What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Axelord FTW]

Got a contract to get some chemcam science from the KSC, decided to just grab everything I could from it, and also from the grasslands, highlands, shores and mountain biomes.

I'm starting to hit the science cliff of later tech unlocks, which mean I'll be going interplanetary next. Suckling the Kerbin-Mun-Minmus system for the remaining drops would just be boring, and I kinda swore off from the science lab for blue-digit farming.

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

Jeb, Bill and Bob are dead...

F KSP "ENHANCED" EDITION'S BUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE GAME CRASHED AND BECAUSE OF THAT REASON THEYRE DEAD. IT WAS A TEST FLIGHT FOR A DUNA MISSION, TO SHOW THE THING'S BIG FAIRING. AND THEN... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Valentina will be the first to touch Duna, because she was the closest to Jeb. 

Edited December 11, 2021 by Aerodynamic Kerbal

[N_Danger]

 More satellites, one to Iota.

 

And one to Ceti. 

[Krazy1]

On 12/8/2021 at 3:49 AM, Axelord FTW said:

Hohmann transfer in the dark.  Night vision is also purdy.

What mod?

[Axelord FTW]

52 minutes ago, Krazy1 said:

What mod?

 

[Kuiper_Belt]

I finally finished out my recreation of STS-112 for our project to recreate the ISS

These are a few of my favorite shots but if you want to see more screenshots learn more about this mission and or the construction of the ISS then feel free to check out our series!

 

[Randazzo]

Deployed some science generators on the Mun. The kerbals are not impressed.

[AFF]

Stratocopter)

[Krazy1]

I plotted a pretty aggressive course for a rescue mission. 

 

 

[Zeldagamer809]

I downloaded like 83 mods for reasons unknown to me.

[Venusian Explorer]

So... Months ago, i've made a LRO Mission,just like my Maven and Venera Mission. I was supposed to show it to you guys on May or June, but unfortunately, due to school issues (At least they weren't hard as hell ), i had to Temporally quit the forums until School is over. So... today it is December, i'm now on vacations... so i guess i'll show you now my (quite old) LRO Mission!

Please note that the Version i used on this was on 1.11.2, and since this mission is from May, i might have some problems remembering what i've done on my mission.

Oh, and just like ol' times,the Images i've posted of the mission are inside this spoiler below (cause i don't want this page to be horribly destroyed by my Quite Large amount of Awful Pictures)

Spoiler

Before i Launched the LRO, i had to take a look at the Transfer Windows or wathev they're called all thanks to Astrogator(Thanks HebaruSan!) so i can properly Launch It.

I've finished the design(i think it took me like 1 or 2 hours to design it lol) of the LRO.

Now it is time to launch it.

Main Engine Sequence Started... Ignition...

And Lift-Off of the LRO!

Mmmmm... the Engine Flames has magically changed,perhaps it is the rocket fuel... idk... maybe it is a sign of a incoming kraken attack.

I used to have a tradition of saving fuel from rocket stages for any maneuver,in this case,i'll save up some fuel for a orbital maneuver.

Alright,my first stage's fuel is gone,now i have to use the Centaur's one.

Lol, i thought that junky debris from that Venera 9 Mission has collapsed to the Atmosphere,seems like i need an anti-Junk Mission!(Which will be on the next week)

Had to do a little maneuver if i wanted to achieve a polar orbit(which i didn't showed you the map view cuz i was so bored uploading the images)

mmmmm, looks like a kerbal is playing with nuclear bombs, and it looks like one has exploded, at least i'm 140KM(idk) away from surface!

There we go.

Now that i've achieved a Stable Polar Orbit, i guess i should separate the Orbiter with it's Impactor, the ... uhhh, idk what it was called.

-Goodbye LRO!- said the Other Probe while he's heading to it's sacrifice Mission for Kerbal Entertainment Science.

This is the Impactor's photo of Space,with the Mun on the Right, and the Centaur's Stage on the Bottom.

Now i need to setup the Spacecraft...

This is a photo taken by one of the LRO Imaging System, you can clearly see that i use low detail textures cuz i don't want my PC to become a Transformer and destroy my whole house while i eat my monthly Pizza.

Apparently the Mun is not sooooo Black and White, and it turns out that the surface's Colour is Clearly made of "sneaky" Colour Details

Alright, The LRO Orientation Setup is now completed,including the optional ones(altought there were no Optional Objectives).

Now let's focus on the Impactor Probe.

KABOOM!

oh my, this is a really odd picture from a probe milliseconds before it's imminent death on the Mun.

*boom*

Catastrophic Failure? More like Catastrophic Success!

Ok.. so, i guess i should consider my mission as partial Success due to the Unfairly Proximity of the Impactor Probe with the Centaur Booster.

Now i might launch a LOcal SPAce CLEaning MIssiON (LOSPACLEMION) to put an end to that Venera Debris,or perhaps i should exploit the module for cultural attractions like making fun of the failed Venera Lander,idk...

Well... I guess i should keep playing KSP and keep working on my Secret Planet Pack Mod Development!(which i might reveal it on the next month).

Fun Fact, the Rocket i used to Lift the LRO is the same as the other that Lifted the MAVEN Spacecraft.

Alright, no more distractions, i need to sleep...

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Mars ship away, at last! They were supposed to have a rover sent out at the same time to do some surface exploration, but that thing was literally CURSED and repeatedly broke everything- it wouldn’t launch, couldn’t be edited, spammed exceptions in the logs all over the place and I couldn’t even get rid of it in the editor either. Like I said, cursed…

In other news, my first Jupiter orbiter arrived and captured into orbit:

The capture burn is about as good as it gets, setting up a nice encounter with the outermost Galilean moon, Callisto, almost on the probe’s apoapsis; this encounter also provides a nice little gravity assist to nudge the periapsis higher and hopefully make encountering Io, Europa and Ganymede cheaper in future, which in turn will feed back into the mission plans for the four heavy probes heading towards Jupiter and planning to orbit all four moons and then the rover missions that just launched.

[Hyperspace Industries]

Yesterday:

Spoiler

Crew Jeb and Phogan (engineer).

Orbit needed a second upperstage burn because Jeb took a while to wake up from his pre-flight nap and did the first circularization burn a bit late. 

Phogan Kerman returning from a tethered inspection eva.

Jeb refused to not eva, and jumped out (with a tether, he may be crazy but he isn't stupid) looked around, went as far away as the tether would allow, and, in the above picture, Jeb is staring directly into the sun.  

Unfortunately his controls for up and down started getting stuck and he struggled to get back to the capsule. He made it eventually. This is actually a common problem for me, my computer keeps getting shift and ctrl to stay on when I press them in short pulses, it is a pain.

Somehow, the heatshield exploded, in the corner you can see the crew reaction.  

Today:

Spoiler

Played around in RO/RSS, since I'm lazy, my signature has the mission report on this.

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

Thanks to the magic of quicksaves, Jeb, Bill and Bob are ALIVE!!!! Had to abort my Duna mission though. Whatever. Here is the BIG faring on the launch vehicle

Note: Thats the size of the rocket without the capsule and the first stage engines. I made such a faring so that the rocket doesn't flip in the atmosphere.

I started making a series of airplanes, called HATA (high altitude test aircraft) I didn't get a picture of Mk1, but I have several from Mk2

It made It to 30km, which is quite high! Full engine flameout at 20-25km.

Then, I attempted sending a new gravity ring for the space station and I asked myself "How dumb can the fairing look?" This is what I thought of

Just as I was slowing myself, MP ran out. I call that a bruh moment.

For saving Jeb and his crew, I reverted to the last quicksave with Jeb. He and Bill were on the station, on their last spaceflight, without knowing it. They were about to undock from the station, excited for their eventual Duna mission, when Val, who saw everything, told them about the disaster. OK, it was good. But I wanted something a little different. I've never landed at the desert airfield, so I did it! Yes, I was lazy to orbit Kerbin again for a better approach, yes I needed several attempts, yes I MADE IT! Note: If you want to land there, keep in ming that the runways aren't 09 and 27. They're almost pointing at the poles. 

"Why am I near a cactus and not on the runway in this picture?" Oh, silly one, I wanted to take a closer look at it!

And then, I decided I should test each rocket in the game. I didn't test some like the Kerbal-1, Kerbal-X, but whatever. They're kinda boring. I tested the AeroEquus, which handles really well. I suppose that with this fuel it might fly-by ze Mun or Minmus, but instead I went for a very high orbit.

10/10. Very easy to fly.

And then comes the time for the ComSat LX. I attempted a Kerbin Synchronous orbit and... I MADE IT! Now it stays above East of the KSC.

And then the Z-MAP Sattelite launch kit. I put it in a 120km polar orbit. 

10/10 for both sats.

And then, career playthrough. 

I'm not a man that would post it on YT, but the farthest I made it to was atmosphere escape. So far so good!

And for those who would commit self dead if they don't see my space station, well, here it is!

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by Aerodynamic Kerbal
autocorrect issues

[eddiew]

Spent the last week stuck in JNSQ SSTO maximum load and reproducibility testing. (I.e. how much can it carry, and how to bring it home reliably.)

Ok, before I get into the flight log: I have previously landed this airframe at 100% stock. That's screenshotted somewhere a few pages back. I have really had a hard time repeating that however. Every subsequent attempt, the quad adapters for the rapiers have overheated. Since there isn't really much alternative to these, I have instead added a tiny patch that ups their thermal tolerance by 400 degrees, and increases their mass by 25%.

Spoiler

// TVR-400L stack quad adapter (2.5m to 4x 1.25m); seems to catch a lot of airflow, gets very hot.
@PART[adapterLargeSmallQuad]
{
	%maxTemp = 2400 // up from 2000
	%mass = 0.25 // up from 0.2
}

So this is not quite stock anymore; but I hope the added mass reasonably balances it out. They're only structural parts, there's not a good reason they can't be made a bit tougher. The ascent is just a little heavier, the descent is vastly safer. Stock parts are very close to being able to handle JNSQ's scale, but the margin of error is too tight in this case. I am considering also patching the cockpit itself, because it does get very, very close to its threshold on descent. I guess I'll see with other airframes. I do wonder if a radiator on the top might not also be a big help.

 

Ascent

A good, reproducible ascent under JNSQ made me throw away everything I knew about SSTOs in this game. Speed on air doesn't matter nearly as much as altitude. The rapiers are there to get us to 20km. Whether we're at 1200 or 1500m/s doesn't matter so much as our vertical velocity is as high as we can get it - ideally upwards of 150m/s by 20km.

So, off the runway; stay low. Hotwings is heavy and rapiers have poor thrust when stationary. She'll unstick near the end of the runway, not before. Rear and mid flaps deployed, just coast barely gaining altitude, but picking up speed. Use deployment on the tailfin to correct any yaw problems once off the ground; we can't afford manual inputs because they're always too strong and the nose will drop.  Around 400m/s, cut flaps, use forward canard deployment to begin a smooth ascent; again, no manual input. Aim the nose ~9 degrees above the horizon, which may only need 10 degrees on the canards.

From here, the ascent is dead-stick. Honestly, the less those controls are touched, the happier it will be. Around 15-16km, the vertical velocity will stop increasing; add the nervas. Very soon after that, it'll stop increasing again; add the vector. Hands off that stick. If everything is going well, vertical velocity won't drop below 120m/s. If it goes below 100, we might not be going to space today.

The pitch creeps up from 10, to 15, brushing 20; let it. We've got to have altitude in JNSQ. There is no point doing 2500m/s 'down' at 20km and on the level.

With a payload below 6,000kg, stay hands off until about 50km, at which point gently bring the nose to prograde. We'll get about 200m/s more out of the vector. It's not critical, but it is efficient and it gives us more leeway on descent.

With a payload above 6,000kg, just let the vector burn out before touching the controls. Rather than turn prograde with the nervas, we'll need to keep about a 10 degree pitch above the horizon. That's how close this ascent is to failing. Hotwings 4 can carry up to 14 tons, but it's really pushing the fuel budget and we might have to do the descent completely unpowered. It's possible, but I'm not sure I'd call it fun.

The AP might start coming closer when the vector burns out, but that's ok; by 65km, Hotwings will keep the AP about a minute ahead, as long as the nervas are burning. (Oh, that's another thing about JNSQ ascent; we pretty much keep the engines on until we hit vacuum.) 

With this profile, a simple 5.3t relay can be lifted to a 90x90 orbit, with about 600m/s still left in the tank, with that cargo still aboard. There's enough leeway there to rendezvous with something around the 120-150km mark. Heavier cargos really don't have any orbital options however; although they will go further under their own steam. My standard 5.3t relay carries 3,800m/s and can go to Minmus, Mun, Duna, or Eve (probably an eccentric orbit at this last, but it should be an orbit).

I'm not really sure how much range we could pack into the maximum 14 ton mass and fit it in that cargo bay... maybe I will try to work that out some time.

 

Descent

I wish I could say it was another hands-off experience, but it's not. The best profile I can come up with requires a high (over 30 degrees, ideally 45 degrees) AoA, which mandates manual input. Which does tend to make the nose bounce. Once we touch the controls (which we'll have to eventually), best advice is just pull back on the stick all the way down. It will wobble 30-40 degrees, but that will be fine.

Anyway, descent burn; there's a handy equatorial lake to use as a landmark, west northwest of the desert airfield. Burn until we have an impact point that is about 1/3 of the way between KSC and the island airfield. If all goes well, we won't need any fuel at all to land with. Set rear and mid flaps to 30 degrees, canards to max, and deploy them all. The inner air brakes can be used; the outer ones will burn off, so keep them down (set deployment angle to zero).

Go ahead and slap the atmosphere at a solid 45-50 degree AoA. By 60km, we're 20 into the atmosphere, but this aggressive AoA generates enough drag that no velocity has been gained in the descent. By 43km (probably wrestling the S key all the way), we've actually shed about 1km/s, and things are starting to get toasty.

So, there isn't a big margin of error here. The cockpit will peak around 1430-1440 degrees, and is rated for 1500. Experiments were run with longer descent paths and lower AoAs, but the heat just creeps up for longer and still exceeds the threshold. Best as I can figure, this is actually the safest flight profile. It's a little tricky and needs to be flown by the numbers, but after three attempts, all three came down smoothly.

Eventually by a little over 30km, we should be well under 2km/s, and starting to cool off. Cockpit temperature continues to rise even as other parts are cooling off - not really sure why that happens! But it should stay within its tolerance. Just. By 1400m/s we can pretty much fly as we like, based on our distance to KSC. Using the desert lake as a visual landmark for the descent burn, Hotwings should get to the runway without any input from the engines.

Touchdown is better now that there are added wheels under the nacelles, rarely swerving or causing any explosions. On the whole, I feel like this is as good as this design can deliver - but I really need to go find out if anyone's lifting larger cargos in SSTOs, and especially if they didn't need to slightly patch some parts to do it 

 

Also, to the JNSQ team: I apologise. Please don't delete my craft file.

[N_Danger]

We first had a rescue at a fairly high inclination.

 

And we bring home the new employee.

Then it was time for the first interplanetary mission to Niven. The first thing I did was to launch a reference satellite for using the transfer tool to find launch windows and D/V requirements for transfers. 

The mission to Niven launched when the window opened up.

The Transfer burn to Niven was able to use the last of the fuel in the 2nd stage.

And after a couple of course corrections we arrive and complete the contract.

[Krazy1]

2 hours ago, eddiew said:

Cockpit temperature continues to rise even as other parts are cooling off - not really sure why that happens!

It could make sense... the surface parts and the surface of the cockpit are cooling off but still hotter than 1500 K rating for the cockpit core. The temperature indicators are relative to each part's max temp rating- they won't even be visible at 1500 K for other parts. As skin temperature drops, the rate of temp rise for the cockpit core will decrease but the temperature itself will continue to rise until the skin temp drops below the core temp. 

I haven't played JNSQ but from the Kerbin circumnavigation challenge, I learned the cockpit temp is always the weakness. My solution was to put it inside a cargo bay:

Spoiler

A Mk1 capsule inside a Mk2 cargo bay will stay under 1100 K but an unprotected Mk3 will exceed 1500 K. Others have used fairings but I consider that an exploit because the drag is absurdly low.

Edited December 12, 2021 by Krazy1
clarity

[eddiew]

46 minutes ago, Krazy1 said:

It could make sense... the surface parts and the surface of the cockpit are cooling off but still hotter than 1500 K rating for the cockpit core. The temperature indicators are relative to each part's max temp rating- they won't even be visible at 1500 K for other parts. As skin temperature drops, the rate of temp rise for the cockpit core will decrease but the temperature itself will continue to rise until the skin temp drops below the core temp. 

I haven't played JNSQ but from the Kerbin circumnavigation challenge, I learned the cockpit temp is always the weakness. My solution was to put it inside a cargo bay:

  Reveal hidden contents

A Mk1 capsule inside a Mk2 cargo bay will stay under 1100 K but an unprotected Mk3 will exceed 1500 K. Others have used fairings but I consider that an exploit because the drag is absurdly low.

That is... bizarre, and I may actually try it out in mk3 format if I can make it look good   My other thought was top-mounting a small cockpit on the fuselage where it would be out of the airstream.

OTOH, I feel like I'm fixing a problem specific to this simulation of thermal spread, and maybe I'll just raise the temp threshold a couple of hundred degrees to get some leeway.

[Krazy1]

38 minutes ago, eddiew said:

My other thought was top-mounting a small cockpit on the fuselage where it would be out of the airstream.

At high AoA you're at in reentry, it might work. In level flight, I still couldn't get that to succeed. I even tried mounting a Mk1 at the end of the tail (backwards) and it still failed! Yeah, it seems like there should be a high temp cabin option that's heavier and/ or more expensive.

[Kerb24]

Today I made progress towards saving Jeb from Eve, I landed the recovery vessel near him.

[Axelord FTW]

Yesterday: First (of many) Duna missions. It's not yet completed, but so far I got a small lander on Duna itself, and a big science package orbiting above, which will return to Kerbin eventually, once it's done scanning the surface of Duna and Ike (ScanSat) for biome, resource, and altimetry.

I made a mistake and deployed the solar panels on the lander before releasing it. They, somehow, survived the descent intact. The lander had enough backup panels to survive, but transmitting the science would have taken a while. I think that's the first time this has happened, and I think FAR is to "blame."

Currently: Two tourists contracts, totaling 9 bigwigs, two flag planting contracts, one surface base contract, one surface rescue contract. All in one mission. It'll also level up a Kerbal sitting at L0.
The craft will do a powered landing back to Kerbin using 16 separatrons since the buzzards are crap in atmo and will not provide enough thrust. Got some drogue chutes, still, for attitude control and softening the final descent speed.

Bit of a scare at the end, as I expended more dV than I would have liked, since the kerbal to rescue was pretty far south of Minmus' equator. Had to do four aerobrake pass. The separatrons worked splendidly, as they killed my vertical speed in about 4.5 seconds (out of a 5s burn) when I was about 50m from the surface of the water. All in all, about 400 science from EVA reports above X biomes on the Mun, and something like 4 million in total contract payout. Unfortunately, I did a woopsie and forgot to plan a flag on Minmus. Oh well!

After recovery, I had 35 messages in the bank, which is pleasing.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Axelord FTW

[AtomicTech]

Flew to the Mun, started building a colony using SimpleConstruction.

[JadeOfMaar]

My Minmus base finally finished expanding. It's roughly 246 parts, supported by an obscure mod's no-launch clamps. The Recycle Truck is roughly 48 parts and has served very well already: hoovering up the bootstrap vessels.

Edited December 13, 2021 by JadeOfMaar

[Axelord FTW]

What's that mod you're talking about with the launchclamps?

[Goaty1208]

Krakened the universe

And built a cool spacecraft