What did you do in KSP1 today?

[bigyihsuan]

When you wanna do a Moon mission but you don't have Saturn or Apollo yet

 

[ColdJ]

Been working on creating Thunderbird 3

Spoiler

Edited May 11, 2022 by ColdJ

[Rakete]

21 hours ago, obnox twin said:

Nice I am wondering does dres have graviolium but on the other hand started a science mode because career mode first contracts decide not to show up so wacky contracts so science mode does the job for now

Isn't that the planet nobody goes?

How much graviolium is there? Does it beat asteroid mining?

[Piatzin]

Evolution.

[obnox twin]

2 hours ago, Rakete said:

Isn't that the planet nobody goes?

How much graviolium is there? Does it beat asteroid mining?

Idk yet might check it out to see if it does what is the rates for asteroid mining

[Akagi]

Is KerbalX alive?

[Neptunium_69]

Continued testing the Firefly 5 plane. Launched more relays.

[Misguided Kerbal]

Today I completed the first launch of my new JNSQ playthrough.

The rocket is, as I'm sure you guys can tell, based on the Mercury-Redstone launch vehicle. It's a pretty simple launch really, go up, turn at the clouds, eject the spent booster. 

However, I've finally discovered the magic of changing the fov with the alt key. For some reason I've just never done it before? But now, since I have it, I plan to use it a lot. I hope nobody minds the image spam.

Gotta love the amazing waterfall plume there.

Jeb becomes the first kerbal to reach space!

Not for long though, a few minutes later he's plummeting back through the atmosphere. During descent the capsule reaches an overwhelming 15 gees, which I never expected. Somehow, nothing broke (I'm using BARIS).

And splashdown! 

Jebediah Kerman, first kerbal in space!

 

Spoiler

shameless self plug:

 

 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Misguided Kerbal
Accidentally pressed the enter key halfway through typing.

[Axelord FTW]

Alright, where to begin...
The 'rescue' mission to Jool to pick up the exospheric collector crew was half-diverted to do something else I was meaning to do already. Namely replace the rover-factory on the surface of Tylo with an automated plant instead. The Exospheric collector ship itself had JUST enough dV remaining to get into a circular, 15km high orbit around Tylo using Laythe for a gravity assist. Once there, they waited for the NSW-driven rescue craft to arrive, which it eventually did. Once it did arrive and the crew was transferred, I used it to land on Tylo next to the mega-rover very carefully, as it was not designed to land anywhere. As for the collector, it was simply deorbited and made to crash into Tylo, somewhere. Not important.
First thing first, the autofactory would need a relay, but instead of putting a small craft into orbit, I drove a ground-relay station to the top of a 'nearby' mountain with LOS to the rover. The drive was a 100km+ pain in the ass, considering Tylo's gravity and the low torque output of most rover wheels. Any incline steeper than 15% I had to zig-zag my way up. Once in place, the relay undercarriage was removed and driven down the slope until it crashed, leaving the relay itself on top of the mountain.
While THAT was going on, efforts were being made on the Mun to roll the surface facilities into a single, comprehensive base. The HEPF and Factory were both incorporated into a new, better mega-rover. The HEPF crew of two simply had to leap 6km over the surface.
Then the Tylo rover-factory finished constructing its automated replacement, and then also a replacement for the NSW-E rescue craft since it didn't have any ladders. Fuels were transferred, pipes were connected, crew disembarked and embarked, etc. etc. New craft lifted off the surface, and almost immediately transferred to Kerbin with a 4500ms burn. The return was without incidents also, and the crew was recovered. With that done, now the only Kerbals out in the field are either on the Mun, or in low Munar orbit.

Spoiler

 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Axelord FTW

[Alex1234567890]

And today i will start my first carrer in KSRSS.

[king of nowhere]

I went far enough into my grand tour that I'm finally certain it is happening, and it's not getting eaten by one of the dozen krakens I found in the last two months.

It's time to make a cool cinematic for my ship

and to start a full mission report

I'll spend the next few days catching up with the mission report until my current timeline, where I'm refueling on Phobos.

I'm not in a hurry. I spent a couple hours doing necessary repairs, and I'm still not done. And after I'm done with repairs, it will take 10 years to complete refueling - ore concentration is very low - and in that time I will have to run maintenance at least a couple more times.

See all those drills? I've got to get close to each one of them and right-click "inspect part", to repair those that are getting old. And then I turn around and there are more drills. And then there are over 100 reaction wheels... and with a 1330 parts ship, the game is a lagfest.

I'll be honest, the best part about my missions is planning them and looking backwards once they are done.

[Piatzin]

I'm back with more boats (and a plane).

Boat is a WIP. The plane is a final product.

I'd like to complain about how difficult it is to get a VTOL to land on a platform with minimal wiggle room. I'm probably going to noodle out the back of the boat until my rear stops clenching while trying to align the docking ports...

[xub313]

I sent probes to Moho and Eve, to orbit this time, not just fly by. Both the Moho Messenger and Eve Explorer carry magnetometers and relay dishes. They'll set up in polar orbits to survey each planet's biomes/anomalies.

The Eve Explorer carries a smaller probe, the Eve Skimmer (the small grey box), that will dip into Eve's lower atmosphere with its fluid-spectro-variowhatever.

The really fun stuff is behind the scenes though. I think I've figured out a pretty good way of planning missions that is efficient but also easy enough to do by hand with just a pocket calculator. I've been figuring out what inclination I should be launching into to save me some delta v on those inclination changes for Moho. Porkchop plot? I keep my kerbals are kosher.  I also made a simulation for long burns so that I can have long LV-N burns and keep my spacecraft horizontal the entire burn instead of pointing it at a maneuver node marker.

[Axelord FTW]

Alright, after having learned all I could from the first two test voyages in the Kerbin system for the Interstellar ships, now the time has come to send the first (and maybe) only batch of Kerbals into the great void.
The design for the IS3 is effectively a toned-down IS2, with some of the superfluous structure and resources stripped away. No science lab. No LH2. Much less monopropellant, less liquid methane. More rocket parts, though, but it's otherwise very slimmed down in comparison. All I needed to do now was construct the vessel in questions. This required some rocket parts, some lithium, some enricher uranium, some liquid methane, not to mention a ludicrous amount of nuclear salt water. The lander is still the overly-powerful Tylo Lander 2, since it worked so well before. Another tentative design had been to use a Z-pinch engine, and I could have gotten a LOT more dV that way, but I decided against it if only because I can't get that mod that let you warp under thrust to work (this is, incidentally, the engine the Interstellar Relay is using.

In any case, construction and the final fueling procedures only took about a month and a half in Kerbal time. That done, a crew was selected. Three pilots, three engineers, and two scientist. Normally I would have had one extra engineer and one extra scientist but the IS3 has two spots fewer since it lacks a science lab. The IS3 was boosted up to a 30km circular orbit beforehand, and there the rendez-vous was done. Crew transferred over without issue, and the 'shuttle' was boosted back down to rendez-vous with the orbital facility, which promptly ate the shuttle.

With everything ready, the IS3 targeted the Drone Factory which was sent out on its way two years prior, and effectively started a burn to match its velocity. I'm letting MechJeb do this burn, for obvious reasons. When this is all done, I will have three vessels en-route to the nearest solar system in the planet pack I'm using. The IS-Relay, the IS-Drone Factory and the crewed IS3. Each travelling at similar speeds, each left from the Kerbol system a few years from each other.

Spoiler

 

[ColdJ]

These shots were after launching from the KSC, doing an orbit and and landing again, I have also landed back at the starting launchpad before, not hard when you can't run out of fuel.

I know it is not canon but I wanted Thunderbird 3 to be more functional and useful. I had had a second airlock in the cargo bay but could never exit by it as it always said it was blocked, even though it wasn't anywhere near a collider, so I made a small airlock that snaps in to place and that fixed it.

This is basically finished now except for internals , next project will be Thunderbird 1.

[Kerb24]

I did my first ever Ike mission. By using a craft I already had in Duna orbit.

Spoiler

The craft in Duna orbit

TII (Trans Ike Injection)

Flying away from Duna

Approaching Ike

Closest approach

Leaving Ike

Back In Duna orbit.

I think next I'll continue my ISS.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Kerb24

[Hotel26]

Testing a new lifter to boost a "Tourist Hut" into a 51-deg inclined orbit and saw an opportunity to land back on the first turn.  Wasn't going to work for the KSC (of course) but then I spotted Cape Kerman.

After an overshoot and fuel exhaustion, this lifter turns itself into an amazing glider (not my design).  And I was able to manage a very long glide to an outlanding just before Cape Kerman "green" and then roll all the way to the R15 threshold.

Cape Kerman is a Kerbinside Remastered airport located at 25/83 NW.

Quite naturally, Nedger called the fuel truck for a partial refuel and then attempted the short flight to KSC.  Well, that flight worked out to be even shorter than KSC but Nedger landed safely under silk with a very useful report on flat spin recovery for this machine.  Thanks, Ned.

 

A first glimpse of the Tourist Hut.  It's maneuverable in space and also 're-entrant'.

      

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by Hotel26

[Kasyan]

Tested out several Orion Drive vehicles based on the firework overclocking exploit, started a mission report about them:  "Thunderstruck"
Took fancy screenshots. Here's one:

 

[Axelord FTW]

Started recovering every remaining Kerbal crews left in the field. The Mun surface factory crew and the Mun orbital factory crew were the two main contingents.
The last leg of my interstellar colonization effort was coming, with three ships on their way, all that remained was to send the last one containing pretty much every Kerbals part of my space agency after them.  The Cascade Z-Pinch engine was chosen, and a design was drafted. In all, this craft would carry 52 Kerbals in total. Before that could happen, though, a lot of Helium-3 and deuterium was needed, and a new orbital factory around Kerbin had to be assembled. This time, the Deuterium and Helium-3 would be made directly instead of bought or harvested in the field, thanks to a set of patch I made. Helium-3 needed an initial investment of over 9 million kosh to produce, all this after I had found a very nice article titled "Helium-3 Production via Lithium-6 Activation in an Accelerator-Driven Reactor" and decided I could just jerryrig the antimatter linear accelerator plant into an effective Helium-3 plant. With a little bit of lithium, an unreactive pressure sump (i.e. a noble gas, so Xenon or Argon), and a little bit of handwavium, producing the stable isotope relatively quickly. Deuterium I just bought.

The initial automated core of the new Kerbin station was sent up, and topped up with four shipments of Rocket Parts over the next few days. A slightly modified version of the Munar orbital facility was born. From this point, I shipped up LHe3 and Deuterium, plus a few other resources over the next week. From this, the last interstellar ship was built and fueled up. The crew was lifted up in a few installments and transferred over. The burn has begun.

Spoiler

 (spiderman kiss?)

EDIT:
Burn was completed, and I began to timewarp until the first ship (the relay) entered the greater Kirbani SOI. As soon as it did, I adjusted course for the Kirbani Alpha system. Still 70+ years of travel time. All three following vessels got the same treatment a few years apart. Greater SOI arrival, adjust, create an alarm. Hardest adjust burn was 2,300ms. I seriously wonder how KSP2 will handle interplanetary planning. KSP1 doesn't generally like dealing with such high values across the board, and you can somehow feel the game's jank seeping through more than usual.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Axelord FTW

[king of nowhere]

I successfully lithobraked not just from orbital speed, but from hyperbolic trajectory

Of course, since the celestial body was Deimos, with an escape speed of 6 m/s, it wasn't much of an achievement

[Admiral Fluffy]

I kept playing Beyond Home.

Launched Bob to Lua.

Spoiler

Hey its Kerbol!

Found this big rock.

Oh. Oh no. (I didn't have enough fuel for orbit.)

Spoiler

 

Launched a thing to help get Bob back.

Spoiler

Messed with the FOV too.

 

Arrived at Lua IV.

Spoiler

 

In the boat thing.

Spoiler

 

Bob Kerman rescue vehicle.

Spoiler

A rock!

I wonder if I can climb it.

Yes. Yes I can.

Jump!

Splash!

Then back to boating to the rescue ship.

Spoiler

 

Going to finish this tomorrow.

[Watermel00n]

When you need to hide the evidence

 

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, Watermel00n said:

When you need to hide the evidence

Set the decoupling force to max for those for when you also need to scatter the evidence

[Krazy1]

Last week I tested more seismic impacts on Duna. I transferred a heat shield to the last probe and tried several different approaches, burning varying amounts of fuel. Basically it doesn't matter how much fuel you burn... if it's going faster and has less fuel, it has more deceleration from the air drag.  So it's basically a wash when there's an atmosphere.  It peaked at 43 G drag when I burned all the fuel and 16 G in freefall. Makes sense... kinetic energy is V^2 but drag is too. So I'll try a long skinny stack of ore tanks with a heat shield next time. Like the concept of using tungsten rods falling from satellites. 

Has anybody actually done a seismic impact on Laythe or Eve? Eve is going to need a comet.

Today I found the last anomaly on Duna and it's actually a double...

Spoiler

The hill that emits a signal sound...the sound does not stop when you pause the game. 

[Axelord FTW]

Well this one's a doozy.

The IS Relay arrived at KirbaniA and did a general tour of the most promising colony prospects before transferring to KirbaniB and doing the same. That done, it started to transfer back toward KirbaniA. Before it could get back, however, the Drone Factory arrived at KirbaniA, where it entered into an orbit around Blalo, on which the first surface exploring rover will be dropped. Blalo ranks pretty low for me. It's effectively an ideal world to colonize, but it's also kinda hard to use as a primary world because it's a slightly beefed up Kerbin in practice (1.1g, 1.05ASL). Might still make a base there, but getting back up from the surface would be too much of a challenge to do regularly. Unless I can wrap my head around Kerbal Konstructs, Blalo will remain mostly untouched. It has a nice set of satellites, though. Next target would be Alva at this point. It's basically a hot Duna, which is nice. 

Spoiler

edit: @Admiral Fluffy convinced me to give seafaring another chance. I hope KSP2's water physics is better than KSP1, because this was honestly fun. Initial tests on Kerbin went well, for the most part. In fact I had not intended for this to fly at all, and initially set out to make a boat, but as soon as I tested the bare thrust on the runway I knew it could get lift. An aileron or two, an extra set of reaction wheels in case it flipped over in the water, adjusting the gear a bit, and boom! Top speed is around 230m/s, and it could probable be tuned for more, but the real operational speed (i.e. the not-scared-it-won't-spontaneously-explode speed) is around 175m/s.

It doesn't have a name yet, but it has worked really well so far. It kinda look like a Klingon bird of prey? IF I ever do colonize Blalo, maybe I could make a floating base? Sea launches could be fun.

Spoiler

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Axelord FTW