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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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I have recreated the space station depicted in the album cover of Blue Öyster Cult's Club Ninja (see image below), sent it to LKO after two failed attempts (and more boosters), and posted it on KerbalX.

 

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  • Source: Wikipedia
  • Shuttles were not included in this test run.

 

Now that you all know what I was aiming for, here's how it turned out.

 

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  • The Club Ninja at 300 km altitude with a 45-degree inclination.
    • The delivery rockets still had ~2700 m/s of delta-V left before detachment.
      • A subsequent test run proved that the rockets would have at least 2,800 m/s left if launched at an orbit half that altitude and at 0 degrees inclination. Plenty of fuel to get to Ike.
  • I installed support beams at the center of the curve so that it didn't wobble and break off during liftoff.
    • Whoever drew that album cover must have rejected the idea of the entire station being sent in one launch - or was too drunk/high to remember supports.
  • Honestly, I'm surprised nobody else built this already. 

 

Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/Mars-Bound_Hokie/Club-Ninja

I guess I'll see ya "Dancin' in the Ruins" tonight

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The first Minmus orbiter is launched. Jeb and Bob light the candle.

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Spoiler

Booster separation, Fairing separation and LES jettison happen within seconds of each other.

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The improved second stage delivers us to orbit with only needing 35 m/s to circularize.

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We get the science at Minmus and head back to Kerbin.

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Spoiler

That was.... close.

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Today, the second part of the mission to investigate Moho was sent on its way. The "Hot Shots part deux" mission will extend the original "Hot Shots" mission (which consisted of a lander and a rover) with:

  • A science and refuelling station with comfortable living accommodations and a grabbing adaptor that will allow the station to refuel and reuse some of the existing infrastructure that is already in orbit about Moho.xc3TqTZ.jpg
     
  • An ore harvester which will land on Moho and refine fuel and is carrying an additional set of communication satellites.tza1nul.jpg 
  • Two tankers that will carry the refined fuel from the harvester to the station.WynUNGC.jpg

These components, along with the six brave kerbals, will allow more science to be wrung out of the nearest planet to Kerbol and the return to Kerbin of the reusable components from both of the missions.

The departure was complicated by the narrowness of the Moho transfer window and the low thrust of the vessels, requiring burn sequences that overlapped each other. But the result is that each vessel has over 4000m/s of deltaV which exceeds the amount needed to capture at Moho (about 1800m/s) by a  wide safety margin. The inline boosters that helped improve the ejection burns have been successfully decelerated and will begin the slow process of returning to the Mun refuelling buoys so that they can be reused.

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Spoiler contains some non-action views

Spoiler

Close up view of Moho station

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Close up view of the ore harvester

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Close up view of the tankers

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Had to revert a couple iterations, but finally got one that is reasonably balanced and stable. The weak-jointed hinges mean the wings do a lot of flexing on high-G turns, but they stay on and don't start flapping autonomously. I just can't seem to tweak any further without causing side effects. So this will have to do.

img%5D

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Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/Bell-X-5-Mk1b

 

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Some images of wip planets!
The cluster has been named "Everoth"!


Prixos, Solis, Pagos, Bink, and Bonk! Solis doesnt have its own heightmap (uses Prixos') and I need to redo the atmo calculations as I broke the atmocalculator n stuff, then realized I may have been doing something wrong n stuff by not moving the 'homeworld' SMA value despite it apparently not being needed. But its just for Pythros and Arcturus systems,

Prixos, the closest planet to Pythros, it has lakes and rivers of liquid lead. it is already quite close to Pythros and its surprisingly not that hot being this close, so.. just some molten lead n stuff!
YDrCfwS.png

 

And here is Solis!

arguably one of if not the most colorful and oddly beautiful planets in the Everoth cluster, it is a chthonian planet that had its gas layers stripped off as Arcturus brightened briefly during the merge. Afterwards, the vaporized bismuth rained all over the planet, giving it one of the most unique colors in the star cluster! Probably the most exotic planet I have made... huge, high gravity, covered in a thin layer of a very colorful metal n stuff.
Gsfrk3v.png

 

I also added the first moon of Glacios, Pagos, it is a little bigger than Duna no atmosphere, very icy, orbits near the rings.

cNpIuMc.png

The colors are actually fairly light, but it gets barely any light due to its distance from Epafi and Adactus

Also Bink and Bonk now have their own heightmaps n stuff! Bink and Bonk are.. the fourth planet in the Pythros system.. idk if I should call this system of two bodies as "the fourth planet" or call them "the fourth and fifth planets", which is a similar thing I have issues with Collait and Culair, but Collait is the dominant body, however Bink and Bonk are identical in size and mass.
e2M43fJ.png

I got the textures to work via the heightColorMap by disabling all 16 oblong maps (yes I split the oblong maps into 16 separate maps and blurred them and applied them to the planets to pretty much remove stepping), and having jsut the heightcolormap and the actual terrain map enabled n stuff, getting the textures, generating normal from the heightmap textures, applying them, reenabling everything (using vertexColorMap with the colormap that was generated, heightColorMap will not like these two)
Bink and Bonk can be seen noticeably rotating in realtime, however due to how the game works (and basic calculations of the system as a whole), I determined that there would still be gravity on the tips, but ingame I had to ramp up the gravity of both bodies to simulate this. Also these are very close to being contact binary, but I am fairly sure the game would just... die if I actually attempted it..

 

 

 

Edited by JcoolTheShipbuilder
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The second attempt at going to Duna is launched

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Spoiler

Booster sep.

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Second stage sep and startup.

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And fairing deploy.

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Trans Duna injection burn

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In cruise mode.

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  And capture at Duna,

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Waiting on a decision to go for Ike orbit or stay in orbit and act as a relay.

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On a whim, I decided to experiment with air launch. Perhaps, I thought, it would be able to streamline launch operations with the use of FMRS, and if nothing else, it would at least provide a significant dose of cool factor - I think a paragliding, air-launched gemini-esque spacecraft really hits the sweet spot.

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Spoiler

For my first attempt, I strapped an abbreviated launcher I quickly put together on the back of a relatively standard cargo aircraft design I had lying around.

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Understandably, considering the hefty, fully fueled payload strapped on its back, the carrier aircraft didn't perform so well. After barely getting off the runway, it took constant coaxing all the way up to about half of the desired launch altitude of 20 km, where it refused to go further while threatening to stall out at any second. Obviously, the payload fell short of reaching orbit.

So, back to the drawing board. Since the carrier aircraft underperformed, I figured that was the root of the problem, and created a new carrier design completely from scratch - leading to the creation of the most part-heavy single craft I have ever created, with a whopping 380 parts. Rookie numbers in the grand scheme of things, but probably not healthy for my poor little MacBook.

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It flies!

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...until the Kraken strikes. Perhaps I shouldn't have clipped five wings into each other... whoops, back to the drawing board  :rolleyes:

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Let's try that again:

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Fun stuff.

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Spectacular.

After plenty of tweaking, including painfully switching the autostrut mode to grandparent on every. single. part, it actually turned out to be quite the flyable plane.

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Six goliath engines might be overkill when the carrier's empty, but considering its application, probably not.

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Yes, it's diving at supersonic speeds.

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Yep, it survived that supersonic dive.

With the carrier proven, it's time to strap on the payload and take to the skies.

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Not much resistance at all this time, though it did put up a hearty struggle when I tried to pitch it up at the 20 km launch altitude. However, the fact that it can still manage to pull that maneuver off is more surprising to me.

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It was a cool launch sequence, but the air-launched payload ultimately didn't reach orbit. I would have continued to refine these two craft, if not for the fact that the lag from the sheer part count was starting to catch up to me - I prefer more than 10 frames per second, thank you very much. So while this project ultimately got nowhere, at least I have a cool plane to boot.

Spoiler

Sidenote: I tried painting the carrier plane with flags... yeah, that didn't end too well.

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778 parts, most of it from the little black line bordering the gray section, based off of the old C-5 Galaxy livery.

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And... it corrupted. Yeah, that was tempting fate right there. Oh well.

 

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
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On 2/4/2023 at 2:34 PM, swjr-swis said:

Sigh.

 

I really, really, *really* dislike stock robotics parts...

 

That is one of the most hilarious things I've seen in a while.

In an alternate universe this is how the Wright Flyer worked and how their modern 787s still fly. XD

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My 1.12 career continued to progress, with the 2nd manned Mun & Minmus landings.  Jeb performed an unauthorized maneuver, slinging his capsule out into kerbolar orbit before returning. 

Kelrik gathering a greenstone to bring home while Jeb keeps the lander warmed up

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Val & Ambera plant a flag on Mun

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Testing a miniature Mun rover before sending it off to space

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The second attempt landed safely and did some exploration before having to stop to recharge it's batteries.  The first attempt suffered an unexplained structural failure & exploded near the Mun's surface (ie a clipped part reacted..... poorly when I staged away the transfer stage during descent)

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We also started providing rescue services to other space programs operating somewhat recklessly around the globe, using a shorter ranged version of the Dawngrazer multipurpose vehicle, repainted in red & white "rescue" livery.

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I tried the niftynebula mod for the first time! it was awesome for the few seconds I saw it in map view before the game completely ground to a halt and crashed due to some other program breaking the game!
it was nortion security.... deleting the .dll plugin file of the mod while the game was running, causing it to crash..

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