What did you do in KSP1 today?

[cubinator]

https://imgur.com/a/dI9hJaT

I made a little jaunt to my favorite miniscule moon.

[BadOaks]

I played around with TUFX settings a bit and launched an RTG / Hall thruster probe to explore the Jool system. 

Three imaging instruments are clustered on one end of the bus so that they can all be actively looking at the same thing. Two RTGs providing power and a SAR antenna are located on the other end to help balance the mass. A Hall effect propulsion system provides over 4000 m/s of deltaV at a blistering 0.06 G's.

In other news, the Edna Explorer, the last of the wave of probes I launched a week ago, finally arrived. It took up a 500 km polar orbit around Edna and deployed its instruments. It still has about 900 m/s of dV remaining, so at some point I'll probably have it transfer over to Edna's moon Dak and do science there as well. 

I've also been kicking around ideas for a manned Duna mission. The lander/ascent vehicle is done and I've got a design for an NTR mothership which is mostly done. Since this plan calls for putting payloads in excess of 50 tons in orbit and larger than anything else I've launched so far in this playthrough, I've had to redesign the Driver IV vehicle into an updated cargo variant (I'm calling it the ReDriver IV) using all the new technology unlocked since the Mun landings. Among the changes are new, more powerful, first stage engines and a completely new methlox upper stage.

I spent a few hours last night running KRASH simulations to fine-tune the ascent profile and work the kinks out of the staging.

[Colbiz]

Bad luck i used time warp when flying a SR-71 blackbird at 20000m height. And when i swooped down at 1200m/s speed, the whole wing fell off and i splashed into the sea. The kerbals were alive but the plane was smashed. Do any of you have witnessed a plane torn apart at time warp*4? This is strange,and i lost 200000 in the accident!

[BadOaks]

It seems that Eve-1 making orbit around Gilly really struck a chord with whoever issues the contracts. Suddenly I had requests for high resolution scans, low resolution scans, science from orbit, science the surface, oh my! The JASPER mission is intended to take advantage of these clustered contracts and bring in some much needed funds for the upcoming manned program. Eve-1 had already taken care of two of the high res scans, but its SAR antenna's minimum altitude was too high for Gilly, meaning that JASPER would strangely carry both high and low resolution altimetry scanners. I don't write the contracts! I just fulfill them. 

A Zephyr VIII launch vehicle carried JASPER to orbit and performed the ejection burn, putting it on a course for Eve.

Spoiler

JASPER intercepted Gilly near its periapse around Eve and performed a 2000 m/s dV arrival burn using the transfer stage.

From there, JASPER maneuvered into an 18 x 280 km elliptical orbit, deployed its SAR boom as well as a surface probe.

The probe landed in Gilly's midlands.

After a few days, Eve came over the horizon.

Meanwhile, JASPER circularized at 280 km and will maintain station there to complete the remaining contracts.

Full mission album: Link

Edited July 18, 2022 by BadOaks

[Hotel26]

5 hours ago, Colbiz said:

swooped down at 1200m/s speed, the whole wing fell off

That's a lot of speed!  Did you have the wings auto-strutted as Grandparent, say?  (I generally strut the fuselage as Heaviest part and the peripheral parts as Grandparent.)  Unsure this is going to help you (at that speed) but...

Mmm, maybe a more strategic idea is to use time-warp only for the cruise duration of a long trip and turn it OFF before heavy maneuvering!?

Edited July 18, 2022 by Hotel26

[Vanamonde]

6 hours ago, Colbiz said:

Bad luck i used time warp when flying a SR-71 blackbird at 20000m height. And when i swooped down at 1200m/s speed, the whole wing fell off and i splashed into the sea. The kerbals were alive but the plane was smashed. Do any of you have witnessed a plane torn apart at time warp*4? This is strange,and i lost 200000 in the accident!

Time warp is not safe to use when there are stresses on your craft. Some aspects of the simulation seem to become out of proportion to others. You may notice, for example, that a vehicle sitting on landing gear will sink lower to the ground under warp, as if it's becoming heavier, even though gravity and its mass should stay the same.  Be cautious about warping and save your progress before you try it. 

[Catto]

well

i deorbited the endurance???

[Kerb24]

My old career mode was getting boring, so I added Snacks, and Extraplanetary launchpads to make the game more interesting.

[Apelsin]

Even more nuclear SSTO fun, with six (!) 3.75m fusion jet engines this time. Not planning to top this anytime soon lol.

 

[Superluminal Gremlin]

On 6/24/2022 at 2:35 AM, Lt_Duckweed said:

lightest flown Duna ssto.

impressive, i must say.

[ColdJ]

Been working on a Hind M-24 parts kit. Learnt some new things. Getting close to completion.

[Misguided Kerbal]

I sent Jeb and Bill into orbit on the first flight of the Leo spacecraft, along with some tasty corned beef sandwiches 

Spoiler

Things got a tad bit hairy during stage separation - thanks to BARIS, one of the separatrons decided it would be a nice time to explode. Luckily, the second stage was okay.

"Hey Jeb, is that your house?"

"Huh, yeah... dammit Bill, I forgot to do the dishes again."

"Say, Jeb, you got another bite of that sandwich?"

 

[darthvader15001]

trying to fix a bug where no attachment points were showing up: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/209044-not-showing-attachment-points/

[Hotel26]

[first] SPACE NEWS GAZETTE [next][prev]

1. in our last installment, a mysterious booster (Dreadnought S2) had appeared on a lonely northern shore^{[pic 1]}.  The next morning, as investigators arrived upon the scene, they were to discover that it had disappeared.  What they found in place was a short set of triple tire tracks, starting and then stopping at or very near the location of the disappeared booster, then turning a sharp left and descending down to the waterline.  Nothing else in evidence.
2. In another hemisphere, far away, a small UAV departed a mountain base^{[pic 2]}, wound through some rugged terrain^{[pic 3]} and then scouted for and found another booster (Obelisk), ditched^{[pic 4]}.  Hours later, a large fishing trawler arrived at the scene, hoisted the booster^{[pic 5]} into its hold and then departed in great haste.
3. Back at KSC Mission Control, all the Big Brass were assembled in the boardroom listening intently as a lone figure, dressed rather dapperly in civilian attire, pointed to the map stretching some of the length of the boardroom table and spoke in low tones.  "Gentlemen, I suggest you scramble clandestine overflights equipped for detailed photography over this area in order to identify the launch site of our mysterious intruders..."  His finger was lightly tapping a location in the far south of the planet.  Perhaps as many as Sixty Degrees south.  The speaker was none other than the legendary Agent 86 (although only one other, present in the room, knew this).  Yes, KSC Top Brass had decided to get smart, and call in Maxwell Krakpotkin to solve the puzzle at hand.

Spoiler

 

 

[click + arrows => slideshow]

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

Edited July 28, 2022 by Hotel26

[Kerb24]

Rescued a kerbal, hired some more engineers, and started designing a Gilly surface base.

[stephensmat]

Today in KSP, I did a flyby of Eve to get into Gilly orbit. On two spacecraft.

I had a contract to explore Gilly, and built my mothership, with a Lander included. Fine and dandy. Except that then I had to worry about getting fuel to get back. I could either try and land my mothership, or include a Digger to collect Ore when i got there.

There was no chance of landing on Eve. Not yet, anyway. And when I put a Digger/Convertor on my mothership, it was wildly unbalanced. Something to remember for the next flight.

I decided to go ahead with it anyway, and send my ship now. So I put the Digger/Convertor on another booster, with a probe pilot, and flew her to Eve alongside my crewed mission. I had to dance back and forth a bit to get them both into orbit. Remember, any time I time warp on one, the other accelerates too. It was a bit of a juggling act, but my digger is now landed on Eve, while my Ship is up above, getting ready to land a Kerbal.

One advantage, I did a flyby of Eve and got some serious science points to crunch in the mothership Lab.

[Rutabaga22]

I built a stock rocket for the first time in months! And it exploded wildly!
 

[Kerb24]

Rescued a kerbal from orbit and worked on a Gilly base that will now be a Minmus base.

[2Tricky]

Huge milestone for me today also took me quite a few hours to finish.

In order I visited: Minmus > Gilly> Minmus> Ike> Duna> Ike> Pol> Kerbin







Eve Eclipse I thought looked cool.


Nice Chunk of science, shame I got the whole tree

(Science mode)
I don't have any Pol screenshots

[stephensmat]

Today's achievement, I returned my 'Mothership' from Gilly/Eve. It took a few refuelling flights, but I got them on a slow orbit back to Kerbin. It was a two year flight, and I spend through it a few months at a time. Why? Because I had science to send,

My boosters, for the last several missions, were also part of my ship construction. Using Probe Brains on each booster, I was able to get Min/Minmus craft into orbit, send them on their way, and then keep the boosters, docking them with each other in a row, as a drive section. I fuel them up on Tourist flights, and mounted a science lab, Cupola, and Lander on the front of the 'drive'. It got me to Eve. Loaded up with all the Science experiments i had at the time, I got to take readings in multiple areas, at multiple ranges to landing, and then save the data in my 'Booster Brains'. Did the same thing for my Landing flights.

As a result, I had my Lab chewing data into Science points for two years, all the way back to Kerbin. I'm back in Kerbin orbit now, and after unlocking the whole tech tree, I still have almost 3000 science points left.

Trying to decide what I can do with them, beyond 'selling' them in my Admin building. Are there any other uses for them? What are the best 'Policies' to follow, once everything's unlocked and upgraded?

[N_Danger]

I sent up some truss sections for my Station.

 

Spoiler

On our way to the station.

We use the SM as a tug

We have to move the second truss back. It drifted over a kilometer away.

And we undock and proceed grab the second truss.

The Kraken strikes! Punishing me for not noticing a clipped part.

 

Well half a loaf is better than none. 

[TheKSPBeginner]

Did a water landing in my MiG-31M.

[Sarxis]

Made my way up to Cape Kerman to gather some more data for my mobile research plane. 

 

 

 

 

[QF9E]

I built a rockoon:

Loosely based on this X-Prize contestant: http://www.astronautix.com/w/wildfire.html, a rockoon is a suborbital rocket carried to the stratosphere by a balloon before lighting the rocket engine. I don't think I've ever seen one built in KSP before so I just had to make one.

[N_Danger]

I sent up a Kraken free truss to my space station.

Undock the SM and go get the truss.

Nothing violently shakes the truss apart this time as we attach it.

And we then move the SM back and put the truss into service. 

Finally the truss bus is deorbited.