didn't give up. Once Jeb came in the Rescue pod, I DOCKED!!! WHAT A MIRACLE! Then transferred the kerbals, de-orbited it all so no debris and yes!!! They all landed safely!

The next mission is well, brave. The three kerbals Spaghetti Kerman, Sheifel Kerman and Tanley Kerman will go on my Space Station. Forever. And do you know why? Because they're tired of seeing anime everywhere: at the Astronaut Building, in YouTube, in Tik Tok... So now, they'll go there. Dunno if they will dock successfully though...

Edit: THEY MADE IT! The thing that took them there was sent on a collision course to the Mün. Now im just gonna make a Geostationary orbit by a satellite

Edit 2: My game crashed so I couldn't put such a satellite...

 

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by Aerodynamic Kerbal

[eddiew]

So yes, OPT's J fuselage and engines can pass the big red test even at default scale JNSQ 

Fun fact, when I added a cargo bay, I forgot to set any fuel type to it... so it was purely structural. The J3 was evidently capable of lifting more than it can physically fit, with no additional fuel required.

For reasons unclear, the J4, despite looking just a touch too long, actually handles better than the smaller version. The ARI engines need to burn a little longer during launch, with a target of 600m/s at about 7km before the Nebulas can keep up, but after that it's the same acceleration phase at 10-22km before switching to shcramjet mode and gunning for 40km. Topped out around 3050m/s before needing to engage the ARI engines again. Apparently I had one pair on auto-switch, and the other on manual, so it burned a bit more fuel on the way up than expected; but frankly the OPT engines are good enough that this didn't change anything about the flight. Nearly 40t of payload to 140x140km. Even shorter descent profile at about 60 degrees around from KSC; no thermal issues, and became flight stable a few km higher than expected. A good 5-15 minutes worth of cruising fuel remained and was ample to get back to a comfortable runway landing.

On the whole, this is very much the sort of mod you want at the end of your tech tree on a larger scale play through (although it's probably overkill for stock) 

[Staticalliam7]

On 11/11/2021 at 12:50 AM, Grimmas said:

Played some JNSQ/Kerbalism - set up a relay network around both Kerbin and the Mun to support future missions, did my first unmanned JNSQ Mun landing, started on a relay network around Minmus, then wrote a bunch of new patches which ate into the remaining play time. Also caused the heat death of the Kerbal universe (fixed by restarting KSP).

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what mod are those landing legs from

[Grimmas]

27 minutes ago, Staticalliam7 said:

what mod are those landing legs from

Those are Ranger/Burke lander parts from Bluedog Design Bureau.

[Staticalliam7]

3 minutes ago, Grimmas said:

Those are Ranger/Burke lander parts from Bluedog Design Bureau.

Ah ok, thanks

[SpacePixel]

*sigh* Another day at KSC...

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

Projekt Arkangel is a collaboration between Werner and Gus to create a highly reusable, modular, and upgradable space plane suitable for the fledgling space program, needing no upgrades to the runway or SPH, and a relatively small science investment:

30 parts, Panther + twin Terrier propulsion, can either carry 3 Kerbals to LKO or a Materials Bay with capacity for other science to be loaded on the runway:

It's technically not an SSTO in the basic version, the Panther doesn't have enough thrust to overcome the drag of exposed Terriers so each rocket has an aero cover that is jettisoned on rocket startup.

The aero covers can be abandoned completely  with a few upgrades to the craft, swapping the circular intakes for supersonic ramps and/or the Panther for a Whiplash:

 

 

With support from a few mod manufacturers, it even makes a good small-sat launcher:

 

I'm hoping to round out my stable of spaceplanes with a medium sized MK2 soon, and possibly an even smaller 0.625m drone plane, this projekt has been a lot of fun

 

KoS