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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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I've begun another mission using a mothership; Jewel 2, in order to construct a station in orbit around the Mun and land an outpost. It carries about 10 kerbals; 4 kerbals commanding the vessel and 6 kerbals to command the station which will be constructed in LMO. The mothership itself is not new, this is its third mission, or its first to the Mun. This also is the first mission where the entire payload was brought to the mothership through spaceplanes as opposed to rockets.

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The ship itself is rather flimsy because of the amount of girder segments which make up the solar arrays.

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Once orbital insertion is complete, the reconstruction of the station can commence with the tug I used

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After several orbits worth of time, the station itself was finally assembled. The next thing to do is to land the base.

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I'm aiming for the basin of a large crater to the south of a Munar arch found by an earlier lander.

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With the base on the ground, the skycrane returns to the station.

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And finally, the lander is deployed with the rover and 2 kerbals to spend the munar night together in the base before continuing operations. The mothership itself will remain in orbit for the next 55 days before it leaves as well.

Edited by DunaManiac
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Ended my Laythe mission by paying homage to one of my favorite games. (I launched from it using a replica of the Neptune rocket from Subnautica)

EDIT: I should really do a remaster of this with visual mods...

Edited by Jack Joseph Kerman
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Performed my first Moon landing in 2.5x KSRSS, after a few IRL days of tedious docking to assemble the spacecraft in low earth orbit. The design is a hybrid Earth Orbit Rendezvous-Direct Ascent configuration, with both the transfer stages and direct ascent lander assembled in a total of 6 launches. The 3 transfer stages were each launched via the Congo I heavy-lift rocket, while the lander stages were delivered via 3 launches of the medium-lift Yangtze IIA.

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Even with autostrut, the vehicle is very unstable and wobbly due to a bug in KJR that disables the mod if any of the docking ports are rotated. I needed to rotate the ports to keep the center of thrust aligned with the center of mass, as the vehicle would otherwise spin out of control.

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The transfer burn to the Moon is painful, as I constantly needed to steer the vessel due to the phantom forces created by the unstable joints.

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After the transfer burn to the Moon, the two side stages of the transfer stage are jettisoned, leaving the core stage to enter lunar orbit.

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After being used to deorbit the lander, the core transfer stage is jettisoned, and the descent to the moon begins.

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The descent goes without a hitch, with the 12 engines performing admirably.

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Jeb Kerman becomes the first Kerbal to walk on the surface of the Moon, as he has in many, many other games of KSP. As I'm playing with the Skyhawk Science System, the EVA jetpack hasn't been unlocked yet, meaning that getting the science into the capsule was a very long and frustrating game of climbing and jumps.

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The ascent stage of the lander blasts off towards home, leaving the 4 descent stages and flag to forever rest on the surface of the Moon.

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The return to Earth occurs 9 days later, and Jeb and Bob are excited to see their home once again.

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The habitation module and remaining tank of the spacecraft is jettisoned, forcing the crew to return to the cramped Gemini capsule for reentry.

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After a fiery reentry, the crew is recovered safe and sound off the cost of Somalia. The recovery ships better watch out for pirates!

The 315 science gained from the mission allows for unlocking of the powerful Cordele engine and 2.5m tanks, enabling the construction of the new Amazon I super heavy lift rocket. With more thrust than a Sarnus V, the Amazon will allow for the simplification of the 6 launch setup into a 2 launch setup for the next Moon mission.

 

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Today I took contracts to put a space station in the orbit of Kerbin, and then another for the Mun. I still had my 'sub assemblies' from my Science Only Game. The contracts said they had to be full assembled for Launch, so I yanked a lot of the parts, but I managed to keep the science labs. I'm hoping the smaller batteries/solar panels I was forced to downgrade to will be enough to keep them running. The good news is, I have science labs with docking ports now.

One major advantage of the Career over the Science Mode is the policy of selling surplus science points. In science mode, there wasn't much to it once you unlocked the tree. 

But I'm really glad I started with Science Mode, because it got me some saved ships to work with when I got to Career mode.

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Took a little drive from my small Munar base to a probe that landed a year earlier to service it and deploy a drilling unit and seismometer. Its a 35 kilometer drive to the northeast.

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I encountered this arch completely by chance. Technically I found it when I landed the lander earlier, but I was dying to visit it.

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I unlocked some new fuel tanks, and decided to take them for a spin. I booked four tourists who wanted to 'orbit Mun', 'Flyby Mun, 'Orbit Minmus' and 'Land on Minmus'.

I used a MK3 Capsule and a Hitchiker can to get them all on the same flight, and stretched the Delta-V enough to make a Mun orbit, and a Minmus landing, and then home safe. Two different Tourist contracts, plus a request to plant a flag, all on the one mission.

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I've been contract farming and using up some of my pre-built rocket stacks while waiting for transfer windows. Endurance 6 is the last of the Apollo-style missions that I'm likely to do in this career as I'm pivoting more towards interplanetary exploration. Jeb, Stelzer and Lodsey boarded the Endurance capsule and launched into orbit.

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LES tower separation.

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SECO after insertion into a 100 x 100 km parking orbit.

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Before leaving low orbit, I did a 3-hour phasing intercept to pick up Mike from his shipwreck. I didn't bother slowing down for a rendezvous, so Mike had to use his jetpack to close the 50 m/s velocity difference.

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Endurance 6 burned for Minmus and reconfigured for out-bound cruise.

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Transposition and docking.

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At MET 1 day the Driver IV S2 stage performed a correction burn to put it on a collision course for Minmus (those surface accelerometers need data!), after which the capsule / lander extracted and performed a second burn to intercept the orbit of a contract satellite. After another 7 days they arrived at Minmus. First order of business was to install a Communotron 16 on the satellite, earning a clean 390,000 in funds.

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Once done, the rest of the mission was a pretty standard flags-and-footprints deal.  Since it's Minmus they made multiple landings in the Highlands, Basins, and Brown Basins biomes. A flag-planting contract was also completed. After bringing the crew back to orbit, the lander returned to the Basins biome to collect long-term data gravity and accelerometer data.

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This is cruel and unusual punishment by the Geneva Convention: being forced at gunpoint to fly a rocket with a 0% survival and 0% success rate.

I'm back!

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Launched Gigaklaw2 from Minmus to grab an asteroid on the way to Gilly. 

Right now I'm waiting to land on Gilly with a lander that came from Moho. After I did the retro burn, I was 10 minutes from impact going 16 m/s... and I can't time warp at all under 8400m. ARG. So dumb. I'm going to take a nap in freefall. :sad:

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Today, I pulled off my first rescue.

I have to be honest: I suck at docking. I've always used Mechjeb for that.

Playing my first career mode, I haven't unlocked that Mechjeb level yet. I'm building cash using tourists, and I got a two-fer by taking a contract for a Mun Rock return. Five tourists to the Mun. I decide to go for a three-fer, by taking a Contract for putting a science station in Mun orbit. I do the math and my booster can do it.

See, the problem with the 'station' contracts is that you need five Kerbals on board, and I don't have a large enough pool of Kerbalnauts yet. So I decide to try something: What if the contract only needs to be ticked off? What if I take a science lab with my five tourists... and then jettison the science lab?

And it worked. Ten seconds in Mun orbit with the Lab, the contract flashes green, and then I cut the weight loose and land.

I've got my Mun rock, and my fees... And I realize I either landed long, or got the math wrong. I don't have enough Delta-V to return to Kerbal.

I do, however, have just enough to get into a decent orbit. And that's it. My lander is now tumbling around in Mun orbit.

The lander has a Docking Clamp Jr on the side, because that was a requirement for the Station Contract. I never planned to use it. I never planned to dock...

But I want that Mun rock back, safe and sound, to say nothing of five Kerbals. So I pull together a 'rescue craft', and try my luck at docking.

Remember when I said I was having trouble filling station seats? My pilots are busy right now. I had planned to get my best pilot back from the Mun for the next flight, but she's waiting for rescue. So I have to recruit one.

No Mechjeb to fall back on, Level 1 pilot on the craft with RCS. I'm on the dark side of the Mun, and my target craft has no RSC, no fuel, can't manouver, and its clamp is in the middle of the Hitchhiker can.

Took me nine tries, but I got them to dock at last! I turn the whole thing around and burn for home. When my path leads to splashdown, I disconnect, get my rescue craft into a messy orbit, and switch to bring my tourists home safe, with surface samples and a Mun Rock as prize.

I feel like I just got to the end of 'Apollo 13', with Mission Control cheering and weeping.

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Launched a “power module” to a space station, which was really an avionics and propulsion module with a little solar panel on it to power itself. Except, it couldn’t power itself and ran out of power before it got anywhere near the station.

Ironically enough, the station already has enough power generation capacity and I was trying to cheese the contract a bit by adding something it needed (propulsion and control) instead, so serves me right really… Good thing I had a backup waiting in case the first one failed, now modified with a small fuel cell to power itself until it reaches the station.

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An ambitious mission to Minmus was launched. Multiple Biomes were targeted.

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And we meet up with the lander launched ahead of time. 

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Jeb undocks.

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And he becomes the first kerbal on Minmus.

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After hopping the lander3 biomes and collecting the science, time is taken out to Wheee!

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And time to go home

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Jeb brings the science over

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And home in time for breakfast.

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Since I finally got KVV working (albeit with a few bugs), I decided to make a nice little graphic about the evolution of one of my rocket families just for fun. Of course, that led me down a long rabbit hole of working with GIMP and reading tutorials and... designing an (intentional) missile. I spent way long than I thought I would, but I thought it looked quite nice:

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Unfortunately, I forgot to save it so I never had the chance to actually fly the missile. But I'm sure I'll 'accidentally' simulate it with one of my regular launches someday ;)

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