What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Pipcard]

On 3/3/2024 at 6:27 AM, space_otter said:

Imgur doesn't seem to be working (when I copy the image address it is a weird link starting with blob...), so I don't have any screenshots of the launch. However, i do have a picture of the current station I configuration.

The "blob" link only shows up if the image was just uploaded, or wasn't fully uploaded yet. If you check it again after a few seconds or a minute, then the link will be normal.

Edited March 7 by Pipcard

[Aelfhe1m]

Alba Aerospace released a press release today, 3rd October 1955, stating that pilot Angela O'Quinn experienced a bit of a scary moment  when going for a new X-Planes altitude record in the twin engine XP-03 "The Flying Scotsman".

The flight started nominally with an air launch over the Atlantic Ocean 500km off the Florida coast and then an aggressive pitch up to reach for the sky.

 

But as she reached the peak of her flight, just above 70km, the thinning atmosphere gave nothing for her flight control surfaces to work against and the plane entered an out-of-control tumble, spinning slowly on all three axes.

Fortunately, after a couple of terrifying minutes, she recovered control as the plane dropped below 35km and she was able to glide back to Cape Canaveral for a gentle 60 m/s landing on the runway.

Miss O'Quinn refused to answer any questions of whether or not a change of underwear was required.

The XP-03 experimental rocket plane Miss O'Quinn flew today is an evolution of the earlier XP-02 "Nessie" and XP-01 "Haggis" rocket planes which have flown ten times over the last year, gaining repeated altitude and speed records for pilots Angela O'Quinn and Irena Novák. 

Miss O'Quinn is also notable for having set a new jet aircraft speed record of 705 m/s in a Phantom II jet earlier in the year, breaking Miss Novák's previously held record of 623 m/s.

Miss Novák currently holds the speed record for a rocket plane having reached 1626 m/s at 66.9 km altitude on 20th September.

Spoiler

 

====

From a new RP 1 career I've recently started. I began by working through the Suborbital Research Program at breakneck speed, while also completing Early Rocket Development Program on fast speed before switching focus to X-Planes Research and Early Satellites (Heavy).

I've been focussing on planes for the last few launches while I wait for various technologies to finish researching before building an orbital rocket. While I could build one with current technology, I feel that my funds would be better spent waiting for more mature technologies to become available.

These last two flights represent the limits of what these aircraft can achieve, and future contracts will require alternative designs (or at least engine upgrades for the jet).

[Nazalassa]

On 6/30/2023 at 7:28 PM, Lt_Duckweed said:

Naughty Kerbals get banished to the Sun

Out of curiosity, how did you make a working "drag flag"? I'm trying to make one for one of my ships but robotics don't seem to work, and the rest of the parts refuse to deploy while "stowed" in the ship.

[Lt_Duckweed]

2 hours ago, Nazalassa said:

Out of curiosity, how did you make a working "drag flag"? I'm trying to make one for one of my ships but robotics don't seem to work, and the rest of the parts refuse to deploy while "stowed" in the ship.

The key is setting the deploy limit on a service bay to one of the axis groups in the action group configuration.  While you cannot deploy a service bay while it is shielded, you can adjust the deploy amount, which results in it deploying.

The setup goes like this:

You have a root fairing whose base is shielded from solar heating by some other part that is larger than the base, but smaller than the overall fairing, so it can shield the base and be shielded in return.
In front of this, a structural plate or multiple structural plates have all drag cube faces fully occluded, creating perfect shock shields.
A service/payload bay is positioned such that the center of the bay is considered "inside" the fairing, but a substantial portion of the bay volume is actually located outside of the fairing.
A flag or flags of the largest size that the bay can shield are located in the portion of the bay that is outside the fairing.
If the flags are not located in the shock shadow of the main shock shield (as is the case for the main station) then a smaller shock shield(s) is constructed that sits immediately in front of the flags, but is also still outside the fairing.
Finally, the axis group chosen to control service bay deploy limit is adjusted to open/close the bays as desired.

 

Interestingly, there are a few other scenarios where you can use axis groups to perform actions that are normally forbidden via action groups.  Some examples:

1. Actuating service/payload/cargo bays when they are shielded.
2. Deflating an inflatable heatshield after it has already been inflated (can be done as many times as you like)
3. Deflating an inflatable airlock that already has a kerbal inside it.

[Lyra]

3 hours ago, Lt_Duckweed said:

Deflating an inflatable airlock that already has a kerbal inside it.

So that's how they make the mystery goo...

[Toaster355]

I'm sorry for overpromising and underdelivering a couple weeks ago 

The flights will be out soon, hopefully not in 2 weeks again!

 

Also, a bit of an embarrassing question... Why the hell are my profile pictures so low-res once uploaded??? How do I fix this??? 

[N_Danger]

Time for a test flight of the new 2 Kerbal capsule

Spoiler

Jeb "Lets listen to some tunes"

Lener: Oh no, he's playing another Grateful Dead concert tape

 

 

Separation from the 2nd stage

And a successful test is concluded

 

[Krazy1]

Probe Control: Uh Kuston, we have a problem. The biome scanner has a minimum altitude of 375 km.

Kuston: affirmative 

Probe Control: Gilly SOI is 366 km.

Kuston: affirmative

Probe Control: So the scanner will say it's too high to scan Eve at 375 km from Gilly. So now what?

Kuston: make it happen

Edited March 10 by Krazy1

[GDJ]

Built a really fast plane......


Then I made it REALLY fast.....

[Martian Emigrant]

On 3/8/2024 at 6:43 PM, Lyra said:

So that's how they make the mystery goo...

Eww

[Kimera Industries]

22 hours ago, GDJ said:

Then I made it REALLY fast.....

Yeah, because we all know 4km/s is not already impressive in any way, only 5km/s or higher is acceptable here.  

[Aelfhe1m]

13 minutes ago, Kimera Industries said:

Yeah, because we all know 4km/s is not already impressive in any way, only 5km/s or higher is acceptable here.  

Take another look. GDJ is using a mod to change the units shown on the navball.

The first picture is 4833 km/h = Mach 4.5 =1343 m/s
and the second is 5842 km/h = Mach 5.376 = 1623 m/s

Still very impressive for what looks like stock scale Kerbin, but not quite as insane as I thought at first glance.

[Kimera Industries]

12 minutes ago, Aelfhe1m said:

Take another look. GDJ is using a mod to change the units shown on the navball.

The first picture is 4833 km/h = Mach 4.5 =1343 m/s
and the second is 5842 km/h = Mach 5.376 = 1623 m/s

Still very impressive for what looks like stock scale Kerbin, but not quite as insane as I thought at first glance.

Aaahh, per hour. Makes a lot more sense. Rather hard to see in the small-ish pictures.

Edited March 11 by Kimera Industries

[Pipcard]

[ARA] Y2, D213 - The crew of Algieba 6 (left) transfer to the Tejat 3 lander (right) via the Gemini 26 propellant depot at Minmus

They arrive at Castor Base (relocated to the Midlands) - the next step is to provide more habitation and a greenhouse to grow food.

[ColdJ]

Finished all the bits of my F-16XL, nicknamed "The Razors Edge". Next project will be building a standard F-16 to go with it. As it never got mass produced for the military it comes in my racing colours, it's prototype Kerbaluminium, and special edition Kerbanium.

Spoiler

 

[Spikemaster]

I put a relay over Duna. Which also served the porpose of testing the Docking cam mod that I recently got. 

 

 

[Aelfhe1m]

Not exactly in KSP - but related.

I was in a bit of a strange mood when I woke up this morning and decided to try experimenting with something a bit artsy - using Automatic 1111, an AI art generation program. The results, as usual, were a bit mixed, but some of them were not too shabby so I thought I'd share a few.

Spoiler

 

[Hotel26]

After starting the Orbit program in January, 2018, I finally begin development of Eve.

 

Since I happened to notice that Elektra's initial landing site was close to Milkrun, which landed on Feb 3, I decided to run over and rescue Cergel Kerman.

(Elektra "kneels" for embarcation!)

Edited March 16 by Hotel26

[ColdJ]

I released my first supplemental for ColdJ's Military Planes today F-16. An F-16C and an F-16XL.

https://spacedock.info/mod/3579/ColdJ's Military Planes F-16

Spoiler

 

---

---

[Pipcard]

[ARA] Y2, D236 - Castor Base on Minmus, now capable of growing food and supporting 3 Kerbals for a few years

[N_Danger]

Time for a Mun shot

The lander is sent off first.

Waiting for the crew.

Next the crew is sent off

And the crew meets up with the lander. After a rest period Jeb will conduct the landing.

 

[Kimera Industries]

Today I went through my craft files in Wrong Red Moon and tweaked them all slightly to look better with Restock on. Then I had the bright idea of redoing my upcoming mission to fit better the little story I'd come up with for it, which ended up delaying everything.  

Edited March 17 by Kimera Industries

[Geek.Verve]

I think I fell prey to another noob trap contract today. I picked one up to expand the meager space station I had put into orbit around Kerbin a while back.  I had never performed a docking maneuver before (at least not in space  ), but I thought I could figure it out. Make sure it's got an antenna. Check. Make sure it can produce power. Check. Make sure it can accommodate 15 Kerbals - ok, that's a lot, but I've got the parts for it. Check. Make sure the station has 4,047 liquid fuel. Check...er, waitaminute...my biggest liquid fuel tank, the X200-32, only holds 1,440 (tons?). I'll need to pack three of those bad boys in addition to what I'll need to make the rendezvous - a task I have yet to become efficient in performing.

After much designing, redesigning and general head-scratching, I finally got all the fuel tanks I needed packed onto an orbital stage. Time to add my launch and orbital insertion stages.  I went with my typical booster package...and it wasn't even REMOTELY close to the TWR and deltaV I needed. It hadn't really occurred to me prior to that point just how much juice it was going to take to push that much dead fuel weight into the atmosphere. After much MORE designing, redesigning and head-scratching, I ended up with a Frankenbooster stage that would (should) get the job done.

Got into orbit, circularized and matched the inclination of my station. I was actually pleased that I had brought along more fuel that I really needed, and I was able to make all my orbital adjustments without cutting too much into what I was hauling to the station. Finally I started plotting a maneuver for the rendezvous and ended up with a nice, close intercept point, where I wasn't going to have to burn off too much speed. I got to under 100m from the station and matched its speed. So far so good. Time to try my hand at the RCS system. Oh, right, it uses different keys than normal. Wait, what direction am I facing? Oh yeah, point the vessels on normal and anti-normal headings to make things easier. Crap. I'm in an unmanned vessel with a probe core. Nothing but prograde and retrograde markers at my disposal. Ugh. Criminy! This thing maneuvers like a freaking cruise ship with all this fuel onboard!

Despite repeatedly losing track of my orientation and making the necessary adjustments only after first hitting the wrong thrusters and having to correct for it, the two docking ports snapped together, and I nearly jumped out of my chair in celebration. In the other room my wife, who really couldn't care less about my accomplishments in my nerdy little "space game", thought I had fallen out of my chair or something.

You got me again, KSP. 

 

[N_Danger]

Jeb lands on the Mun

Jeb plants the flag

Take off

Jeb likes this stuff

On the way back

and a happy landing is had

 

[Hotel26]

On Mod-L and when not to rely on it (not ever):

Currently at Mission Control commanding the Mission Director's chair, preparing to aerobrake and eventually deorbit and land Outpost Jr, a deep-space vehicle returning home from a long sojourn just outside the Kerbin SOI from where it aids in plotting the timing/planning of interplanetary transfers.  (One at Kerbin's leading edge for outward transfer maneuver plotting and another at the trailing edge for inward transfers.)

The observant reader will note its propulsion section, which is retained for the whole mission until near the very end, deep in the atmosphere, when slowing to chute speed.

When I turned to Lt Cmdr. Pembrook Kerman and sweetly enquired why the connecting Papa dock is not listed in the staging queue, he responded (just as sweetly, with a hint of cheerful triumph):

"Your orders, Sir!!  You might recall that, at design time, you specifically stated:

'to heck with Mod-L Stage Lock, Lt Cmdr!  You know as well as I do that it has to be re-applied at the start of every command upload sequence...  and we have now lost count of the number of tragic, premature ejections that have ruined missions in deep space!  Let's just manually stage this one when we are good and ready, hey!!?'"

Danged if the Lt Cmdr didn't quote me word for word, too^[1], from over a year back, but my irrefutable wisdom still made sense to me so I settled for a mild "Thank you, Lt Cmdr; that will be all" accompanied by a laconic salute for (coffee break) dismissal (with my usual two-finger indication for strong black with extra sugar).

"MAKE IT SO!!", I bellowed unnecessarily to nobody and everybody in particular.  (Again sweetly, with a lilt) "Stage away!".

[1] a day later, I had the security team search everybody coming on to my shift (for hidden voice recorders) just to keep everybody on their toes.  I run a tight ship and brook no insolence. 

Edited March 18 by Hotel26