What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Caerfinon]

@ColdJ Love the attention to detail, the wire strike protection system is very cool.  

[ColdJ]

6 minutes ago, Caerfinon said:

@ColdJ Love the attention to detail, the wire strike protection system is very cool.  

I model by looking at lots of photos and then try to recreate. I hadn't realised that was what those were meant to be. I thought they were more types of aerials.

I was tempted to add the weird wire/rope thing to the tail, like in this pic, but decided it was not worth it.

Edited August 1, 2022 by ColdJ

[Caerfinon]

5 minutes ago, ColdJ said:

I hadn't realised that was what those were meant to be

I had a buddy in the air force who flew helicopters and apparently flying into wires on exercise was a real issue. These little wonders took care of it, but some poor lineman had to be dispatched for a repair.   

The model looks really nice. 

[SSTO Crasher]

I tested my lander for the unmanned Duna pathfinder 1 mission, soon I shall be launching it

[SkyFall2489]

Working hard on my rocket SSTOs.

[Caerfinon]

What makes Bob get up in the mornings? 

"Well science is a lot like Pokemon... you gotta catch em all."  - Bob Kerman, Rocket Scientist & Armature Filmmaker

 

[Caerfinon]

When you need to move a lot of Kerbals a short distance you need to find ways to pack them in...

 

Available on KerbalX:  Kermansky-T-58  (Flies nicely with Throttle Controlled Avionics)

[SpacePixel]

What's with the booster crosses anyway?

So Angara A5P was meant to carry Federatsia spacecraft, but got shelved because... office politics. Anyway, the fun part about it was not yet another booster cross, but the fact that the rocket could not place the spacecraft into orbit. Someone at some totally-not-Soviet engineering bureau had a bright idea to eliminate Angara's third and second stages for the fun of it, since Federatsia had like 2k dV anyway. So, if something were to happen to Federatsia's propulsion, the crew could expect swift splashdown literally anywhere in the world and some nasty gees to boot. But then someone came up with an even better idea - what if we make Federatsia like 1.5x lighter, since it's not like we're going to the Moon or anything - and so A5P was shelved in favor of a lighter rocket.

P. S: Rogozin renamed Federatsia to Orel, but I refuse to call it that. The original name won a vote.   

[swjr-swis]

On 8/2/2022 at 5:56 PM, Caerfinon said:

 

My first thought was "Doing some dino hunting?"...

 

[dci]

Deorbited station planned for Ike because of ghost forces ruined my node creation attempts. Fortunatelly, there were no kerbals inside, so just loss of money. Facelifted versions suffered same issue, so I will create some new station to fullfill taken contract in future.

Spoiler

Two Gigantors were destroyed by heat, all other parts by water impact.

 

Placed alpha version of kerbostationaty communication satellite "The Eye of Kerbin" above KSC with experimental iris mechanism.

Spoiler

 

[stephensmat]

Meet my new ship.

I have named her the "SS Bowman", after the character in 2001. As you can probably guess from that, I plan to fly her to Jool. At least, I do eventually. She has another mission first.

Some of my contracts are to put Stations in orbit of various moons and planets. The construction of these Stations is relatively simple, but one of the Criteria is to have X amount of Fuel left. I never seen to keep thousands of extra fuel units on hand. So I thought: Why not build a ship that could make a circuit of some of these places, and check off all those contracts at once, and then refuel and send her to Jool? Like a Tour of the places I've been, before I send her someplace I haven't been yet.

The Bowman is my first Nuclear Powered craft. Her Drive Section is five linked MK3 Shuttle tanks, and a total of twelve Nerv Engines, giving her 50,000 units of liquid fuel, and a Delta-V of over 6600m/s. (Enough that I'm hoping to have some fuel left for those contracts). The lander on the front is the same design that's already landed science gear on the Mun, Minmus, Duna, Gilly, and Ike. If I come up with a small Atmo-To-Orbit spaceplane (Something I haven't tried yet), then it'll be sent on to meet her somewhere. Note the Docking ports on outer edges of the Drive Section. If I need to upgrade her range further, I can do so when I return to Minmus.

She's the largest ship I've ever constructed in Orbit thus far. It took Seven launches with Mammoth Boosters to get all these parts up there, plus a lot of work from my Engineers to get her fuel lines and struts in place, so that she'll hold together for the flight.

I haven't taken her out yet. In truth, I'm thinking about bringing my last crew back from Duna, since they've all levelled up to Five Stars on their flight. I transfer the crew over, and send them back out, or I send the new crew on a 'Kerbol Tour' and let them learn too. Honestly, the only advantage to higher stars 'en route' is a faster Science build up while we fly, and I'm only using that for cash at this point.

Edited August 4, 2022 by stephensmat

[IncompetentSpacer]

Continued my KSP RP-1 career. After successful manned missions around the earth, including the rendezvous between satellite and mercury capsule, I tried my luck on a moon orbiter.

And got introduced to the phenomena of certain fuels boiling off in space... From comfortable 900 ms budget, I ended up with 0 in the four days it took to come to moon...

 

I detached it from engine section in order to conserve more electricity and at least get some science back from the failed mission (very little since my signals don't reach beyond the moon).

 So no good pictures or stories to be had today, since the orbiter slingshoted around the moon and headed in the dark space, forever to be lost to the Kerbalkind

Edited August 4, 2022 by IncompetentSpacer

[king of nowhere]

Run some testing on my biggest ship

After being unable to make manned landings on the inner moons of saturn because of the strong radiation belt, I calculated that those landings could be possible by including 8000 tons of magnetic radiation shields. and 300 tons of nuclear power plants to work them, but those are trivial at this point.

the rest of the ship, of course, must be at scale with that. the result is close to 200k tons, and I fear I still have nowhere near enough fuel.

Anyway, today I tested landing on Mimas.

From the beginning, things went poorly; the crew cabin detached itself as soon as I cheated the ship in place. well, this is mostly a test of engines

And then some engines went kaboom, too. despite the extremely soft landing and the very low gravity (0.01 g) Ringrazer is just so heavy

Here I'm bringing valentina just to give some scale to the picture

and here's poor val, sitting on top of one of the engines

I was about to scrap the mission, since this thing keeps on exploding. But then, it's actually stopped all in one piece. some engines broke, yes, but the ship is already supposed to discard some engines as it loses drop tanks and becomes lighter. plus, still because of the drop tanks issue, it's going to be a lot lighter when it comes to mimas in the actual mission.

so, for now I'll keep at it.

 

P.S. somebody posted on youtube a megaton rocket, so it's theoretically possible to go a lot bigger than I am.

However, this is not just a big rocket. this is a big rocket that actually does something.

Edited August 5, 2022 by king of nowhere

[Kerb24]

Launched Mint Sat to Minmus orbit to survey for ore. 

Spoiler

Mint Sat on the launch pad.

SRBs ignite, Mint sat has lift off.

'

The SRBs detach and deploy parachutes. 

And splash down just off the coast. 

The core stage continues to burn. 

Fairing deployed. 

Core stage detached. 

Re-entry 

Parachutes deployed 

And it falls over upon splash down. Further development is needed. 

Stage 2 continues to orbit. 

TMI (Trans-Minmus Injection).

Arrival at Minmus. 

Orbital insertion 

Mint Sat detaches from the second stage. 

Mint sat is operational.

With the ore on Minmus now mapped, 4L1P (4 Landings 1 Probe) can launch.

[IncompetentSpacer]

Yesterday I failed to achieve orbit around the Moon in my RP-1 career due to discovering that the mod had fuel boil off implemented. Long story short, the fuel in my tanks evaporated in the travel between Earth and Moon.

I had to change to untested American AJ10 series engine in the top stage in order to fulfill moon orbiter contract - it was only restartable engine which used fuels that do not suffer from same problems as kerosine/ liqued oxygen combo that all my other engines use.

 

Unlike yesterday's attempt, this mission went without problems. Images in the spoiler.

Spoiler

 

 

[W.V Kerman]

18 minutes ago, IncompetentSpacer said:

Yesterday I failed to achieve orbit around the Moon in my RP-1 career due to discovering that the mod had fuel boil off implemented. Long story short, the fuel in my tanks evaporated in the travel between Earth and Moon.

I had to change to untested American AJ10 series engine in the top stage in order to fulfill moon orbiter contract - it was only restartable engine which used fuels that do not suffer from same problems as kerosine/ liqued oxygen combo that all my other engines use.

 

Unlike yesterday's attempt, this mission went without problems. Images in the spoiler.

  Hide contents

 

 

i can never get RSS/RO/RP-1 properly working, so landing on the moon is impressive (at least in my POV)

[Catto]

Made an orbital gauss cannon.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Landings on Moho and Gilly, after enduring temperatures of over 1000K at Moho’s low, low perihelion (Gigantors were making 1500EC/s per panel!) and long, long, long ion “burns” to get there. Radiation is understandably through the roof and even the heavy shielding on the pod and specially designed sun shield module with active and passive shielding isn’t enough to protect the crew from Kerbol’s fury, so the less time spent here the better.
 

@IncompetentSpacerhave you considered an unguided lunar capture with solid motors? If you set up the lunar capture burn as soon as the TLI burn finishes, then point at the node, spin up and decouple (with a 0 force decoupler! otherwise the trajectory gets messed up) then the probe can use solid separation rockets to capture into orbit. If you angle the solids so they point at/near the centre of mass, the small margin of variance on each motor won’t be enough to knock it off course thanks to the spin-stabilisation.

This is how I did it:

The TLI stage also completed a lunar impactor contract, though it required a bit of cheesing the system by packing a small, locked battery so it would have some stored power at the moment of impact.

If you’re not restricting yourself to just American engines, the RD-0105 is the best upper stage out there in terms of overall delta-V, just watch out for the puny gimbal force from the verniers; the upgraded RD-0109 is even better. For early hypergolic upper stages, I’ve always favoured the Juno 6k over the AJ10-mid as its ISP is higher, propellants more dense and reliability slightly better(?) despite the limited ignitions.

[Master Tao]

I updated my hovercraft to function on multiple worlds and include only one modded part (the kOS controller):

YouTube

KerbalX

[Hotel26]

Backgrounder:

Spoiler

I have been playing my current, Orbit, production world since January 2018 (progressing through KSP versions 1.4.5, 1.6.1, 1.7.3 to 1.11.2) and playing more or less in real-time.  Recently, for a twist, I ran a proof-of-concept in my Lab world to establish a new space agency based on the island of Olympia, 60 South.)

Today, the first launch by the independent Terkestan Space Agency (TSA) -- a Titan 2 fuel tanker, now secured in a 60-degree inclined orbit at an altitude of 80 km:

   

We, at Mission Control in Olympia, are looking forward to seeing some new scenery from space!!

Still to be decided but the next series of launches is likely to be to place a KISS Space Station into a 90-km altitude orbit.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Hotel26

[stephensmat]

Today, I messed up a mission. My first Mission Critical Failure.

Now, like all of us, I've hit the F9 key more often than I can count. This is the first time I didn't get there in time, and I couldn't reload or revert. Long story.

Two tourists dead, plus one pilot.

#shudder#

[IncompetentSpacer]

12 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

 

@IncompetentSpacerhave you considered an unguided lunar capture with solid motors? If you set up the lunar capture burn as soon as the TLI burn finishes, then point at the node, spin up and decouple (with a 0 force decoupler! otherwise the trajectory gets messed up) then the probe can use solid separation rockets to capture into orbit. If you angle the solids so they point at/near the centre of mass, the small margin of variance on each motor won’t be enough to knock it off course thanks to the spin-stabilisation.

This is how I did it:

The TLI stage also completed a lunar impactor contract, though it required a bit of cheesing the system by packing a small, locked battery so it would have some stored power at the moment of impact.

If you’re not restricting yourself to just American engines, the RD-0105 is the best upper stage out there in terms of overall delta-V, just watch out for the puny gimbal force from the verniers; the upgraded RD-0109 is even better. For early hypergolic upper stages, I’ve always favoured the Juno 6k over the AJ10-mid as its ISP is higher, propellants more dense and reliability slightly better(?) despite the limited ignitions.

I did consider solids but during current run I stick (mostly not hard house rule) SSSR tech. I speculate that I probably could have saved 20t (or thereabout) because of the savings in top stage and in prior stages. A monopropellant solution, considering the light payload, would probably work too.

And I agree - RD-0105 is insanely good engine, only reason I changed it to RD-0110 is better TWR in vacuum (I play without Mechjeb piloting - shorter burn times is then QoL improvement imho).

But ultimately I play RP-1 career with house rules where I stick to liquid boosters (sure, heavier rockets but I much more capable imho). I am no expert in solid boosters from late 50s but IRL by the time Moon Orbiter and Luna 10 flew, they did not use solid boosters for last burn as far as I know. I suspect that solid boosters back then would be far less reliable after four days in space (have no sources for this, just probably the reason they did not send orbiters around the moon before 1966).

I am not advocating how to play RP-1 "properly", it is just explanation for background for my house rules. Everyone should play a game however they want.

So I ended up with this configuration:

Spoiler

Which solids did you use in your orbiter? - I don't recognise them (you seem to have clipped them into payload so I can't se what they are).

[jimmymcgoochie]

Height above Kerbol is under 1.5Gm, it's 1000K outside and the solar panels are producing about 7000EC/s. And yet Moho is still further sunward than this craft...

14 minutes ago, IncompetentSpacer said:

Which solids did you use in your orbiter? - I don't recognise them (you seem to have clipped them into payload so I can't se what they are).

They're just generic small separation motors.

[IncompetentSpacer]

21 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

They're just generic small separation motors.

Oh yeah, starter sep motors would work greatly as long as you are below 400 (or thereabout) km separation from the moon.

These and decoupler boosted to the max force are (were?) bread and butter for caveman cursed rockets

14 hours ago, The Kerman said:

i can never get RSS/RO/RP-1 properly working, so landing on the moon is impressive (at least in my POV)

The key is to start on totally clear install with no mods. Last versions are working on latest version of KSP so installation process got bit shorter.

Otherwise just follow github wiki and don't for moment stray from the procedure:

https://github.com/KSP-RO/RP-0/wiki/RO-&-RP-1-Express-Installation-for-1.12.3

 

[Kerb24]

Launched my 4L1P mission and completed the first landing. 

Spoiler

The 4L1P rocket on the launchpad. 

All 28 engines on the first stage ignite. 4L1P has liftoff. 

Nominal Ascent 

Stage separation. 

Fairing deployed. 

Orbital insertion.

Stage 2 starts the TMI burn. 

Which is finished by stage 3. 

Course correction. 

Stage 3 burns all of its remaining fuel, inserting the spacecraft into Munar orbit. 

The transfer stage circularizes the orbit. 

Lander undocks. 

De-orbiting. 

PDI 

A few meters off the surface. 

Contact.

After a few days of refueling via ISRU, the lander ascends from the surface. 

Re-docked. 

'

Next communication session the spacecraft will land on Minmus, where it will stay until the next Eve transfer window.