What did you do in KSP1 today?

[KerikBalm]

9 hours ago, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

instead, you have to find the perfect mass where you will sink, but only just. The fact that the submarine will lose mass as it burns fuel further complicates this. In the end, I came up with a solution: add a small cargo bay to the middle of the craft, and open it to increase buoyancy while the sub is almost fully fueled, and later close it when it's burned some of its fuel. With this solution, I was able to make the submarine have just the right amount of buoyancy to function properly. 

Aside from opening/closing bay, you can just have your craft use rotors from BG, and RTGs for power.

Anyway,  recently I reformatted my computer and reinstalled windows, after a partial backup... lost some of my later KSP saves, particularly craft files.

So I'm now redesigning recoverable 2 stage cargo spaceplanes for 3x kerbin (1.25x atmosphere). I'm trying to fix various flaws in my old design concept (I had invested a lot of tweaking into it to make it work well, but changing certain features would require a complete rebuild.

It no longer has an underslung 2nd stage, as that required anhedral in the inner wing section, making it roll stable difficult. The upper stage is above, but that makes it difficult to have thrust balance while still having wide enough landing gear track. Getting thrust to balance as fuel is burned, and centered with the 2nd stage which is below the root of the craft (previously above), is a bit of a challenge.

Another flaw was that I used the big airliner wings to keep part count down, but it limited the speed I could hit with the 1st stage, and that's suboptimal, so I'm using the "shuttle" wings as a leading edge to take the heat (while the rear wings are still the airliner). I use 12, which allows for removal of 6 airliner wings... net increase of 6 parts... allowable.

And I made an even larger first stage carrier... boasting 61 rapiers instead of 41... and carrying a lot more fuel - part count still under 180 though...

Looking to get 150 tons to orbit in 3x... previous designs had a 100 ton goal (but exceeded the goal, test payload was 102 tons of ore tanks, and had good margins)

[ColdJ]

Jeb made a friend.

[AtomicTech]

5 minutes ago, ColdJ said:

Jeb made a friend.

That's awesome!

[king of nowhere]

After spending the last 15 months building increasingly titanic mothership and sending them in increasingly convoluted missions, I decided to try a different style and take a caveman challenge. Guess what I did? I'm trying to build a titanic mothership and send it in a convoluted mission.

This is the core of the Navis Sideralis Neanderthalensis

The core grows with more crew pods. They are not needed, but it just feels wrong to send the crew to jool without any living space

The core of the ship is completed. Now the service probe (on the left) is installing the first drop tank. Many more will be needed.

Caveman limits to 18 tons. The Cetotherium module is too big and aerodinamically challenging to be launched with this restriction, so I buff the launcher with additional drop tanks with a dedicated fuel tanker.

Also recycling the poodle engine from the second stage. Navis Sideralis Neanderthalensis will have 4 poodles, all attached through docking ports because I will discard them as I lose drop tanks.

The last piece of the Cetotherium launcher is discarded, revealing the mothership so far.

By my estimation, I will need upwards to 200 launches to complete this but at least I know what to do with my free time in the next few months

[king of nowhere]

Also, I built a memorial for Valentina.

Earlier in the caveman, I lost her to a stupid accident in an easy routine suborbital mission. I still don't know why the parachute didn't open, nor do I know if it was my attempt to land in the mountain biome that doomed her. Regardless, she died trying to land on a mountain to get a science jr reading.

Now I brought a memorial with a rover

which, because of the 30 part limit, is seriously crappy. it is hugely understaffed in solar panels. it took me four days of driving to get to the mountains; the last day just to climb a short slope.

and here's the memorial deployed. I did bring a science jr, the part that contributed to Val's demise, to act as a pedestal for a likeness of her, outstretched arms, palms pointing up as if urging her people to reach for the stars.

Due to the pose, I'm informally calling it the Valentina redentora

 

 

P.S. I considered carrying it to the top of a mountain, for most majestic placement. But with that limited rover, it was already difficult enough to get there

[Scarecrow71]

17 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

Earlier in the caveman, I lost her to a stupid accident in an easy routine suborbital mission. I still don't know why the parachute didn't open,

Not sure what happened to your mission, but I know that, for myself, if I'm in map view things won't stage properly.  So I always have to get back to the "normal" view to stage.  Not sure if that includes parachutes as well, but it's worth mentioning.

[king of nowhere]

32 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Not sure what happened to your mission, but I know that, for myself, if I'm in map view things won't stage properly.  So I always have to get back to the "normal" view to stage.  Not sure if that includes parachutes as well, but it's worth mentioning.

was an unidentified aerodinamic problem. she took a mostly vertical suborbital jump; i wanted to do things mildly, so I used leftover fuel to brake; it run out around 35 km. then i jettisoned the rocket, keeping only the crew pod, a cargo bay, and a science jr. there things went wrong; the capsule picked up a lot of speed fast, it flipped, and i didn't manage to turn it right again. I opened the cargo bay for extra drag, and tried to oscillate the pod also for drago , but she still slammed into the hill, too fast to deploy the parachute. there was also a parabrake in the cargo bay, for extra safety, those deploy more easily than parachutes.

I had similar accidents before and after, and i always survived. the parachute opened at the last moment, but it opened. And those times, i didn't even have a parabrake.

maybe that time it was purely vertical speed, so the pod didn't have time to brake. Maybe that time it was the science jr, it added mass. maybe it was the attempt to land on mountains, Val still missed the mountains and hit hills at 1100 m altitude, maybe an extra 1100 m would have allowed the parachute to open. I thought the parabrake would grant extra safety in any case, but it didn't make a difference.

Whatever the reason, it's directly linked to my attempt to get a material bay study on mountain biome. Hence a material bay on the mountains as a base for the monument.

Edited January 11, 2022 by king of nowhere

[Scarecrow71]

In one of my career saves, I got a contract to rescue Tanner Kerman from the surface of the Mun.  So I did that, and upon return I got a contract to bring a green sandstone home from Minmus.  Tanner is a pilot, so i thought this would be awesome to get him some XP.  So I created a lander and sent him up.

I landed the thing in the Greater Flats, pretty close to the Lowlands.  Why?  So I could double dip on the same mission for EVA and Surface Sample.  And as I landed i went to get the rest of the science gadgets ready for collecting...and realized that I was so excited to use a new Kerbal that I failed to put any science gadgets on the lander.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Scarecrow71

[splashboom]

I started with this

Spoiler

and sometime after take-off it became this

Spoiler

and I flew that around for 10 min.

Spoiler

then I tried to splash it down and lost the other engines

Spoiler

 

I went back and took off 2 engines and added struts. Then I flew and landed on the first try

Spoiler

Still need to tweak stability though.

[Krazy1]

Recued Jebby... not Jeb... Jebby from LKO and recovered his MEM to pay for the fuel. Also recovered a 5 m fairing baseplate from low Minmus orbit and handed it off to the same spaceplane, then landed at KSC. This is routine stuff now, just waiting for my interplanetary ships to get there. 

ALBUM LINK

 

 

[Axelord FTW]

A single refueling run per day, after work, is relaxing enough.

Only got three round trips for the LH2, maybe two more trips for EnUr (though it already has WAY more than enough), and finally the antimatter.
After that will be the crew. The ship will be able to carry 68 Kerbals in all, which is almost every Kerbals part of my space program at this point.

Double-finally will be the factory (or two) starter that will be instrumental in getting things running once we've reached our interstellar destination. Still undecided as to the target.

[Chladic88]

Today i was looking for a pancake formation. After few hour finally found it.

Spoiler

 

[Staticalliam7]

On 12/22/2021 at 3:41 PM, Axelord FTW said:

It seems that, once again, crew hiring is the real chokepoint of mid-game. I wonder if there is a 'loveshack' mod that allows me to make little green men in situ.

@zer0Kerbal's MoarKerbals mod

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

I've been doing a bunch of geoscience contracts lately. The ground based element is sporting a highly modified Space Winnebago:

 

We even found some [REDACTED]!!! (Easter eggs in spoiler, you've been warned.)

Spoiler

Proof that there is intelligent life out there???

Melmy wanted to investigate further.

Melmy even found some abandoned facilities that we are going to bring online soon, this one will be designated for my light launch vehicles going into lower inclinations.

And its polar counterpart.

The aerial survey team is equipped with a modified version of my Katalina amphibious jet:

The cargo bay was originally designed to air-drop rescue supplies and retrieve downed Kerbals, but has plenty of space for an extensive science suite and a large ferry tank:

It takes off from the water at ~50m/s, and easily cruises at 275m/s @ 5km. The ferry tank gives it enough range to make polar round trips, this particular mission was to get splashdown data on the icecaps:

It's certainly not sexy, but I find it does have a certain ungainly charm, especially when it gets in and out of places a jet really has no business operating from.

[JadeOfMaar]

B A L L I N ' c:

22nd century kerbal engineers doing what they know not to, for shiggles

 

(earlier screenshot)

[jimmymcgoochie]

So there I was, preparing to dock the final ~650 ton booster to an interplanetary ship destined for Venus, total mass of somewhere around 2000 tons including a ~500 ton nuclear tug on the front of it, when the Kraken decided it rather liked the look of that nuclear tug and proceeded to try and turn it outside-in, spinning the ship and delivering a nearly perfect baseball bat swing to the booster. 650 tons of stuff, bonked away at 3-figure speeds.

OK then, fine. I have a save from before this happened when the booster and the upper stage of the launch rocket were getting ready for the intercept burn, just reload that.

But as soon as I decoupled the booster, the Kraken decided it rather liked the look of it and tried to turn that inside out too. It’s no coincidence that I turned KSP off after that…

[Admiral Fluffy]

On 1/10/2022 at 9:54 AM, ColdJ said:

Jeb made a friend.

It’s the Kerbal Dog! His eyes look a little like golf balls…

[unolover322]

i launched a science satellite with 4 magnetometer boom and then exploded i ment tested prototype ktarship aka starship replicas not all went so ggood

10 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

It’s the Kerbal Dog! His eyes look a little like golf balls…

ehh.. kind of disturbing... not gonna lie..

[AtomicTech]

4 hours ago, unolover322 said:

i launched a science satellite with 4 magnetometer boom and then exploded i ment tested prototype ktarship aka starship replicas not all went so ggood

ehh.. kind of disturbing... not gonna lie..

No it's not!

It's pugly!

I love it!

[Hyperspace Industries]

Alrighty boys! School's out, it's time to regolith and roll! 

Spoiler

I basically only did one thing today:

Tycho station, 9km/s a second of delta v thanks to TWO near future propulsion colossus engines! I also installed kerballoons, let's go colonize Eve!

I didn't fancy my chances of launching that to orbit so, you know the debug drill.

Gorgeous plumes!

Deploying the centrifuge.

Ericklo going on a tour, aka, me showing my dad the ship.

Trust me, that went straight into the user loading screens folder.

Also: how can I get those high res surface textures for planets, like they show in the 1.12 Eeloo overhaul? What setting is it?

Edited January 14, 2022 by Hyperspace Industries

[AFF]

 

[Nazalassa]

Today I fell under terrain at Cove Launch Site due to phys-warp while running in EVA (shift+W) and I got a pretty good picture of Jeb's head pinned on the ground.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Beat back the Kraken to finish orbital construction of the Venus ship, after one of the slowest, stutteriest and downright infuriating-est dockings I've ever had to do. MJ docking mode was beyond useless (it actively hindered docking with its antics and wasted a load of RCS propellant) so in the end I had to point the ~650 ton booster and then ~1800 ton ship at each other and try to dock with brute force.

[Angelo Kerman]

I finished the modeling and texturing of my Sandcaster 3D printer:

It is an automated printer for Extraplanetary Launchpads that is inspired by NASA's habitat printer concepts that use ISRU to build homes for astronauts.

[BuranAce]

No plumes just vibes.