What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Aelfhe1m]

Progressing to supersonic jets in my new RP-0 career. After an air launch 300km from the cape and holding a Mach 1.4 cruise at 13,000 m for 3 minutes to complete the first supersonic planes contract. I managed to surprise myself with a near perfect glide slope approach to the runway.

Touchdown was a little late but everything was looking good 

Umm, not braking very quickly... 

Whew! Down and safe. Maybe I need to figure out how to add some drag chutes before the next flight. 

Edit: Jet is a modified version of the JP-1B Pingu from here

Edited May 28, 2022 by Aelfhe1m
Add credit for craft file

[EwTE_H]

Launched a manned probe to Duna in Career mode in year 1. On the ship there are 8(9?) science modules: Goo, SC9001, 2HOT, PresMat, GRAVMAX, AtmoFluid and Magnet. (and EVA experiment, I wonder if it's considered a science module) With these I thought it could get a few thousand Science.

The bottom stage was copied from Kerbal X, but only with 2/3 of the fuel and dV just enough for a low orbit. The middle stage had a Terrier and a FL-T 400, along with a lander can(it's the lightest)and all of the science modules except GRAVMAX. The top stage consisted of an Ant, two Oscar-B, a seat, an Experiment Storage Unit, an OX-STAT panel and a Z-100 battery, a reaction wheel, a MechJeb case(necessary for me) and a parachute, but without heat shields.

Luckily when I finished the construction it was just at the transfer window, so I planned a Hofmann transfer at once. On the 150th day of the mission I did a deep space manoeuvre, and on the 323rd day it reached Duna SOI. Later it got into Duna's atmosphere near its south pole and aerobroke (for 12 times, its atmosphere is much thinner than I thought) into a round polar orbit with a height of 150k. I then got gravity scans and EVA reports from all of the biomes, both high space and low space. It took me a long time.

After that I transferred to Ike, also on a polar orbit. Having collected science from all biomes, the middle stage still had 700 dV left, so I landed it near the equator(I didn't plan to do that so the ship didn't had landing legs, but with that reaction wheel I managed to land without legs) and then reached an orbit of 20k. At that time my poor Bob had got onto the seat, and the middle stage was already jettisoned. My small probe had 1700 dV then.

I waited for a long time for the transfer window back to Kerbin. During the waiting that Halo Orbit satellite fell off and crashed on Mun but I didn't know. After another year the probe reached Kerbin. It aerobroke at 43k. As mentioned before, it didn't have a heat shield so Bob melted, but it didn't matter at all, right? As the experiment storage module landed in one piece, I call it a successful crash.

Then I recovered it. To my surprise, it contained over 12000 science! That was enough to get all of the parts unlocked, with 2000 science left! Hearing this, the R&D forgot the evaporation of Bob at once.

I forgot to take screenshots

[swjr-swis]

39 minutes ago, EwTE_H said:

Hearing this, the R&D forgot the evaporation of Bob at once.

I forgot to take screenshots

No worries, I got you covered.

Here's one that commemorates the most important part of that journey:

Spoiler

We shall never forget you, Bob.

[N_Danger]

The test flight of the new Kemini capsule occurred today.

 

Bill gets the science.

I found a use for the faring separation feature of the 1.87 meter service module. Disintegrating during capsule separation.

After a successful flight and with a few tweaks the Kemini is flight rated.

[miklkit]

I completed my first round trip to Duna including landing there last night! 

Took a MK1 courier SSTO to Minmus and refueled, then went to Ike and refueled.  Dropped down to Duna orbit and found a big canyon to land in like everyone says to do.  Bad idea.  Aerobraked then flipped to retrograde for the last part.  As the atmosphere got thicker the NERVs got less and less powerful and i had to use the Rapiers.  This used up almost all of the oxy just in landing. 

Lessons learned:  More oxy!  Ladders!  After dropping it to the ground the Kerbals were able to jump up onto the wings to get back in.  This also kept it from sliding around so much. 

 

This made the takeoff a real challenge as there was just enough oxy to get it off the ground and then the NERVS really struggled to gain any altitude and speed.  I had to steer around that mountain. 

But it did actually make it! 

Upon landing back at Ike Base I discovered that the gas truck was overheating.  This is the 8th one scattered around and none of them has ever overheated before.  This made refueling take a very long time as it slowly cooled down.  It was also generating very little electricity which caused further delays.  The engineer aboard is level 4.

After eventually refueling I headed straight back to Kerbin and landed just fine.  Whew!

[Nazalassa]

Discovered KSP is mentioned here at 5:01  ;D

[Aelfhe1m]

18 minutes ago, Nazalassa said:

Discovered KSP is mentioned here at 5:01  ;D

The Artifexian rabbit hole is deep! I've whiled away many an hour on the minutiae of worldbuilding and conlangs. Fascinating stuff. I'm sure he probably references KSP in other videos, in a similarly off-hand manor, but I can't remember for sure.

[Nazalassa]

Yes, Artefaxian has a nice way to present complicated stuff simply.
Semi-Major Axis? Done.

[N_Danger]

 

The first Kerbaled Munner Orbit mission was launched in this play through

Spoiler

Bob is concerned. 

But the vessel heads onto orbit with out incident.

On the way to the Mun after the Trans-Munner injection brun.

The mission executes a capture burn.

 

Later Bob gets some EVA science. 

 

Valentina's pictures from the hand held taken on the journey back to Kerbin.

Spoiler

The vessels finally arrives back at Kerbin and uses the Kemini's patented "Use explosive bolts in all the places" separation feature before re-entry.

Spoiler

The crew sees the explosion as a good omen of things to come.

Heat shield separation: 

And the crew waits for the boats after a successful landing.

[Cavscout74]

I fired up an old 1.8 career and continued with a few missions I had going.  This was the old Out of the Sands career in mission reports that I stopped because I lost the usb drive I was storing all my career info (current & planned missions, build times, etc)

Exploring Duna

Spoiler

First to an strange rock formation noted by satellite surveys:

Also found a random meteorite to investigate:

Finally returned to the surface outpost after a week or so in the rover

And delivered a rover to Laythe by glider.  I've tried this before (on both Laythe & Eve) but never succeeded before.  Lost the previous Laythe to loss of signal and the Eve didn't survive reentry.

Spoiler

Approaching Laythe

First pass was tail-first to bring down Ap

For the actual entry, I staged the nuclear drive just as I entered the atmosphere and the glider flipped nose first on its own, so I apparently did something right

Technically it's a rocket glider

And I admit I had to cheat infinite fuel to actually make landfall - although I did have an island in sight, I just couldn't quite reach it.  Still not bad for not playing KSP for a while

My landing was smooth - the glider was controllable down to 30-some m/s, which made the landing safer

Deploying the rover:

My rover came down maybe 1.5km from a geyser, which was a happy surprise:

 

Then sent a few Moho craft on their way - such as this giant crewed rover (minus crew) with landing cradle

And a small station for whenever a crew gets sent

And finally launched a Tylo sample return probe in two parts - the first is the lander while the second will dock after the return probe reenters orbit & bring the samples home to Kerbin

 

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Today's top tip: always strut your boosters.

Or else this happens:

[Cavscout74]

14 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Or else this happens:

Yeah, that looks pretty familiar!!

[obnox twin]

Working on me space dock and maybe launch some modules for a colony to mine uranite so I can convert that to enriched uranium then something to convert them to fission pellets

[Ben J. Kerman]

Working on an MAN TGX replica in KSP. I still haven't done a lot yet, but I'd say it's going along well.

[DunaManiac]

After constructing an SSTO I'm finally ready to fully staff the Kerbin Starbase in LKO.

It's meant to replace the earlier Majesty-1 class SSTO which is very reliable, but has a small crew capacity. The Majesty-2 class SSTO seen here can carry not only 12 kerbals, but also a small amount of Cargo.

I reach orbit, but with little fuel to spare. Might need a little more oxidzer on this one.

Arriving at Kerbin Starbase just as morning dawns.

I decided to do the docking from the IVA, just for kicks.

And with that, it is docked. The crew file out and take up their respective posts.

Soon, however, we leave the station to it's own devices to take them down. At this point we're running on fumes. Definitely need some more fuel on this one.

And, touch down! With just a little bit of the runway to spare. This definitely needs some tweaking.

[Aelfhe1m]

Reginal Morrison piloted the final and very successful X-planes (low) flight, hitting altitude records at 50km, 60km and 70km and a new crewed speed record at 1500m/s, before returning safely to the Cape.

[N_Danger]

While on a mission to Minmus the crew records a partial eclipse of Kerbin by the Mun.

Alice while on EVA.

And Tomdo from inside the capsule a half an orbit later.

[Akagi]

Val made some very bad decisions with her remaining fuel and accidentally staged her rocket.

[Aelfhe1m]

1 hour ago, N_Danger said:

While on a mission to Minmus the crew records a partial eclipse of Kerbin by the Mun.

Nice Syzygy

[sevenperforce]

I built a fully-functional VTOL Quinjet from the MCU:

 

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

Yesterday I was trying to connect my MS acc to my Minecraft PS4, but yet I couldn't. So instead of that I made my first successful propeller plane! 

Its sort of based on the I-15, if we talk about the wings. Thats all.

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Aerodynamic Kerbal

[Cavscout74]

Continued on with my old career, filled some old contracts (who would've guessed, with a crew on Duna & probes everywhere that I never scanned a Minmus Olivine formation in this career yet?!?), landed a probe on Eeloo and got a crew headed for Moho - after the infrastructure arrived from the last transfer window.

Finally completing the Minmus scanning contract.  The crew at the Minmus mining base were approaching a full year before I noticed the contract, so I had them run around to get that done quick before sending them home

I also built a new interface craft for Minmus.  It works, but it's actually easier to just land directly at the mining base than deal with this

    

Spoiler

Tested a rocket-launched spaceplane, with less than great results

Spoiler

Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, right?    There are actually 3 more sets of these pics.  Amazingly, the pilot survived all of them

Moho Crew Station arrived in orbit

Along with the Moho-Lancer outpost, which landed safely.  I never sent a resource survey probe, so I had no ore info to go by.  My chosen landing site only has a 6.2% concentration

The MoRo heavy rover also entered Moho orbit & landed safely.  I left it sitting on its cradle till the crew arrives.

With new science sent back from all the arrivals, I was finally able to unlock the Rapier & bring my Lightning spaceplane into service again.  After one test flight (with tourists) to make sure I remembered how to fly it, it was used to bring the Moho crew up to their transfer vehicle

Spoiler

Docking with the EV-1 (Exploration Vehicle) Avalon which departed two days later and is currently en route to Moho.

And safely returning to KSP.  The second flight went much smoother than the test flight reentry - no loss of control, flat spin or anything else.  It took weeks to get the tourists' vomit off the new upholstery.

My Eeloo can lander finally arrived & set down safely.  Gotta love Universal Storage mod - fit all your lander needs on an equipment rack safely inside a service bay

The solar panels are mostly for show at this distance, but it's a standardized design I use (one for vacuum landings and one for atmospheric landings).  There is a small RTG on the other side that provides the bulk of the power.

I also decided Moho could use some extra fuel to make sure the crew can get home, so a huge launcher was thrown together to get 3600 units of LF to Moho:

The Tylo Sample Return Vehicle & Tylo-Kerbin Return Vehicle headed out, with the return vehicle pictured.  The lander has enough dV to land, gather science and return to orbit where the upper stage will dock with the return vehicle to bring surface samples back to Kerbin.

Last but not least, my Laythe Ocean Explorer entered Jool space and made a small course correction to get a good fly-by of Tylo - it's still a few weeks out from the fly-by. 

[obnox twin]

1 hour ago, Cavscout74 said:

Tested a rocket-launched spaceplane, with less than great results

  Hide contents

Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, right?    There are actually 3 more sets of these pics.  Amazingly, the pilot survived all of them

A good tip you see because of aerodynamics you want the center of lift near the center of mass so you don't go flipping around. If you check out my Jool 5 I had plane but I had to launch it with big wings on the booster to contract the other wings(Thank god for old drawings for prototpye things aka dynarsoar booster designs.)

[Aelfhe1m]

1 hour ago, Cavscout74 said:

Tested a rocket-launched spaceplane, with less than great results

Elaborating on @obnox twin's point, most RL design concepts have either had large wings on the booster stage; mounted the spaceplane piggy back (like Shuttle and Buran) so that the plane's wings are as close to the rear of the combined vehicle as possible; or wrapped a small spaceplane in a fairing for launch. Without one of these choice the centre of pressure tends to be too far up the vehicle for stability.

[obnox twin]

14 minutes ago, Aelfhe1m said:

Elaborating on @obnox twin's point, most RL design concepts have either had large wings on the booster stage; mounted the spaceplane piggy back (like Shuttle and Buran) so that the plane's wings are as close to the rear of the combined vehicle as possible; or wrapped a small spaceplane in a fairing for launch. Without one of these choice the centre of pressure tends to be too far up the vehicle for stability.

I learnt that the hard way when trying to launch a spaceplane for my Jool 5 it had no wings/fairing/piggybacking so it kept flipping then I searched up Dynarsoar as it was a spaceplane concept saw that a booster had larger wings on it did the same thing and it stopped flipping. But for what I did to day was designing a colony ship that can be launched in pieces and assembled in orbit and head to any planet with a pulsed fission engine and attempt to colonize it. (Me have kinda have clue how MKS works but I haven't tried making a self sufficient colony before)

Edited May 31, 2022 by obnox twin
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