What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Kerbalsaurus]

8 hours ago, N_Danger said:

I blew things up.

Isn’t that the only way to do things?

[N_Danger]

Moved the Jennah lander into low orbit for landing.

I just missed a hill on the way down

Landing number 1.

Gathered some science and pictures and then few off 2 KM to a different biome. Landed a second time.

And gathered more science.

 

[Thingymajigy]

KSP speed record for a conventional helicopter in sustained level flight

 

[Kimera Industries]

2 hours ago, Thingymajigy said:

KSP speed record for a conventional helicopter in sustained level flight

You ever heard the song from Turbo? About the super fast snail?

"That chopper's fast, that chopper's fast, that chopper's really fast fast fast!"

(I also saw the "conventional" bit just now. Nice chopper, looks good.)

[Kerballlistic07]

Technically yesterday but it was in the last 24 hours so it counts 

I posted about it on the forums a couple days ago but decided to make a video! 

[Kimera Industries]

It's not KSP, but I saw the Psyche launch live! My friend was shocked that SpaceX could land boosters like that and there is something so cool about seeing them touchdown one after the other. My friend said it's like concept art for the future where they show two rockets landing, one in the foreground and the other in the background. I agree.

If you want to make this mission yourself, check this post out!

[Krazy1]

Last few days... The tourists and stray Kerbals were returned from Mun and Minmus. First attempt gathered valuable thermal data... but everyone died. 

Then everyone lived... except I forgot to put any engines on the reentry ship, so I took it down to 81/81 km orbit at low thrust so it didn't break away and then used its RCS to get it down. 

Spoiler

Today 2 satellites were launched from Y. Gagarin for contracts. First was a telescope, to > 200 km orbit.

Spoiler

Second was placed in a Kolniya orbit with larger relay dish so it could be put on a solar orbit later. Both launches experienced ~10 second radio dropout right at booster sep. Some bug I guess. I have plasma blackout on but there was no plasma. It doesn't do that launching from KSC. The Kolniya launch was a bit dangerous... to avoid going above 160 km PE at the north, I coasted almost 1 minute past ascent AP still 500 m/s below orbital speed. All good.

Spoiler

I also reran the Class I asteroid rendezvous but I need to upload the video later.

[The epic chicken]

Did a short formation flight.

And afterwards at the ksc.

I think the aeroplanes are plotting something... either that or they're complaining about the f22 and su57 causing raucous with power drills and french rafales.

 

[space_otter]

After taking a bit of a break from KSP, I decided to continue with my JNSQ save. I launched a small polar satellite with ScanSat units and got 80 science points and 100,000 funds from the ScanSat contracts. However, this mission was really only intended to test out the new Atlas V launch vehicle, which I just unlocked. The launch itself was a 412 (4m fairing, 1 SRB, 2 RL-10s) Had about 4500 m/s left after reaching a 250km orbit.  

Just after SRB separation, about 40km up.

[Kimera Industries]

I saw the eclipse! It wasn't the full thing, but at max, it was about 70-80% covered. The cloud layer was just right so we could look directly at it! In other news, my recreation of the Psyche mission is going OK. Little did I know that asteroid hunting would be so hard, but that's for another time. Here's what I posted on the Psyche Recreation thread: 

For posterity, I present:

Making the Psyche Mission: Episode 1

Cursed Robotics Out of Scale

In making Psyche, I decided to start with the probe itself. Placing a probe core, I surrounded it with structural panels and filled my new box with batteries and some small xenon tanks. Psyche has 4 Hal Effect thrusters, placed at angles so each is pointing through the CoM. The Dawn engine is too big to have 4 at this scale, and I don't need the redundancy anyway. To maintain some semblance of accuracy in the matter, I chose to have two engines. Since I would only really use one at a time, since the fact that they are angled means I would lose dv if I used both, I created action groups to toggle them and docking ports so I could control from the center of thrust. Next, I added "greebles" to the exterior, meant to be the cameras, star trackers, etc. Psyche has two "horns" that are scientific instruments held away from the craft via struts, then covered in insulation. (It looks like foil but it actually isn't) You can see it in the pictures. Anyway, I made those with science bits (this isn't all aesthetic) and triangular structural panels. Next, DSOC: Deep Space Optical Communications. I just wanted the look of the thing, so I used two magnetometers for the cylinder and SP for the base. I added an antenna dish, and we were done.  

Except for the solar panels- oh, the solar panels.

Psyche (and JUICE) use plus-shaped solar panels. None of the deployable panels in stock KSP come close, and I haven't found any mods with one either. So I would make my own deployable panels with DLC hinges and static panels. Two large OX-Stats clipped side by side made the right rectangular shape, so I mounted them on a small SP and added hinges and more "panels." I got it to look visually correct, and it could unfold normally- but the panels all clipped through each other. I decided to make a KAL sequence to get a cooler-looking deployment, and the problems began. Whenever the craft loaded in, the folded panels would stay in place, while the hinge connecting it to the craft rotated 90 degrees, in its fully deployed position. Attempting to deploy the panel results in the final thing being 90 degrees from where it should be. I discovered that if I rotated the entire assembly 90 degrees the other way, then it would load in normally. I figured this would be the best I'd get, so I put the array on Psyche. Suddenly, the problems vanished.

Frustrating, and something I've seen a million times before: Problems with DLC hinges, spending several hours crying and diagnosing the problem, and discovering that the solution is stupidly simple. RIP Starship with moving flaps...

I tested out the fully assembled craft (well, mostly) and then

It was this moment

He realized

He messed up

The solar array is all out of scale! It's too small! Way too small! Okay, it's not that bad, but to me, who has spent several hours in the last week on the Psyche website, it's a glaring mistake. Rather than make the solar arrays bigger, which would mean more panel clipping than I was already doing, and redoing the robotics, (which I hope never to have to do again) I decided it would be much simpler to redo Psyche itself but smaller. Instead of 1.8m SPs, I would do only 1.2m ones. The only problem I think I'll have is the Ions being a bit big, and I'll have to figure out a new antenna dish. 

Well, that's all for now, except for the fact that my PC crashed and I lost all the data, meaning I'll have to restart.

Psych!

Edited October 16, 2023 by Kimera Industries

[FahmiRBLX]

Not really today but very recently actually. After finally purchasing KSP after the last time I played 3 years ago.

Sent this tiny ahh shuttle to LKO, realized there's a tiny little space I could use to put up a microsatellite, so I did. Then I put Clamp O-Tron Jr on the microsatellite (in a separate launch, not pictured), realized the microsat isn't on a stable orbit, tried docking my shuttle to it in hopes of boosting it to a higher orbit & failed. I did read somewhere you could dock certain smaller Clamp O-Trons together but I forgot which combination worked.

I mean I don't really do spaceflights that often. 4 years of me playing KSP plus more than 10 years of watching KSP on YT is just about everything atmospheric flight.

Plus I didn't place RCS properly (I put nozzles at the very end of everything without even checking CoM so... )

Then after some while I decided to pull the plug on "putting all 3 stuff into orbit" & decided to leave the microsat's orbit to decay & deorbited the upper stage & shuttle.

I was looking to land the shuttle back in KSC but I deorbited too early (stupid me) so I diverted to Desert Airfield...

... in which I re-entered too erly & landed short of it.

Speaking of atmospheric flight I mounted every single large BDA radar on my L-50 airliner...

... which I rewinged it with B9 Procedural Wings.

And for those who forgot what this is, this is essentially the oldest plane in my entire save from 1.1 to 1.12.5. It went through a lot of reiterations from Pure Stock, clipping haven wings & probably a comical double decker configuration to having jettisonable fuel capabilities & rotating beacons & finally a revamped wing. And for the first time ever it got modded wings.

Earlier this plane glide-tested an earlier version of my shuttle earlier in this post. Hence the Structural Pylon behind the pylon & Structural Tube + Tweakscaled Aerodynamic Nose Cone that housed BDA's TWS Radar. I clipped wings into BDA AWACS radar to simulate CoL changes & basically to 'cheat' some lift-generating ability in. I later put 50 cal turrets around it & a Goalkeeper Mk2 CIWS & turned it into some giga-AWACS (1st pic).

So here's the plane carrying the shuttle.

Wingflex ftw

Yeah I tried to recreate the photo of the 747 SCA releasing Enterprise for a glide test

But the I realized this rendition of the shuttle went away from its original purpose. It's meant to fit inside large fairings & not simply becoming a proper glider. Hence came its delta-winged, shorter wingspan sibling.

Speaking about this testbed, a bit earlier than that is me mounting the Dudley engine from Near Future Aero on the #2 position. An that's before I changed the fuselage from passenger cabins to the cargo bays.

I clipped the Goliath to the front of NF Aero's 2.5m engine nacelle to avoid putting NF's odd-looking subsonic intake with maintenance-nightmare lots of narrow-chord fan blades. So basically some poor man's attempt at an actual GE90-115B out of the stock Trent 800 & modded... GE90-115B from 2077.

Edited October 17, 2023 by FahmiRBLX

[Kimera Industries]

To keep up-to-date with my Psyche recreation episodes as they come out, check out the original post here.

For posterity, I present:

Making the Psyche Mission: Episode 2

Miniaturizing and Asteroid Hunting

Making a scaled-down version of Psyche was much the same as making the original, of course, with the benefit of hindsight, I could streamline it more. Packed full of batteries (the solar panels provide enough charge but just in case) and adding some monoprop tanks for the cold gas thrusters, (I forgot to add the RCS itself but I'll do that later) I actually like the scaled-down version better than my original. There's more to add but I'll do that later. Then, I slapped together a quick probe with a telescope and got to work mapping asteroids.

Turns out that asteroids in KSP are extremely unrealistic as far as orbits go. Nearly all of them have orbits that intersect with Kerbin, frequently. If the Kerbol (Kerbolar?) System is anywhere as old as ours, then asteroids with orbits that intersect with a planet's so frequently would impact, become a moon, burn up, break into rings, and be filtered out of the population of asteroids in general. Kerbin should be a wasteland with all the near-Kerbin asteroids it has. No wonder about the big crater, then. In reality, they should mostly be between Duna and Jool, as that is where the biggest gap between the orbits is and also where the analog of Ceres is, Dres. This made finding an accurate stand-in for 16 Psyche rather difficult, as far fewer asteroids spawn in the orbit of Duna, and of course, all asteroids by Dres are part of the Dres-teroid ring.

After an hour of searching, I found an asteroid whose orbit did not take it past Jool, and that didn't intersect Duna's. I built in the ability to grab another asteroid into this probe, so I rendezvoused, grabbed it, and renamed the asteroid. As far as I know, this is the only way to rename an asteroid. I'm using cheats, but since I am not altering the orbits of the asteroids in any way and this is only to find a suitable one and name it 16 Psyche, I'm ok with it. If you choose to do so with your attempt, feel free. At the last second, I decided its orbit was too close to Duna's. (It did not cross the inside of Duna's orbit but if you zoomed out it looked like it was right on top of it.) More searching, and finally, I found it! Its orbit is visibly apart from Duna's, and its distance from the orbit of the red planet means a Duna gravity assist might actually help me out.  I had already named the previous asteroid 16 Psyche, so after I renamed the new one, I went back to the old one and called it 40 Mothball. Not quite sure where the name came from but I went with it. (Perhaps it can be a secondary target after 16 Psyche.)

Oh, I named my asteroid exploration craft Psyche-ologist. Not the main focus but just as important all the same.

[FahmiRBLX]

And today I tried to make my L-50 perform better without using too many mods so I came up with my L-51.

A trijet. Not exactly every real life airline's favorite but whatever.

Got rid of one Goliath, Tweakscaled the remaining three, added lights, slightly reduced the sweep angle, got a simpler 3-bogie MLG, bumped up the graphics & bam. That 6-passenger cabin stretch? Well assume that's secondary because I want to make sure the larger variant performs well before I begin making a shrunken variant.

Squad pls make the lights brighte- Nevermind no more update after 1.12.5

After taking the pic, I nosedived it, severed the tail & engine #2 & landed with only the pylon for Engine #2....

... and broke more stuff along the way.

.... and then accidentally killed Jeb & The Original Four.

SoI loaded my quicksave where I left my giga-AWACS L-50 flying (which is my most recent quicksave with all the Original Four alive) & landed it back at KSC.

Wikipedia ahh pic

Then I did a photoshoot with the GigaAWACS, L-50-70 & L-51-30.

I think everyone's confused at this point which one's the L-50 & which one's the L-51.

The L-50 series is the 4-engined one. All the 4-engined planes you see in there is the L-50. The L-51 is the 3-engined one; the one that's starting up in the above pic.

[Kimera Industries]

Today I changed my profile picture for the forum. 

This is the PrOP-M. It was a Russian Mars rover carried aboard Mars 2 and Mars 3. Supposedly, a PrOP-M was also carried aboard Mars 6 and 7. Every one of these vehicles crashed, failed shortly after landing, or coasted by the planet and missed entirely, so the PrOP-M never got to rove on Mars or was even deployed. It is the only exception to wheeled rovers.

I also find it incredibly funny and cute- look at it! I'm torn between Sojourner and this little guy!

Here's another gif- these little guys were the size of shoeboxes! I love them!

Edited October 21, 2023 by Kimera Industries
MOAR pics

[miklkit]

The Kraken just got too intense and I abandoned Dres base.  Went there for a routine crew rotation and a rover blew up, a fuel truck blew up, and a spaceplane blew up.  It took a lot of saves to get past all that.  So one more flight there to rescue the crew.

The fuel truck refueling the spaceplane.  All went well at for most of the time there.

It was only after refueling and boarding all crew that the Kraken struck.  While moving the fuel truck away from the spaceplane it simply blew up.  Not caring any more it was just left there.  This is the debris field.

This is where the cabin ended up.

And I'm outta here!

[Kerballlistic07]

5 hours ago, miklkit said:

The Kraken just got too intense and I abandoned Dres base.  Went there for a routine crew rotation and a rover blew up, a fuel truck blew up, and a spaceplane blew up.  It took a lot of saves to get past all that.  So one more flight there to rescue the crew.

The fuel truck refueling the spaceplane.  All went well at for most of the time there.

It was only after refueling and boarding all crew that the Kraken struck.  While moving the fuel truck away from the spaceplane it simply blew up.  Not caring any more it was just left there.  This is the debris field.

This is where the cabin ended up.

And I'm outta here!

Dres was never meant to be colonized. That’s because it doesn’t exist.

[Toaster355]

I did more work on an upcoming mission; I could have FINISHED it if it weren't for the game crashing twice and making me give up for the day.

________

Here's a peek:

Edited October 21, 2023 by Toaster355
Sing it with me: Embarrassing typo

[TwoCalories]

6 hours ago, Toaster355 said:

I did more work on an upcoming mission; I could have FINISHED it if it weren't for the game crashing twice and making me give up for the day.

________

Here's a peak:

Shuttle with solar panels, my beloved!  Also, love the NASA wormball.

Spoiler

The wing heat tiles are asymmetrical. I'm sorry.

 

[Toaster355]

6 hours ago, TwoCalories said:

Shuttle with solar panels, my beloved!  Also, love the NASA wormball.

  Hide contents

The wing heat tiles are asymmetrical. I'm sorry.

 

Yeah, it looked cool and I have an excuse to do it.  I love the wormball too, it honestly looks much better than the plain meatball.

Man, you have good eyes. Thanks for catching that!

[TwoCalories]

10 hours ago, Toaster355 said:

I love the wormball too, it honestly looks much better than the plain meatball.

Yeah, I don't understand why NASA's messing around with two logos. Just do the wormball! Best of both worlds, and it gives you an excuse to use the plain worm on rockets and stuff.

Also, fun fact: the NASA wormball was proposed by a NASA employee, but due to something with the patents it's illegal. Apparently, you're not allowed to put the worm logo inside any shape, like a circle. But you're also not allowed to put it at 90 degrees, and NASA does just that on Crew Dragon Falcon 9s, so checkmate.

[Kerbalsaurus]

16 minutes ago, TwoCalories said:

NASA does just that on Crew Dragon Falcon 9s, so checkmate.

They also do it on the SLS’s SRBs too.

[Great Liao]

Challenge: fully colonize bop (literally turn it into coruscant). Mods allowed: 

Kerbal Planetary Base systems

Any Planet Mods

Visual Mods

QoL mods

Ranks:

Amateur:

land a couple suface bases on bop.

Normal:

Cover bop with colonies.

Advanced:

make said colonies self-sufficient.

Expert: 

Literally cover bop until there is no surface left to cover

How?;.

Make the covering super tall, and add skyscrapers to the mix

[Kimera Industries]

I finally got around to posting my Pravda I mission for Wrong Red Moon, the Pravda series is an orbital surveyor to locate anomalies and the best spot for a surface base.

Orbital scanning is fun! Except... not when Minmus has only 2 anomalies. Sigh...

 

Oh, and in other news I made an F-35 with Airplane Plus parts. I think it's one of my best VTOL planes ever, and it's really maneuverable! I tried to land on the VAB helipads like you do, and I missed and destroyed my starboard tailfin and corresponding tail boom. Long story short, I'm on the VAB but not on the helipads, so I try to rotate the plane to face the helipads so I can more easily make a short hop to land on them. I realize I am out of EC (this variant held only the electricity in the cockpit, something I fixed in the later model) so I fire up my engine at low throttle so the alternator can charge me up. I realized too late that my engine was facing forward, not down, and it pushed me to the edge of the VAB! My only hope now is to perform an emergency vertical takeoff before I fall! It slides over the edge as my engines warm up, and mid-fall  I recover! I then landed on the VAB helipad successfully. Probably the coolest moment of my day.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Kimera Industries

[Lyra]

Yesterday I started an automated SSTO and today I tweaked it a bit more. At the moment it can go from launch to engine cutoff by itself. It has six KAL controllers (although I could probably get away with three or four if i was better at organizing them) and isn't practical at all but it's definitely cool. Orbital insertion is the most annoying part and that's next...

Edited March 5 by Lyra
Fixed dead image link

[DunaManiac]

One of my favorite images I've taken recently: a grainy, low resolution photo from Eve. Visible here is a significant mountain range in an area near the Eastern sea's northern tip.

The probe itself: the second probe landed on Eve (The same mountains can be seen in the distance). I built it out of armor plates to give the impression it could survive the forces of Eve's atmospheres, with two protective covers to be lowered once it had landed.