What did you do in KSP1 today?

[N_Danger]

Infrastructure for future missions was put into place. Starting with Kerbin, Relay satellites were put into a polar orbit.

On station.

And at the Mun.

Minmus is not left out.

[tajwo]

Aside from sending some lander probes and satellites to the Mün and Minmus in a career save, I attempted a Dres landing in sandbox.

Halfway successful. Only hurdle now is to get Jeb (and the rest of the crew up in orbit) back home. Not very certain that will work though, I don't think I have enough fuel. While the spacecraft was in LKO i encountered this...is it a sign of bad luck?

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

I am making a few engines for my planet pack to make it a little easier!

 

Here is the cheesecake nuclear engine, a 2.5m engine with 500kN of thrust at 1600s. It makes SSTOs quite a bit easier in conjunction with the H-1 hybrid electric scramjet. though you do need to watch out for overheating while escaping Temporalis!

 

I havent textured it yet tho

the blue light is from a domelight clipped inside the engine

Edited January 21, 2023 by JcoolTheShipbuilder

[whytho]

So ive been playing ksp for 3 weeks now and ive been getting used to it(still havent docked 2 spacecraft which i would love to do since im planning on making a realistic mission to duna or an apollo style mun landing). I sent this smallsat stock launcher thats available without building anything and with 18 parts i sent a satellite to the mun with about 100 m/s of delta-v left in the end of all the manoeuvres i did(which was difficult bc i am pretty new), its orbits is extremely close to the muns surface.

 

 

https://imgur.com/sH1fNY6

edit: sorry about the link, idk how to properly send images in this forum so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Edited January 21, 2023 by whytho

[whytho]

Also you should use near future mods, they are pretty good and add alot to the game, just sayin check it out.

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

Finally figured out how to add scatters! These are landable. the biggest one in the center is between 10 and 20km across. I am testing these scatters on Temporalis before I.. well I cant exactly move these scatters to a planet that doesnt exactly exist yet. These scatters will appear like the levitating remains of the devastated planet's crust. the devastated planet will be the 2nd planet around Excelsior, which is a dim orange dwarf orbiting the Estrela Dobre system.

[Pipcard]

2044-01-09 - Relay satellites and the Koujin habitat module arrive at Vesta

[AuddieD2015]

I made it to Minmus! Bob brought home just under 1100 science from ground, low and high space with the 4 science I can do and his reports. And he made it home alive without being adrift in the black! The science more than doubles my space technology so Mun should be a lot easier this time around.

[Minmus Taster]

Conducting my first Eve landing, it's been a pain the butt to design the ascent vehicle with all the lag and kraken attacks that involve such a large craft. I'm going to do it though, I don't care if I have drive the Kerbals to extinction to do it >:(

[Cavscout74]

So I bit the bullet and went through the trouble of building a modded 1.12.5 install & started a fresh hard career.    So I've been doing all the early career stuff - at least the modified early career that I started using, with some aircraft & rover parts, to give Jeb something to do waiting on rockets to reach orbit.

Bumper rocket, lofting the Korporal upper stage almost into space - 68km

2nd try a few days later, I didn't turn as sharply and kept the nose higher to get a 78km Ap and the first suborbital flight

In the meantime, Jeb was off exploring the desert in a tried & true Hawk prop fighter while Kelrik & Ambera were working to bring the island airfield back into service

Spoiler

 

For some reason, now when trying to go up the stairs, you have to "F" climb once for each flight instead of being able to just run up them like you could in earlier versions.

Once back in service, Val did some flying of her own around the area

After the successful Bumper flights, I was able to loft a small relay satellite into orbit

Jeb also got to test out the experimental Juno engines, powering the new Star fighter. 

Lastly, Kelrik & Ambera were tasked to take a long range patrol jeep up to the arctic to investigate some strange signals received from there.   Mostly because the Hawk I don't think has the range, the Star's engines were experimental & I don't have the science to unlock them now that the contract is complete, and my other prop fighter that might have the range still has parts that I also need more science to unlock.

I am also wondering about something I encountered that I haven't seen before - in the tracking station, when I select a craft, it's icon disappears but the orbit is still visible.  Then if I select a different craft, it's icon disappears, but the previous craft doesn't reappear and it's orbit disappears unless I mouse over where it is.  I'm hoping it was just a glitch & will be gone when I load the game next time.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Cavscout74

[whytho]

Today(actually yesterday but who cares) I tackled the problem of orbital rendezvous. After watching a video made by Mike Aben, I sent two Kerbal X rockets with a crew of six brave kerbonauts. The first launch was textbook with a perfect circular orbit with a apogee of 87 km just as planned, the second one was kinda off with an apogee of 520 km. My closes intercept was 9.9 km and i couldn't go closer than that due to possible mission failure, all in all could have done better. All 6 kerbals were recovered safely.

[Cavscout74]

12 minutes ago, whytho said:

Today(actually yesterday but who cares) I tackled the problem of orbital rendezvous. After watching a video made by Mike Aben, I sent two Kerbal X rockets with a crew of six brave kerbonauts. The first launch was textbook with a perfect circular orbit with a apogee of 87 km just as planned, the second one was kinda off with an apogee of 520 km. My closes intercept was 9.9 km and i couldn't go closer than that due to possible mission failure, all in all could have done better. All 6 kerbals were recovered safely.

All it takes is practice.  Oh, and quite a bit of beating your head on your desk or other convenient hard surface.  But at least no casualties. 

Seriously though, I found rendezvous to be the hardest skill to learn in the game, far harder than the actual docking - although that needs some practice to get the hang of as well.

[SpacePixel]

What is this, a boat with wings?

It is indeed exactly what it seems it is. For when regular landing ships don't suit your flights of fancy, and even parachuting materiel down seems rather... uninspired, the Kaspian comes to the rescue. With enough space to fit pretty much any land vehicle and plenty of horsepowers to get it airborne, it also does away with the pesky requirements for landing strips and ground infrastructure. Just put it down in the nearest lake and enjoy a full-fledged mobile base of operations. The Kaspian is also rated for hostile environments (warranty void), and by hostile we of course mean Laythe, although any adversary you might encounter will be certainly stunned by the sheer nerve of pulling up in a plane that ugly. Beware of the rough seas though - you don't want to get sea salt in the turbofans, for everybody's sake, especially for that poor sod we bribed to get this abomination flight rated.

[mmiillmm]

I tried doing the Historical Replica Challenge, but sort of failed with the design! I had around 30 minutes for the assembly, mission and editing, so it's pretty janky. Though I will not submit this craft for the challenge, I'll be sure to try again, possibly with smaller tanks and engines and a bit more realistic design! Anyways, I recorded the launch and orbit so here you guys go! I also recommend you guys turn down the volume, since I couldn't make the music much quieter (I don't have Premiere and AE on this PC :C) but I promise I will make it better next time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UqiCHcsMZQ

Edited January 23, 2023 by mmiillmm

[Cavscout74]

54 minutes ago, SpacePixel said:

What is this, a boat with wings?

 

It is indeed exactly what it seems it is. For when regular landing ships don't suit your flights of fancy, and even parachuting materiel down seems rather... uninspired, the Kaspian comes to the rescue. With enough space to fit pretty much any land vehicle and plenty of horsepowers to get it airborne, it also does away with the pesky requirements for landing strips and ground infrastructure. Just put it down in the nearest lake and enjoy a full-fledged mobile base of operations. The Kaspian is also rated for hostile environments (warranty void), and by hostile we of course mean Laythe, although any adversary you might encounter will be certainly stunned by the sheer nerve of pulling up in a plane that ugly. Beware of the rough seas though - you don't want to get sea salt in the turbofans, for everybody's sake, especially for that poor sod we bribed to get this abomination flight rated.

There was a mod "Ground Effect" that added, well, ground effect to KSP, making creations like this able to be built more like the real thing.   It also affected regular aircraft, making them more buoyant near the ground - which I found made for much smoother landings.  I don't know if it works in the newest KSP versions, but since you just reminded me of it, I plan to find out tonight.

[whytho]

3 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

All it takes is practice.  Oh, and quite a bit of beating your head on your desk or other convenient hard surface.  But at least no casualties. 

Seriously though, I found rendezvous to be the hardest skill to learn in the game, far harder than the actual docking - although that needs some practice to get the hang of as well.

I think i did pretty good on my first try

[Zacspace]

When paralax 2.0 came out I started thinking about how I'd go about building a vehicle that can handle rough terrain.  KSP's wheel colliders seem to only collide  the bottom, so any time they encounter a bump they just dig in. I came up with a novel way of doing tank tracks that abuses a recently (ish) discovered glitch with the breaking ground pistons that lets them stretch infinitely. Basically the treads are driven directly by spokes that can stretch and squeeze to keep grabbed on. Each set of 2 spokes gets its own rotor so that I don't have to worry about the changing angle between them. This keeps the whole vehicle as one craft, makes the treads less likely to wander off, and greatly increases the torque they can deliver.

Unfortunately I started a new job before I could really starve to death start working on it, but now I have! tank treads are a pain in the butt to build, and janky as heck even with this new system, It's coming along though. It works as long as it's not in contact with the ground and the treads are tightened. I think it needs more spokes since right now it just kind of stretches and tangles itself up when I try to drive with it. WIP, but I thought I'd share since I feel the concept is sufficiently proven now.

You can't tell because it's a still image, but the track is tracking! the other one had some symmetry issues and unfortunately couldn't join the celebration

[Triop]

20 hours ago, SpacePixel said:

What is this, a boat with wings?

 

I made something like that once:

 

[tajwo]

Over on career mode, I did a few things, I sent two probes (aptly named Docker) and docked them with eachother. Then after that I sent Val (for a second time) to the Mun, and she returned safely. On the first time, she was barely able to leave the Mun's SOI, and was rescued about a (Kerbin) day after she was confirmed stranded.

I sent her on another mission to Minmus, but it ended up reaching the Mun instead.

I wasn't paying enough attention to the landing and she just barely touched down on the surface at a safe enough speed. I landed Val inside either the East Crater or East Farside crater, I don't remember. Then I figured I still had enough fuel to launch from the Mun, land on Minmus and come back to Kerbin. During Val's trip to Minmus she found this:

It was very enticing. A few quicksaves later I gave up trying to get inside the tear and just planted a flag next to it, called "Glitch 1". Further investigation to be done...

I ended up getting about 800 Science! from that mission, unlocked a few nodes in R&D. Verygood

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

I made an awesome ship, and then teleported it around as I made a new star system! The Excelsior system orbits 10x further than Ichor, and is a dim orange dwarf.

Periphial, an eyeball world on the edge of the Excelsior system habitable zone that is barely habitable. What life it used to have was wiped out during the big event. It is the third out of four planets, a little smaller than Kerbin. Also its heightmap is literally a modified version of Temporalis' ice cap heightmap lol, I just thought it would look good for an eyeball world like this.

 

Canite, a devastated world that is on the inner edge of the habitable zone. it was once an eyeball world filled with life around the terminator until the big event blew a massive chunk of its surface off, enough to reduce its orbit slightly making the star move retrograde in a wobbly motion in its sky. The ingame radius is 627km so the lava is down below at the level of the exposed mantle while the cliffs at the edge of the giant basin are mostly 20km near vertical cliffs. The way I made it look pretty good imo is that it uses three heightmaps, one for the basin (just.. basically two colors, black and white), the regular terrain map, which is just.. a mashed together heightmap of a normal planet overlayed onto this, and finally a crater map where the basin has none. Also, its atmosphere has mostly pooled into the basin. It does recycle two heightcolormaps from two other bodies in the estrela dobre mod, but they are shifted around so it effectivley has one heightcolormap for its exposed mantle (yea 20km down is definitley in the mantle) and one for its regular terrain. The orange light from the star it orbits makes it look the most like chocolate.

Canite's orbit is also right next to the wormhole that links the Excelsior system to the Estrela Dobre system. These wormholes are close to the center of the systems so its difficult to get to them. 

 

Edited January 25, 2023 by JcoolTheShipbuilder

[CaptainTrips86]

I got Jeb into a stable LKO for the first time. Now he's stuck up there because I only left him 58m/s of dV for a re-entry burn. But hey, 0.0060 eccentricity at 178.5km/184.9km!

[Vanamonde]

1 hour ago, CaptainTrips86 said:

I got Jeb into a stable LKO for the first time. Now he's stuck up there because I only left him 58m/s of dV for a re-entry burn. But hey, 0.0060 eccentricity at 178.5km/184.9km!

Have him get out and push, using his personal RCS. Yes, it works. 

[capi3101]

Hell, 58 m/s can get you out of orbit if you time it right...I mean, you really just have to get your Pe down below 70k. Lower than that gets you down faster, of course.

Edited January 25, 2023 by capi3101

[Triop]

Today I had enough about steering the controls with a keyboard and mouse.

I'm buying a controller tomorrow....

 

Any suggestions ?

[CaptainTrips86]

3 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Have him get out and push, using his personal RCS. Yes, it works. 

I truly had no idea. I'll be trying that tomorrow.

3 hours ago, capi3101 said:

Hell, 58 m/s can get you out of orbit if you time it right...I mean, you really just have to get your Pe down below 70k. Lower than that gets you down faster, of course.

Every retrograde burn I planned missed that threshold, sometimes by as little as 10k. Is there an ideal thrust direction for de-orbiting from a circular LKO?