What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Angelo Kerman]

I flew a Starship/New Glenn mashup:

They delivered a flight crew to conduct space trials for this:

[Krazy1]

Made another video of the auroras at S72A, time-lapse of the whole night this time. 

And did stuff in space for a change... Launched an lander that will return 2350 ore from Mun. Big rocket with wobbly 2.5m center section. Took a few tries to get to orbit. 

Spoiler

Try again... 

Saw this rare Mun, Minmus, Jool conjunction by chance. 

To the Mun...

Spoiler

Eclipse.... just enough light left to mine before sunset.

And on the way back from Mun I realized I have.... no parachutes! Arggg. It weighs 57 tons. The inflatable heat shield is a good start but it needs parachutes. A lot of them.

The End!

Edited November 11, 2023 by Krazy1
broken link

[MaverickSawyer]

Had a busy day yesterday...

Found the Green Monolith on Minmus...

 

Made it to "In space Low above the Sun"...

 

Made a screaming flyby past Moho...

 

Launched a space telescope...

 

And pondered the majesty of a comet from the night side of Minmus.

[Lyra]

Yesterday I started a save where I try to colonize Laythe and maybe some of the other moons in the system. It's got 60-70% science rewards (forget which one) so every science report is valuable. I sent a mission to the flats of Minmus and forgot that the Science Jr has a horrible heat tolerance, resulting in this very fun and definitely not at all terrifying reentry.

Yes that large orange dot in the second photo is my heat shield flying off. I made it down safely but that didn't make it any less scary

Also set up a 3-satellite relay in a fairly routine mission. Next stop: the Jool system

Edited March 5 by Lyra
Fixed dead image link

[capi3101]

Trying to get back in the saddle again.

This was a seven-passenger tour bus mission to get into Münar orbit. Not really all that great of a shot frankly but I still thought the craft itself looks pretty okay. Using bits and bobs from Pathfinder/Buffalo/MOLE as always. She's in orbit now anyways and I'll be shooting her back towards Kerbin at the first opportunity.

I did have my first Münar landing mission go off late yesterday, with Val and Bob scheduled to conduct a series of equatorial biome hops. Their refueling craft in orbit didn't quite make it on the first pass so they're currently waiting for it to finish making its maneuvers so they can get on with it. Meanwhile they're enjoying the view of the East Farside Crater at night. Hoping to be able to continue that later today and in the meantime I've got my initial Minmus exploration mission contract (always prefer to go to Minmus over Mün, frankly...).

[MaverickSawyer]

5 hours ago, capi3101 said:

 (always prefer to go to Minmus over Mün, frankly...).

Me, too. Yeah, it's a little harder to get to, but it's so much easier to land there, and setting up bases on the flats is an absolute cakewalk.

 

Not to mention the higher multipliers for science.

[TwoCalories]

8 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Me, too. Yeah, it's a little harder to get to, but it's so much easier to land there, and setting up bases on the flats is an absolute cakewalk.

 

Not to mention the higher multipliers for science.

I honestly prefer the Mun. The Moon is one of my favorite celestial bodies so I guess I feel a bit more "connected" to it. And the views of Kerbin are nicer since it's closer.

Minmus is pretty cool too, I guess, but that's just me.

[miklkit]

The Mun is my big test if a design works or not.  If it can go there, change inclination, land, take off, and return to Kerbin then it is good enough.

This is my heaviest spaceplane yet heading out.

Destination Moho to deliver a rover to the base there so they can visit the Mohole.  And they even made it!

[tajwo]

Plane

 

[Krazy1]

After the Mun ore return contract debacle in the last update, where parachutes where forgotten, I went through all the stages of grieving...

Spoiler

1.  pride 
2. greed
3. lust
4. envy
5. gluttony
6. wrath
7. sloth

Then proceeded to aerobrake to LKO. 

Spoiler

Then launched a supply probe with 30 parachutes. It was night and hard to control so I only got this pic on my first launch attempt with wrong SRB decoupler staging.

Spoiler

Parachutes have arrived.

Spoiler

Transferred all the small parts from the probe to  the ship to recover them and discarded the probe.

Peak LKO reentry temp was only 2400K. It was 3100K while aerobraking. The squared in E= 1/2 m*v^2 makes a big difference. 

Tilting... not good. It didn't go sideways though.

 

[Krazy1]

Launch attempts, mostly failures...

Spoiler

Made it this time:

Spoiler

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Krazy1
more pics

[TomKerbal]

On 9/10/2019 at 11:49 AM, Maravone said:

Last time I posted here in this thread, like a month ago, I was doing a whole different RP-1 career. One new career later, I'm launching my first geostationary satellite in 1964. A bit late, probably could've launched it earlier, but was busy with manned flight.

  Reveal hidden contents

Launch Vehicle: Nestor-Pegasus I, boosted with 6xcastor SRB's for an extra oomph. The payload was right in the maximum limit for GTO insertion.

Ascent!

Pegasus Second Stage burning a few minutes into flight

Applying spin-stabilization in GTO orbit apogee to prepare for circularization burn with Vega SRB kick stage

After some rcs corrections, a perfect final Geosynchronous orbit for the first of several comm sats!

 

In 1968 I was able to direct land on Moon with a Gemini capsule placed on a big rover with an ascend stage... rocket on Earth had 2600t only for that. I was quite impressed, that this is possible.

A Moon mission for 2 astronauts in 1968. I think something like that Wv Braun was thinking about initially.

RP-1 of course. A fully new KSP1 game experience.

Edited November 12, 2023 by TomKerbal

[TomKerbal]

On 8/28/2023 at 8:48 AM, RedTyro said:

I'm a few days into my first experience with RSS/RO and doing an RP-1 career.  Today (ok, yesterday) I launched my first X plane and broke the sound barrier (and then some).  It's very loosely based on the Bell X-1:

Every step in RP-1 is associated with sweat, blood and curses. However, the final success is all the more valuable and fulfilling  Good work !

[Hotel26]

I was able to land my X-37B impression on the Mun at Armstrong Base.

The attempt to relaunch it:

was madly successful:

Spoiler

 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Hotel26

[TwoCalories]

4 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

I was able to land my X-37B impression on the Mun at Armstrong Base.

The attempt to relaunch it:

was madly successful:

  Hide contents

 

 

How'd you flatten the terrain around the base like that?

[Kerb24]

1 hour ago, TwoCalories said:

How'd you flatten the terrain around the base like that?

Probably a Kerbal Konstructs terrain decal.

[Hotel26]

6 hours ago, TwoCalories said:

How'd you flatten the terrain around the base like that?

 

4 hours ago, Kerb24 said:

Probably a Kerbal Konstructs terrain decal.

Quite so.

I recommend this great article: Getting Started with Kerbal Konstructs by @Caerfinon

Edited November 13, 2023 by Hotel26

[Pipcard]

2057-06-21 - The Raijin Jupiter Piloted Vehicle one day before orbital insertion

2057-07-25 - The Jupiter Orbital Vehicle docked to the Jovian Moons Landing Module

Right to left: Hachirota Hoshino, Ken’ichi Obikawa, and Juri Araki landed on Callisto

Edited November 13, 2023 by Pipcard

[capi3101]

Started a new log for the current save last Tuesday so I could start bothering y'all about the same ol' same ol' again...

Most of my past week was spent on my initial Mün landings. I had Val and Bob out there in a craft called the Kerblammo 7, which I designed to dock with a refueling cannister (which of course I unorginally christened Exxon Valdez 7) so they could make multiple surface excursions along the equator.

Here we see Kerblammo 7 in the process of docking with the Exxon Valdez 7 fueling craft, itself just a big gas can with a docking port. The two ships would find each other three times before their missions ended.

Kerblammo 7 making one of nine landings; this particular time it was targeting the Canyons in what was probably one of the easiest Canyon landings I've ever experienced in my decade of playing this game. Here comes the suppository!

Jeb was off with a group of six tourists and Bill in another craft called the Tourbus 8 at the time in a high Mün orbit, and ultimately that mission would get back to Kerbin just a few hours before the Kerblammo made its final return to Kerbin. The return was itself not guaranteed and in the end Bill had to get out and push while Val kept the craft steering straight, but they did make it back and brought back nearly 4700 points of science from the nine equatorial targets, enough to get a good chunk of my more advanced gear back into service.

Bunch of little things filled out the rest of my week into the weekend. I had Jeb go up in a Bad Idea 3 aircraft to take care of four high-altitude aerial surveys I'd managed to accrue. I accidentally hit the button to have him eject about seventy klicks east of KSC so I lost the plane despite having completed the missions otherwise. I completed a parts testing contract for a Skipper engine (having unlocked said part thanks to the Mün mission), did three satellite adjustment missions (two at Kerbin and one at Mün), and rounded out my weekend with the launch and retreival of a Kerbin polar orbiting probe that I called the Bullock 7, which took low and high orbital gravioli readings from all eleven of Kerbin's biomes. The extra 690 science points (missed one somewhere) were enough to get the Mk2 Drone Core unlocked, which was the last piece I needed to bring the Auk I rescue plane back into active service.

I have a rescue mission on tap now that I'm hoping to do today (assuming I can remember how to fly the Auk I - it's definitely been a minute).  I've got two tourist missions on tap to go for Mün landings but that's only for three kerbals; I'd like to accrue a few more before I do those. I've also got contracts for space stations at Kerbin and Mün that are on hold pending additional parts access, two parts tests that are in annoying locations, a couple of metallurgical analyses to tend to and a rover repair job that I'm not ready to do just yet. I also have a couple of survey missions on Kerbin that require landing; unfortunately since Angel15 retired Buffalo in favor of Buffalo 2, I've very reluctantly had to sunset the reliable Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter design that I would've used to do the job (I've also had to sunset the TBD 7e base-seeding rover, which I'd be more annoyed about if it didn't afford me the opportunity to address a few minor issues that design had). Equivalent parts from the Echo Flyer aren't yet available and I'm trying to build a worthy successor for the craft. I did have a quadcopter going for a while over the weekend, but the new craft is slower and has a much more severely limited range. I think it could do the job, I'd just have to be able to have the time to fly it out to the survey locations. Getting back might not be doable - I have yet to see what the final craft range is but the first iteration was only good out to five hundred kilometers, which didn't even get me out to the target zone.

Minmus is up next on my exploration agenda - I have to do a flyby and return with some science. I'll also probably be getting that mission underway sometime later today.

Edited November 13, 2023 by capi3101
fixing typos.

[GDJ]

Nothing in a while.....but I'm currently building my PC rig for games and other stuff.......It shall be glorious when it's finally done.

[Kimera Industries]

Another update on:

For posterity, I present:

Making the Psyche Mission: Episode 3:

Let's do this SpaceX style

I added the last things I was missing to Psyche, namely RCS. I made it as simple as possible, with a single angled thruster on each corner. I realized that my slightly clipped solar panels are very overpowered even at long distances to Kerbol and I can remove many of my batteries and gain lots of bonuses from the decreased weight. I set up a Kal for solar panel deployment and another I can toggle for the sun tracking servo. I can't remember if this was in my last update but I used a medium landing gear for DSOC, turns out a cylinder smaller than .6m is hard to find and I had to compromise.

That's not the fun part though, the fun part was landing a Falcon booster. The hard part was making and flying it. 

I watched a video solely for the landing gear and was mildly disappointed, nonetheless, I used the design on my prototypes (Grasshopper, if you will.) At first, I used a Kal for the deployment of everything since the piston and the gear weren't connected, but then I realized that if I used the same vessel interaction the piston could actually work to push the gear even if it's not connected. Early models suffered from lag. Improvements suffered from lag. My newest version suffers from lag. My PC is a scrap of paper at the mercy of my need for reaction wheels and suffers from lag as a result. Lag. Blech. 

I crashed several times, and I got more used to using KER's landing tool, though its suicide burn indicator is meant for airless bodies and doesn't account for drag. Finally, I landed without tipping over or exploding something, and it was the BEST feeling in the world. Like, melt-your-heart amazing. It's also given me huge respect for SpaceX and what they've done, truly awesome. Several attempts to merge boosters into a Falcon Heavy were suboptimal, but then, I changed over to 2.5m parts, redoing everything, over the previous 1.8m boosters. I realized, to save on parts count, I could make the gear out of wing pieces, too. The angled effect would create lift, gaining stability on the ascent but not so much lift on the descent as to overwhelm my airbrakes.

Switching to an RCS system for Falcon could eliminate the need for so many reaction wheels, helping with lag. For now, though, all plans are on hold as I try to fix a problem with KSP that almost made me lose my only science save. Wish me luck!

Andrew W. Kerman, Kimera Industries CEO

November 13, 2023

Spoiler

How do you like that little signature? I'm trying it out for a little bit to see if I like it. Doesn't work for everything but still fun.

[Hotel26]

Just a bit too aggressive with the aero-braking, descending from GKO (Geosynchronous Kerbin Orbit, for a (missed) return to KSC, after depositing a geosync spy cubesat...

Edited November 14, 2023 by Hotel26

[capi3101]

The Auk I rescue plane flies again! Here we see one on re-entry, having successfully plucked pilot Tiemone Kerman out of her stricken Mk1 Command Pod. The plane would go on to successfully land at KSC 09. Thought this was a beautiful screenie, what with Mün getting ready to set there.

(On a side note, I could use a review of some good landing gear settings again - with the planes I've flown so far in 1.12.5, it's like I'm constantly landing on ice. The Auk I never had the best settings to begin with...)

[Kimera Industries]

22 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:

For now, though, all plans are on hold as I try to fix a problem with KSP that almost made me lose my only science save. Wish me luck!

Fixed the problem! Replaced persistent.sfs with the most recent backup as persistent.sfs had become corrupted from a garbage collector overflow. At last, I could complete my mission of simply landing a small cargo rocket SSTO. Finally. Oh, yeah, and I rescued my best save or whatever. Not as important as landing rockets like SpaceX.

9 hours ago, capi3101 said:

The Auk I rescue plane flies again!

What mods are you using to make the wings dark? Is that an intentional effect to get a space shuttle-like heat shield? Let me know because I have wished for that quite a few times.

9 hours ago, capi3101 said:

On a side note, I could use a review of some good landing gear settings again - with the planes I've flown so far in 1.12.5, it's like I'm constantly landing on ice. The Auk I never had the best settings to begin with...

Friction and brake setting at full for the rear landing gear, zero for the front, and disabled steering for the rear set. Still a little slidey but much more stable. If it creates too much friction, adjust the settings as needed.

[Krazy1]

15 hours ago, capi3101 said:

some good landing gear settings

I usually set damping = 2, spring= 1.5. That will help keep wings level when turning. Brakes stronger at the rear... like 80% rear, 60% front. And avoid the large or extra large gear. The multi-axle (bogie) setup is not stable... it vibrates on the ground and slides with no external force. Tweakscale the medium gear for large planes.