What did you do in KSP1 today?

[OJT]

On 8/8/2023 at 5:37 AM, Hotel26 said:

The one remaining difficulty was in getting the nose wheel to touch down and not immediately veer the craft causing wing tip damage

Learned this one from Matt Lowne, matter of fact: toggle Friction Control of the nose gear to manual and set it to 0. It will still provide a "leg" for the aircraft to stay on, but since wheel won't have traction it won't veer the nose sideways if you happen to not land perfectly straight, making the touchdowns more controllable

[Martian Emigrant]

Hi all.

 

Today I got rid off assigned two crews to the Kerlab.

Crew 1 in Kerpollo 1 on approach.

 

Spoiler

Kerpollo 1 docked on the main docking port.

Kerpollo 2 on approach to the alternate docking port.

And the money shot.

 

ME

[Duke MelTdoWn]

Full test of the Behemoth Mining System Prototype was successful. It features many improvements over the Leviathan Heavy Miner. Payload mass for test flight was 220 tons.

Behemoth Orbital Refinery serves as the gas station on the Kerbin side. It stores up to 180 tons of ore and provides ISRU and lots of docking options. The Very Heavy Reusable Launcher was left docked to serve as fuel storage.

Leviathan II Heavy Miner concentrates all the gear necessary to land on the Mun and extract the ore. This optimizes the range of the docked Freighter. The Mark 2 has 2x Dart + 2x Nerva for improved thrust during Mun transfer and lift-off.

Leviathan II Ore Freighter can ferry 12,000 ore and 4 crew between the Mun and Kerbin. Two are provided to minimize downtime of the Miner. The Mark 2 has an additional internal passenger compartment to land two tourists on the Mun during mining trips.

Testing showed some flaws in my operational concept. I think I can reduce the launch mass considerably, the Freighters carry too much fuel. I will post the model after I incorporated the findings of the test flight.

[Duke MelTdoWn]

Huge explosions rock the Mun, visible to the naked eye

If you looked at the Mun yesterday at around 1:30 UT, you might have noticed some flashes of light. As it turned out, these were not alien signals, but an ill-fated test flight performed by Kerbal Space Center (KSC). A prototype of a "Leviathan Mk.3" ore miner crashed near the Muns equator during a landing attempt. This is a very heavy vehicle weighing up to 75 tons during the landing phase, so the explosion caused by this horrible accident was visible all the way back here on Kerbin. The impact was so great that it could be measured by seismometers placed at the Muns Poles.

The Kerbin Herald was able to obtain exclusive footage of the crash.

The lone survivor is Barlorf Kerman, a geologist. She only sustained some mild bruises after her Lander Can detached during the initial impact and slid across the Mun surface for some kilometers. KSC is currently working around the clock to retrieve her. Matrigh Kerman, Pilot, and Samburry Kerman, Flight Engineer, were lost in the crash. Samburry leaves behind a husband and two children.

The preliminary investigation by the Kerbal Transport Safety Board (KTSB) found that the accident was caused by "a lack of communication between the main contractor for the Behemoth Mining System and the subcontractor for the Mk.3 Ore Freighter module". Two of the four Nerva engines of the new Ore Freighter were moved outboard by about 30 cm compared to the old Mk. 2 version. This small change caused the exhaust to hit parts of the basically unchanged Miner below, in turn lowering the available thrust during the critical landing phase.

Walt Kerman, KSC spokesperson, told the Herald on request that this change was not communicated to KSC and not caught during integration and testing of the full Behemoth stack due to a lack of funds. "It is very hard to test engines like the Nerva, which are designed for vacuum operations, on the ground. And we would need a HUGE vacuum chamber to fit the whole Behemoth Mining System inside."

But a contact inside KSC, who likes to stay anonymous, stated that problems with the new design already became apparent when the Leviathan prototype was leaving Kerbin orbit for the Mun.

"Some temperature readings of the Inline Stabilizers of the Miner were abnormally high during the trans munar injection burn. But we decided to go forward with the burn anyways because the Thermal Control System seemed able to cope with it. It has cost us over 800 thousand to get this baby into orbit, so management wanted to finish this test flight. It occurred to nobody that this might affect our thrust levels. "

The red hot glow of the Stabilizers can be seen clearly in some frames of the TMI burn and Mun descent footage.

Dawton Kerman Aboveground Pool Company, the contractor for the Mk.3 Ore Freighter, declined to comment. A source inside DKAPC provided some background on the unfortunate redesign:

"So KSC told us to get rid of half of the fuel tanks and replace them with airbrakes. They said that they have reevaluated their mission plan and found that it does not make sense to lug all this fuel all the way from the Mun to Kerbin and back. They planned to keep the fuel for the Mun descent  in the Miner, save fuel during Kerbin arrival by more efficient aerobraking, and refuel the Freighter for return to the Mun at the Behemoth Refinery. They wanted to get the launch mass of the whole Behemoth System down so they would not need to strap on so many boosters to the VeHeReLau. Now with half the fuel tanks gone, we suddenly had a lot more room for packaging all the components of the freighter. For ladders that actually work and stuff."

"Then an intern said 'You know what, if we rotate the twelve central tanks by 90°, we can move the crew cabins closer to the dorsal and ventral Nerva. This way the tourists will not get cold on the way to the Mun and can enjoy the pretty glow from their windows.' We all thought that this was an excellent idea and made this change. We knew that this would move the port and starboard Nerva outboard a little bit, but thought it would not be a big deal."

Sergei Kerman, renowned rocket scientist, told the Herald that the whole design of the Behemoth System is flawed. "Whoever thought that it is a good idea to shoot the exhaust of the Freighter straight through the Miner stage below should reconsider now in light of recent events." He showed us pictures of his own "Kraken" system that is, according to him, much safer. "You see, in my design the exhaust goes AROUND the lower stage."

Wernher von Kerman dismissed this: "We know about the design of Sergei. We even did some preliminary testing with it at the outset of the Behemoth Program, when we were evaluating designs for the Miner stage. But we found that it introduces unnecessary bulk and complexity."

Senator Kerman questioned the usefulness of the Behemoth Program in general. "Why do we need 1000 tons of fuel in low Kerbin orbit anyways?" To this Wernher von Kerman commented: "Because we can."

Edited August 13, 2023 by Duke MelTdoWn

[ColdJ]

After weeks of the odd hour here and there I have someting for each wing of the B-52. An X-15 and a D-21.

Spoiler

 

[Watermel00n]

More plugins and parts. (and yes i'm working on something with the old firma mod)

Edited August 13, 2023 by Watermel00n

[TwoCalories]

After more than seven hours of work (not all at once) I present... the Ranger!

My version of the SSTO from Interstellar. As you can see, it doesn't have the Delta-V to SSTO... but how does it fly?

Badly. The VTOL engines can't even get it off the ground. The main engines don't have enough TWR. And I lost all my pictures. Sigghhhhhh... 

Also, there's no way I can even give this any purpose, because it has 242 parts and it'll lag the heck out of anything I fly it with.

Edited August 13, 2023 by TwoCalories

[miklkit]

Got tired of going to Jool and Moho with no margin for error and started messing with low tech and cleaning up old designs.  This MK1 with Whiplash and Wolfhound does well.

This is a new design of MK2 rover carrier with tail gate that is cleaner and more efficient than older designs.

[Krazy1]

1 hour ago, TwoCalories said:

As you can see

Nope... bad link.

I did some bug reporting for a cargo bay mod and now I'm doing my homework. I didn't know NASA actually did multi-pass aerobraking on Mars. 

[Selective Genius]

I tried KSP after quite a while, resuming my save where I left it. I had almost forgotten all the missions my Kerbals were up to. 2 missions to Duna, one to Ike, A crewed mission to Sarvin... Instead of completing my backlog of missions, I instead built this big boy..

I launched this Fresnel rocket in a single launch, but for the life of me I can't figure out what to do with it. It's waayyyyyy too overpowered. The huge bulbous tank at the front end is a LH2 tank, which is only a quarter full. The smaller spheres are Deuterium-He3 fuel tanks. All but two are empty, and thosse tanks has only a very limited amount of the fuel. With its tanks full, with a 200 ton payload, it has a lot of of delta V

I am at a loss as to what I should use this for. Any ideas?

Spoiler

The launch of the Fresnel rocket. The spaceship was hauled out of the atmosphere with SRBs, and when in the upper atmosphere, the spaceship made it to orbit on its own power.

 

[RevanX_LSR]

Let's kick off the new hundred of posts with this. Almost at 100 rep too. Sorry for ruining the 200/100 opportunity.

Anyway...

A probe to Heyu - LSR

A very simplified mission of the crewed landing mission i planned a while back. I'll split this into multiple parts.

MODS:

Linbol System Rebirth, EVE, Scatterer (questionable compatibility)

DEPENDENCIES:

Kopernicus, Module manager, Modular Flight Integrator, Texture Replacer, Kronometer

 

Our goal for today is to launch an unmanned Ion Probe to one of the gas giant's moons Heyu, which is a moon orbiting very close to the gas giant 111000. None of the gas giants have proper names yet, and in fact none of the bodies we will be using for gravity assists (e.g. entering the SOI but not studying) have non-provisional names. Heyu has an atmosphere, making landings unfeasible. The entire mod is in 2.5x (JNSQ) scale. I will not spoil the rest.

Part 1: Orbit

We start out on Revan with a 300 ton rocket that will lift us to orbit, as well as a 25 ton transfer stage.

(I forgot to install scatterer)

Open the Spoiler to continue reading

Spoiler

Radius: 2000km

Surface G: 1.38

Pressure ASL: 2.90 Atm

Orbital Velocity: 5000m/s

DV to orbit: 7500m/s

The craft, now at 5000 meters, has rolled to face the right direction (the KSC is not in its usual position to make SSTOs more challenging, if they are even possible), and the first stage is almost out of fuel.

A rather asymmetric and spectactular staging event. The TWR has been compromised but the lower pressures allow the stage to continue accelerating. Altitude: 9km

As the altitude of the craft increases, the pressure decreases extremely rapidly, and the craft starts a Gravity Turn. Altitude: 17km

Past Max-Q already at 30 kilometers. The shoreline is very visible now.

Passing over Welcome Back Lake (in space already) at almost Kerbin's orbital speed. It's more like "good luck lake" imo. The lake would span from, roughly, the KSC to the round island to the NE of the KSC were it to be placed in Kerbin.

We go for a very steep trajectory as the transfer stage is also needed to circularise. It has a TWR of just 0.19. The brown marble Canyon is setting.

Stage separation. Velocity: 2000m/s

Welcome Back Lake looks so small from here. Separation of the Second Stage. The third stage is a NERV powered rocket that will take us the rest of the way to orbit, and for interplanetary transfer. Velocity: 4000m/s, comparable to JNSQ Kerbin orbital velocity.

Apoapsis of 182,000m.

Finally, the first signs of light appear.

Orbit finally achieved after 11 minutes.

Sunrise for real this time.

PART 2 COMING VERY SOON! In part 2 I will cover the entire transfer all the way to Heyu, featuring a multitude of Gravity Assists.

Edited August 14, 2023 by JNSQFan
nicer formatting

[RevanX_LSR]

A Probe to Heyu (LSR) - Part 2 - The Complicated Transfer

https://spacedock.info/mod/3434/Linbol System Rebirth

This is the last of three periapsis kicks.

Content continues behind the spoilers.

Spoiler

This may look complicated, but we are currently en-route to our first gravity assist target, 106000. It's a super earth 18 times heavier than JNSQ Kerbin, which will take us almost all the way to 111000 (the far-out blue orbit line planet). Its highlited in yellow, the orange orbit is  our spacecraft and the third planet (ignoring the grey orbits) is Revan.

Transfer stage out during a maneuver. The transfer was crazy inefficient and direct transfer would be way faster, but it's good practice. The probe has 26000 charge, 11.4km/s delta v and has nearly a hundred parts (symmetry abuse). Its 8 ions only give it 0.03 twr. It can burn for 6 minutes before needing the RTG to recharge.

The sheer size of 106000 comes into view. If it was replaced with the STOCK kerbin, this would be beyond minmus, almost out of Kerbin SOI! BTW, the SOI of 106000 is about 1 million km, half of Jool.

From a close, the rugged terrain appears. There are numerous tiny hills along streaks, and there are some huge standalone mountains (look at the one near the center of the planet)! in the mountain ranges that stretch up to 35km. For comparison, the atmosphere is 55km.

The resulting orbit takes us into a gravity assist of the second gas planet 110000, which will bring us all the way to 111000.

This is from 3 million km away. The gas planet is eight times as massive as Jool and has 2 very large moons (a super earth and a gas planet) both not visible here.

Arrival at 111000. It orbits where you would expect Saturn to and has a slightly slanted set of rings. The black dot to the left is Heyu, of course, in the shadow of 111000.

Heyu setting. Closest approach to 111000.

The rings of 111000.

The first flyby of Heyu, after nearly 200 years of travelling.

See you soon in part 3, where we do the flybys and return. We currently have less than 5km/s delta-v due to inefficient transfers.

Edited August 14, 2023 by JNSQFan
nicer formatting

[RevanX_LSR]

A Probe to Heyu (LSR) - Part 3 - The Flyby and Return

https://discord.com/invite/MfNSkn3u

Heyu - 1440km, 0.33G

This is the last of the 3 parts. In this part we will take a close look at Heyu and return, hopefully to a elliptical Revan Orbit.

Spoiler

The first flyby occurs on the dark side, just above the atmosphere which starts at 85km.

It almost looks like Saturn. Dont question the way the rings are lit. It's a sun angling thing, these things are thick!

(Sorry if it appears blurry). The second flyby brings us down to the lowest orbit we will achieve around this planet.

From this altitude, it reveals liquid water and huge mountains and cliffs! It almost looks like a mix of Hadrian and Tellumo.

Our ninth and last Heyu flyby. This one got us out of the system and into a 1:2 resonant orbit with 111000.

Heyu is visible one last time. Goodbye 111000!

Even with the discolored oceans, Revan looks stunning with clouds and scatterer.

The first flyby lowers the relative speed significantly. From here, a storm is visible!

The first flyby gets us on course to conduct the second flyby.

The second flyby. I considered the mission a success as we successfully reached Heyu.

That's it! I considered this mission one of my greatest achievements yet, given I haven't had the time to go beyond duna ever. It took 3 hours to pilot and another 2 hours to create these posts. With LSR becoming more playable, I hope to do more of this again.

 

[Hotel26]

I stripped down a Rhino/Boar combination lifter to create a light/medium-weight lifter called Rhino, that is equipped for deep space and can be used as a transfer booster.  It was not intended to be recoverable since it can be re-used in space and is not likely to ever want to come down.

I built X-Rhino today anyway to see how to recover a Rhino engine with 2x S3-14400 tanks.

Spoiler

It touches down with 4 chutes at around 16 m/s, but the bicycle landing gear takes the blow.

(Ah yes: no water landings, though, please!)

But I didn't really want to dedicate the landing gear and a bunch of chutes to a craft that will most likely remain in space.  [Although ... only 1.3t]

OK, so crazy idea!    Tandem:

Spoiler

Tandem in the VAB -- just a couple of very ugly, steam-powered devices in a fairing:

 

Fly them to your vehicle to be recovered.  Attach them to two likely points on the belly of your vee-hickle.

 

Detach the chute component and go attach them to the top of the craft -- looks ugly enough now?:

 

Purge the MP and then perform the re-entry.  Plenty of chutes so the idea is that you can cut a chute, one at a time, from the end that is riding high until you get even keel. 

Just before touch-down:

 

Lost a fin and that is all.  Everything else intact including the underbelly stanchion devices that took the punch...

Worked first re-entry and no one more amazed than me.  I'm going to make an appointment with a shrink doctor next...

And here's a bonus shot from the X-Rhino low-altitude testing -- I call it "Stars and Stripe":

Spoiler

I unloaded the SRBs early and they went on ahead to play by themselves.

And while I am here, with a hat-tip to @Martian Emigrant: Kerpollo approaches its first docking with Kerlab.

Spoiler

 

Edited August 15, 2023 by Hotel26

[Duke MelTdoWn]

"Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you; His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron."

So after a small hiccup, the Behemoth Program is back on track. They found a scapegoat at DKAPC, and the fat senator was bought off with some tickets for the inauguration of the tourist flights. 

I am proud - despite the unwarranted negative press - to present to you:

'Behemoth' Mining System

This integrated Miner/Freighter/Refinery system enables you to refuel even the largest ships in Kerbin orbit with ore brought back from the Mun.
This can greatly reduce the launch mass and cost of huge interplanetary stacks like Maia and Pannychis.
Launch them without propellant load and then refuel in low orbit after docking with the Orbital Refinery component.
As a bonus, crew compartments on the two Ore Freighters allow tourists to hitch a ride to the Mun surface and back in regular intervals.

2x Leviathan Mk.3 Freighter + Leviathan Mk.2 Miner + Behemoth Refinery + Very Heavy Reusable Launcher III
Payload Mass (launch confguration): 195 tons (down from 220 tons of the Mk.2 configuration)
Price: 512,235

Total launch mass incl. VeHeReLau III launcher: 1181t
Total price: 849,469

The Behemoth System consists of the following modules:

Leviathan Mk.3 Ore Freighter can ferry 12,000 ore and 6 crew between the Mun and Kerbin. Two are provided to minimize downtime of the Miner.

Leviathan Mk.2 Heavy Miner concentrates all the gear necessary to land on the Mun and extract the ore. This optimizes the range of the docked Freighter. High powered engines keep the burn times during Mun transfer and Mun ascent low.

Behemoth Orbital Refinery serves as the gas station on the Kerbin side. It stores up to 180 tons of ore and provides ISRU and lots of docking options.

The VeHeReLau III launcher can be left attached to the refinery to serve as additional fuel storage (62k LF and 76k OX). Or it can be recovered for ~235,000 back at KSC.

More pictures and detailed operational instructions in workshop.

 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3020149140

Edit: KerbalX page now also has nice operational concept, with pictures.

 https://kerbalx.com/Meltdown/Behemoth-Mining-System

Edited August 14, 2023 by Duke MelTdoWn

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey all Kerbonauts.

 

Started a new career and posting a mission report about it.

Space Is Dangerous, A new career without a single Kerbaled mission

 

 

The plan is to complete all upgrades to the KSC, get all the devices science can buy, without having a single Kerbal (Or pony) risking his simulated life.

So far a sounding rocket as reached space.

 

Next to orbit something.

 

ME

 

[Toaster355]

I've recently gotten back into KSP, so I launched a Starship to orbit in KSRSS. Nothing interesting.

[Watermel00n]

*hint hint*

\

*hint hint*

[Duke MelTdoWn]

"It is so large that all the asas, with their weapons and war-gear, can find room on board it."

As an improvement over 'Sleipnir', I built a small SSTO that can get 8 Kerbals and a lot of cargo to the Mun or Minmus. It also features an additional shielded Clamp-O-Tron for easier docking.

'Skidbladner' Short Range Shuttle

2x Rapier
Delta-v: ~ 1600 m/s left after insertion into 75x75 km Kerbin orbit
TWR: 1.58 in low Kerbin orbit
Launch Mass: 33.3 tons
Price: 55,475
Crew capacity: 8
Cargo capacity: 2x 650 L + 2x 200 L
Science: 3 Experiment Storage
Docking: 1x Clamp-O-Tron, 1x Jr. port, RCS

Aerodynamics turned out fine, I had no problem landing this back at KSC.

This is useful to ferry tourists, cargo and science from and to a 'Behemoth' Orbital Refinery in low Kerbin orbit. From there the tourists can hitch a ride to the surface of the Mun and back on board one of the Ore Freighters.

KerbalX: https://kerbalx.com/Meltdown/Skidbladner-Short-Range-Shuttle

Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3021720905

Meltdowns Reusable Launchers

[IncompetentSpacer]

Restarted for 3rd (or was it 4th?) time my RP-1 career in KSP1.

The difference compared to prior versions of the RP-1 mod is that career mode is drastically changed with it being bit more alike the one you can find in BARIS.

My first rocket, intended for breaching Karman line is perhaps bit too heavy and I have wasted many months extra  and LOT of money (almost all of it) in order to build an Launch Complex which can build the rocket.  I am hoping to regain the lost time with higher flexibility of the design and having an LC which can be reused. .

 

Campaign continues in the next post here...

Edited August 20, 2023 by IncompetentSpacer

[Toaster355]

Did some more interesting things today; I caught a Starship yesterday (please don't crucify me) and flew a crewed Starship by the Moon today.
(I took a really unhealthy amount of screenshots, so be ready lol. KSRSS, TUFX, and SEP just look so friggin good together )

 

Spoiler

Starship Being Caught ^

Spoiler

First time trying out the Starship Depot too













Venus making a nice cameo ^



Saturn making a nice cameo too ^










Landing somewhere in southern India because I am a skill issue at landing back at the KSC from interplanetary trips 

Moon Flyby Mission ^

Edited August 20, 2023 by Toaster355
Typos, and adding some more descriptions to some pics

[Watermel00n]

Checking out the new clouds for LSR...

[RevanX_LSR]

50 minutes ago, Watermel00n said:

Checking out the new clouds for LSR...

The EVE clouds have been fixed in 0.9.1. I think the 16K clouds are a great but data-increasing addition, i would probably create a separate download for them starting 1.0. still sorting out scatterer

Revan has 3 cloud layers at 5,14 and 29km. The main clouds are at 14km but there are some storms at other altitudes though. The 29km clouds are made of tiny ice crystals and are faint.

Vera has one cloud layer at 7km.

Also,  you forgot to invert the ring

 

Edited August 20, 2023 by RevanX_LSR

[GDJ]

Ran KSP1 on a "new" rig that I got for free.

-Lenovo M series Thinkcenter
-4th gen i5-4670 processor with intel 4600 graphics
-I dumped in a few parts (WI-FI 6 PCIe card, 16 gigs DDR3 RAM, Samsung 870 EVO SSD) and did some cleaning and repasting.

It's a whole lot jammier than the old 2012 Mac Mini (3rd gen dual core i5, intel 4000 graphics) but it's a stepping stone for the potential new build or I will be dishing $$$ out a base model M2 Mac Studio (more than enough horsepower for my needs, KSP2 or otherwise).

I think the only thing I will do with the Lenovo is install a i7-4790 processor, maybe a graphics card (around 6 gigs DDR5) and that will be it. At least some of the parts I can use for a new motherboard that is 13th gen compatible if I choose that route.

EDIT: I already know that KSP2 has not been ported to Mac OS, so lets throw that out of the discussion.
I'm considering a long term solution for my computing needs, and if KSP2 is in the Mac world, great! If not, I have alternatives.

Edited August 20, 2023 by GDJ

[Akagi]

I attempted to set up my Thrustmaster joystick to use in KSP.

Current casualty count: 129 130

Flight roster:

128 seat space tourism crashed into Kerbin

Hiryuu Kerman crashed into Oxygen Tank

Macden Kerman crashed into Administration

Edited August 20, 2023 by Akagi
hey llok new pg