What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Akagi]

Built a very strange airplane, flew it a bit, then bailed out. Left KSP open in the background

My fellow Kerbals, I am proud to announce I have created a self-flying airplane.

I came back and the plane was 1/8 or so of the way around Kerbin.

Craft file and stuff soon.

EDIT: It moves in "skips," building up enough velocity to make it VERY high into the atmosphere (about 14.6 kilometers) and then loses engine power and descends to build up enough velocity to ascend again.

EDIT 2: We've gone 630,302 ground meters!

UPDATE: We are doing the Third Skip, 1/6 of way around Kerbin!

Edited April 15, 2022 by Akagi

[Akagi]

Third Skip, climbing

Third Skip, map screen

Fourth Skip, apoapsis

UPDATE: We are on the Fifth Skip, with 1.433 million meters traveled and A QUARTER of the way around Kerbin!

FINAL UPDATE: On the Sixth Skip, 3/8 of the way around Kerbin, the noble and valiant E was destroyed. The E Design Bureau at Akagi Aerospace Industries, Inc. will release a version to the public store of "Kerbal X."

 

Thank you for your support,

The E Design Bureau.

[Krazy1]

Why must I do this?

Escape velocity equals sqrt(2)* orbit velocity... Kerbin is about 9.3 km/s, so I just need to push a class E about 3.8 km/s.  With ISRU it should be doable, with many burn/ refuel cycles. 

[Axelord FTW]

Yeah, my Jool mission is NOT going well. One of the two solar panels got fugged by a wanton winged nut and the ship was barely breaking even in EC with half the radiators stowed. I now had to do the escape burn in many steps. Burn, stop, retract radiators, wait for EC, charge up engine, deploy radiators, repeat. The crew is snagging all the science it can but only Tylo got a fly-by out of the moons, and it was 'high' above the world. Kind of a bummer when your first real exotic-engine driven craft turns out to be a glorified space-Pinto. Anyway, the return time was not ideal but once I get closer to the sun I will be able to burn through what's left of my dV to get a kerbin encounter and probably a capture. I tell you, as soon as the crew and science gets recovered, that piece of junk is getting the ol' straight-down reentry treatment.

In other news, the Mun base is now finished. Went for a wider design this time. Nothing more exotic than EnUr and Li will be produced there. The crew transferred over and the original factory was scrapped altogether. I didn't even transfer any of the resources.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Axelord FTW

[fleventeen]

7 hours ago, Akagi said:

FINAL UPDATE: On the Sixth Skip, 3/8 of the way around Kerbin, the noble and valiant E was destroyed.

This had me laughing. I was really getting invested in the story of this little plane. 

[Robin Patenall]

I got annoyed at losing control of my unkerbaled vessels when I was using hard mode as Kerbin does not have full coverage when the CommNet occlusion modifier is 1.0, so I generated maps which show where you have a CommNet signal vs altitude. 

I've put a post in the Tutorial forum as I thought that others might find the maps useful, which also includes lower altitudes (10m to 60km) for people trying to do powered landings

Edited April 16, 2022 by Robin Patenall

[Akagi]

6 hours ago, fleventeen said:

This had me laughing. I was really getting invested in the story of this little plane. 

Do not fear! I shall make a new one for KerbalX!

Also, I'll do a complete Kerbin circumnavigation by self-flying, uncontrolled plane!

[IncompetentSpacer]

TLDR version:

To quote popular meme from some time ago, today's mission in my RP-1 career was "Not great, not terrible". I failed to fulfill Moon flyby but succeeded with Moon impact contract in Realism Overhaul.

More detailed version:

The two contract's, I aimed to fulfill today,  are supposed to emulate real life late 1950s missions to explore the Moon - flyby of the Moon and impact missions.

In my alternative history, I aimed to fulfill both objectives of these historic missions, coming near enough to the moon to gather data and impacting the moon's surface to do what real life Luna 1 mission aimed to do but failed (Luna 2 succeed to do).

Since this was the very first time I was launching to the Moon in my RP-1 career/Realism Overhaul mod, I kinda followed general advice from the net but which all proved wrong. For the design vehicle, I used my previously described rocket just with bigger liquid booster tanks, 13188 dV total (vacuum).

First thing to go wrong is that, that one of the RD-107 malfunctioned, careening the rocket to the side and ended up in highly offset (from the desired) ecliptic orbit, shown in the spoiler below. Btw - all engines are single fire only, meaning that they cannot be restarted.

Due to the bug in forum software, rest of the post is in the spoilers (sorry for this).

 

Far from ideal, but still possible to go for Moon impact. Point being that suddenly both EC and dV budgets are getting bit on the low side.

I managed to plot the intercept with the moon, using around 1450 of remaining 1718 dV budget (had to fiddle with in-game maneuver gizmo in order to achieve impact)

Second thing to go wrong is that my solar panels were destroyed during decoupling of protective fairings so I had 1 of 6 working. My avionics got out of the juice by the time I finished 90 % of the final burn, ending up tumbling towards the moon.

I have no images here because everything is happening in pitch darkness (imagine the clicking around to find the right component---). This also means no science since I had to shut down everything (Moon flyby contract, demanding science data transfer around the Moon, is now not possible to fulfill).

 

Arrival to the Moon, 4 days (in-game) later:

Moon impact contract demanded 40 kg payload impact with 2450 m/s speed with Moon surface, which I fulfilled with no issues, since my entire 1114 kg upper stage slammed into the Moon.

Sorry for dark images, the impact happened just as the spacecraft arrived in the light side of the moon.

 

Edited April 16, 2022 by IncompetentSpacer

[Akagi]

UPDATE ON E PROGRAM:

We have confirmed the cause of the loss of the first E.

As the plane's angle grew steeper, less and less air entered the intake and the engines eventually were not producing enough thrust to lift the aircraft.

New designs will rectify this.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Created a hideous mishmash rocket using engines from several different real rockets in ways they were probably never meant to be used. Promptly abandoned the idea when I realised I could make something much better using the power of hydrolox, which is so much lighter it’s not even fair to the other fuels.

[Kerb24]

Did a quick rescue contract

Spoiler

Ascent

In orbit

Rendezvous

De-orbited

Re-entry

Parachute away

Landed

Mission Complete

 

[Kerb24]

So started making an ISS replica, which will be posted here: 

 

[Akagi]

Attention all E Program fans!

We have our own thread!

@Kerb24, @fleventeen, @N_Danger, @Krazy1, @darthgently, @Davi SDF, and @Basesixty, you might want to follow it...

We're launching the El-ahrairah later.

 

[Akagi]

You can't argue with success!

I'm sorry, everyone.

[Jcklemme]

Spoiler

Tried out robotics for the first time.

[Axelord FTW]

I keep underestimating Moho. Got a contract for surface feature scanning on the planet and launched a rover from the Mun base. 
So, I slapped together a few extra LH2 tanks and sent them up from the Mun to link up with the transfer stage. I'm going WAY overkill, because screw tight margins! Four extra tanks should be more than plenty.

All four were sent up and kicked up to the parking orbit of the main craft, which is sitting in a circular obit between the Mun and Minmus. Four lifts, four kicks, four encounters, four matches. All at the same time, with judicious use of the alarm clock system. He's the first that got there.

[Krazy1]

I had a small probe on a collision course near a seismometer on Duna. It was going about 5.4 km/s... mach 28... with no heatshield. However, Duna's atmosphere is only 0.067 atm at sea level. Did it make it to the surface?  What's your prediction? 

 

[ColdJ]

If toy companies kept to scale.

[Axelord FTW]

I had a metal thunderbird2 toy when I was little.
"Les sentinelles de l'aiiiir!"

Great show.

[Hotel26]

In the Spamming Moho Dept.:

On Moho, Mission Control had recently pressed HA2 Atlas ("moHo Atlas 2nd") into service, relieving HG1 Goblin of duty.  HG1 descended back to the surface and fueled up; then went idle to await "further instructions".

Then news of the impending arrival of (ehm, "forgotten") HA3 Atlas was received and the capture situation looked like a nail-biter.  The boffins in Mission Control deployed slide rules and confirmed, "sorry, Gene, we're 205 m/s short".

Not willing to let such a huge(ly expensive) piece of equipment slip through his fingers, Gene set the trajectory boys to work with a very stern, "no time to waste, guys!".

This is what they came up with:

Spoiler

A multi-geared asteroid shoot:

In a STROKE OF LUCK, Bertie Kerman remembered the HG1 sitting on the ground, fuel tanks loaded!

The orbital boys checked its position on the surface.  YEAH!  Just perfect to launch into an immediate polar orbit, aligned within 3 degrees of HA3.

Let's see how this works out... 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Hotel26

[ColdJ]

9 minutes ago, Axelord FTW said:

I had a metal thunderbird2 toy when I was little.
"Les sentinelles de l'aiiiir!"

Great show.

Same here. Though my Dinky Thunderbird 2 was metalic blue for some reason.

[Axelord FTW]

I think I remember seeing something like that too before.
A cursory research indicates that the original dinky toy release was blue because 'kids don't like green toys' or something. Market research...

In other news, TOUCHDOWN! I proceeded to get about 2500 blue dots before I broke a wheel and flipped the thing on its head. Damn incline must have been near 90% steep.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Axelord FTW

[stephensmat]

Speaking of rovers, I landed my first one.

I picked Minmus because the low gravity made a far easier landing. Talk about being hit with poetic justice for being a wuss.

Today's achievement, I landed a rover on Minmus. Tommorow's achievement? Making the damn thing stop rolling down the slightest incline when I'm trying to get cargo out. Driving it properly given the checklist I have to go through to stop it spinning around and around in place... or just giving up and trying to land on the Mun.

On the plus side, I was able to place some ground experiments on Mun and Minmus; as well as an orbiting relay satellite. The science comes trickling in.

[IncompetentSpacer]

Nothing creative today but more of gaming the system in my RP-1 career - rockets designed in SPH (Spaceplane Hangar) and launched from airfield can be recovered in current version and reused.

Since I am bored to death by position satellite X in Orbit AxB with inclination of Y, I have (ab)used the repetitive airplane contract which ask you to launch to height of 120 km for up to 30 000 credits (depending on difficulty and how long since last time you took the contract).

This rocket can be turned around in 5 days and relaunched minimizing the time it keeps the build line busy.

Edited April 17, 2022 by IncompetentSpacer

[Krazy1]

I'm anomaly hunting on Duna. I found everything on Ike, Kerbin, Mun, Minmus and Moho

7 hours ago, stephensmat said:

Making the damn thing stop rolling down the slightest incline

In 1.12 they tried to make it easier to drive without flipping over by making every surface like ice... and now everything slides downhill. 

Right click the wheels and in the PAW select manual friction control and make it a larger value, 2 or 3 maybe. It will help but everything still slides a little in this game.