What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Overlocker96]

Today I have finished (For now ) a Google Spreadsheet with all the Engines of the Main Mods I use. It can be improved but it gives a little help when designing rockets, mainly on Career mode because of the costs.

Main Mods Engine Chart

Edited May 30 by Overlocker96

[Thingymajigy]

Made a gas hauler for moving fuel from Gilly down to low Eve orbit

[RevanX_LSR]

Just made a kerbin revamp, which completely overhauls the continents and terrain (planet is also 20% bigger). Flew to the high mountains near the KSC (the clouds are at an altitude of 5km) - definitely did a great job with those!

 

Oh, and uhh

400th post as well

[king of nowhere]

about one month after saying goodbye to the game, i came back.

there was an old challenge where I was trying to work a 200k tons ship on a trip to the rings of saturn, that I dropped because I had other, more pressing challenges. I decided to give it another try. here's the aftermath of an experiment where i didn't have enough launch stabilizers.

 

By the way, does anyone know a mod for having a bigger VAB? the kind of stuff I'm trying to build is way too big to fit inside, and it's bothersome to work on the construction. I heard there were mods for it, but I can't find one

[miklkit]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

about one month after saying goodbye to the game, i came back.

there was an old challenge where I was trying to work a 200k tons ship on a trip to the rings of saturn, that I dropped because I had other, more pressing challenges. I decided to give it another try. here's the aftermath of an experiment where i didn't have enough launch stabilizers.

 

By the way, does anyone know a mod for having a bigger VAB? the kind of stuff I'm trying to build is way too big to fit inside, and it's bothersome to work on the construction. I heard there were mods for it, but I can't find one

  I have "Hangar Extender" from CKAN.  It works quite well.

 

[ColdJ]

9 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

 

9 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

By the way, does anyone know a mod for having a bigger VAB? the kind of stuff I'm trying to build is way too big to fit inside, and it's bothersome to work on the construction. I heard there were mods for it, but I can't find one

https://spacedock.info/mod/56/WasdEditorCameraContinued#info

WASDEditorCamera

It not only allows you to go right past the walls in every direction but allows you to maneuver in a much better way. Once you use it you will never go back.

Edited June 1 by ColdJ

[king of nowhere]

9 hours ago, miklkit said:

I have "Hangar Extender" from CKAN.  It works quite well

 

2 hours ago, ColdJ said:

https://spacedock.info/mod/56/WasdEditorCameraContinued#info

WASDEditorCamera

It not only allows you to go right passed the walls in every direction but allows you to maneuver in a much better way. Once you use it you will never go back.

i tried installing both, including the dependencies. didn't work

[ColdJ]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

i tried installing both, including the dependencies. didn't work

Could you please write exactly how you downloaded, from where and the same for what dependencies you put in.

Quite often the slightest oversight can stop things from working.

 

[Beamer]

Dres station needs some extra fuel storage, in its current state every time I refuel a ship I need to send my tanker to the local asteroid miner to refill the station.

Dres Station with a NuKerBus Mk-3 used for the last batch of tourists, the KerbHerder 21Kvac lander and the OTO Tanker docked to it.

So I launched a dual extension. It's basically 2 rockets tied nose-to-nose with the top one having its engine section replaced with a cupola. Once arrived at Dres it will split down the middle and dock to the station to form a cross, providing lots of additional fuel storage, and 8 luxury cabins for up to 4 persons each. It flew surprisingly well, only needing 2 Clydesdale boosters to get the entire thing to orbit where it refueled at Kerbin Refueling Station Alpha. Needless to say docking was a quite slow and deliberate operation, but ultimately uneventful.

 

Aside from Dres there is also a launch window for Moho. 2 tourists were waiting at Kerbin Station for a trip that way. I built a new NuKerBus model (Mk-5 Moho Edition) with its 5800 m/s provisions it should be able to make the trip on any but the most unoptimal launch windows.

A quick stop by Kerbin Station to pick up the 2 tourists, filling up the last cabin of the ship as the other 9 seats are taken by a crew rotation for the various Moho installations.

After that a top-off of the fuel tanks at Kerbin Refueling Station Alpha, ready for departure in 3 days.

Moho Station can also use some additional storage and living space, so a modified copy of the Dres Station Expansion was launched destined for Moho. Of course this needed some additional fuel tanks to be able to make the trip, that's ok, nothing a few extra boosters can't handle.

Once in orbit of course the rig needed to be refueled, busy days for veteran engineer Podely Kerman at Kerbin Refueling Station Alpha, but the E class asteroid still has a few drops to spare, so loudly singing along to Hanson Brothers' "Rink Rat" (he's Kanadian) he swiftly set to work. Fill er up!

With 2 convoys in orbit everything is ready for departure to Dres and Moho to upgrade the respective orbital stations and bring crew rotations, tourists and additional utility hardware.

 

[king of nowhere]

2 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Could you please write exactly how you downloaded, from where and the same for what dependencies you put in.

Quite often the slightest oversight can stop things from working.

 

What I've done for all mods: went on the page, followed the download link, extracted the folder, put it into the game data directory.

 

But it looks like I won't need it too much, I have managed to work by moving the ship around - and this gives me an excellent excuse to say I'm not hijacking the thread, if I show what I did

so, working on the ship was not nice and it was not pretty, given that this is just the lower third

alas, can't be avoided. Kerbalism gives saturn an extremely powerful radiation belt encompassing the inner moons; the only way to land there without getting the crew fried in a couple of hours is carry 20 thousand tons of electromagnetic radiation shields. plus nuclear power plants to power them up and a few bits and odds.

I made the ship to be modular, and assemblable in orbit, and I did launch the individual pieces to show that the proof of concept worked. But it would have required hundreds of launches to get it whole - a launcher too big crashes the game by sheer lag, this one is already stretching the limit. So I built that piston on the bottom; when the ship appears on the launchpad, it starts to collapse the piston, and that gives me a few seconds (tens of seconds, due to lag) to cheat the ship into orbit whole.

This is Ringrazer, whole. Those tanks are 7.5 meters of diameter. The orange ball on the right side is 9 meters, and it holds 750 tons of water - necessary for the life support of 14 people over a couple centuries, I don't know how long it will take to reach saturn by gravity assists and i wanted to be safe. on a ship this size, a hundred tons of water more or less makes negligible difference on the deltaV.

Too bad the ship got torn in half when i tried to turn it around, just by the sheer stress of handling a thing this big and long.

but the second time i sent it up, it worked.

as big as it is - those are 60 engines slightly more powerful than a stock rhino - the engine segment is severely undersized. again, lag was the deciding factor, the game is already nigh-unplayable as it is. which is what brought me to interrupt the challenge the previous time. i guess i'm becoming more patient in my old age. or perhaps more feebleminded.

weird, by calculation i should get 2150*60= over 120k kN, but the game only declares 33000. I will have to look into that and figure out how much thrust i actually have.
and I noticed a flaw in some fuel tanks that should hold liquid fuel only and are instead holding a mixture, so I will have to launch the ship again. the fuel switch function is iffy on my current mod selection.

 

Edited June 1 by king of nowhere

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

Went looking around at some old craft files I have, and found a few from the same career save that are quite large. so today I took a trip down memory lane...

These were all created 3-4 years ago

(top to bottom)
S. S. Zerye (64m)
The Duna Mothership (74.9m)
Dawn Mothership (75m)
Massive Cargo Ship (113.7m)
Massive Colonial Ship (147m)

All five of these ships are completely stock. and the Duna Mothership is the first interplanetary ship I made. the duna mothership is the only ship out of these that was assembled in orbit.

I stumbled upon the cargo ship, and realized it was the sister ship of the MCS that I had never launched. its partcount is like.. 330, and cargo bay too small to hold anything.

What happened with the ships?
All I remember about the order was the Duna Mothership was first, and the Massive Colonial Ship was the last of this group to be launched.

Duna Mothership - assembled in LKO, flew to Duna with multiple landers to act as a "KSC away from Kerbin". was left at Duna due to not having enough ore tanks to refuel properly via landers transferring Ore.

Zerye - launched from Kerbin, had landing legs attached, and landed on Minmus to refuel, then left in a convoy of other ships (I think one was a ship based off the Consular-class space cruiser?). Landed on Ike to refuel, then docked with the Duna Mothership to transfer crew, then left to Eve or something? I do not remember where it went last.

Dawn - flew to Eve, idk where I left it afterwards.. maybe to Gilly?

Massive Cargo Ship - never launched due to issues of its cargo bay being too tiny for anything

Massive Colonial Ship - launched in a single piece empty to LKO. drained a class B asteroid that was left in LKO to partially refuel enough to make it to a big asteroid station in a 1000km orbit. Then drained a class E asteroid to almost fully refuel. Then went to Eve with Dawn, landed on GILLY (the thing is 650t empty and 2700t full) piggybacking on a much smaller ship to refuel, then flew to Dres. (in a sandbox save, I launched it fully fueled, and did a direct transfer to Jool, but I abandoned that save before it reached Jool..)

 

 

 

Massive Colonial Ship launching (surprisingly light when empty)

Massive Colonial Ship landed on Gilly (used the 'diplomatic ship' as a lander stage lol)

When the MCS was docked to the asteroid station

A small mothership.. cant have been more than 40m in length

Zerye on Ike

Dawn grappled onto class D asteroid

Failed docking attempt of Zerye and Duna Mothership... (this docking event happened in late 2018, a year prior to the Massive Colonial Ship's arrival and refueling at Gilly... and about 12 ingame years I think..)

 

All the images are not the best quality due to it being from Steam... and also late 2019..

I do distinctly remember building a third mothership in the 75m class at about the same time as the Dawn mothership.. but it seems to not have existed?

I am now thinking of even more gargantuan ships that could be made with the partmod I am working on.. it could probably have ships with large enough hangars to fit the MCS?
 

Edited June 1 by JcoolTheShipbuilder

[Selective Genius]

Today there was yet another Mun landing attempt, that could have gone horribly wrong. I use a probe core to control this, and in absence of a relay sat, the mission almost ended in a tragedy.

This is the moment when the lander stopped responding to my commands. I could only point it retrograde using SAS and throttle it to the minimum and maximum.

The landing was sketchy as heck, but thankfully the important bits survived.

Corina and Bill after the flag planting ceremony.

The duo flew away as soon as they could. This landing was planned to land near an existing uncrewed lander at the Twin Canyons that had plenty of science equipment. But because of the difficulties mentioned, the lander landed 11 km away. So, the mission was deemed a partial success as the science target was not achieved.

Atleast the view back home was pretty.

********

The KSC brought about new improvements in the lander, namely new science instruments aboard the lander and mandating relay sats on any celestial body that it was to land on. However, behind the scenes, plans were being made to launch a second generation of crewed landers to mitigate the problem of the first generation.

The upgraded first gen crewed lander was sent on its first and last mission to Minmus. Its objective: To hop across atleast 6 biomes and gather any and all science that it could.

The lander and crew launching to minmus. Notice that the crew vehicle has an updated habitation module. This one's supplies and habitation lasts 30 days, more than enough for a round trip to Minmus. (I use USI-LS)

The first and the subsequent 4 landings went off without a hitch. However, for the final landing, the Descent module did not have enough delta v to drop the lander to the final landing zone. The landing procedure was completed with the help of Ascent Module's propulsion.

The Ascent Module landed on its engine bell. It was a smooth landing.

Oddly, the descent stage that was jettisoned at 154 m/s also landed relatively safely, just missing two of its landing legs.

The ascent module took off and rendezvoused with the spaceship in orbit to return home.

Jettisoning the habitat module moments before reentry...

Home Sweet Home, this mission netted almost 2502 science points.

*****

There was a contract to land a base on the Mun. I found out the most resource rich spot i could find and sent this to land.

The transfer stage at the rear will turn into a skycrane as we reach the orbit of the Mun

The base landing safely on Mun surface. Once the next gen of uncrewed landers is finished, we would be taking crews and tourists to enjoy and study the Mun.

 

[TwoCalories]

I've been designing a new plane for the first time in a while, but I've had a lot of trouble with the plane swerving on takeoff. I encounter this issue a lot when using the KS-16 Slanted Landing Gear from the Airplanes Plus mod. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, because the landing gear is completely straight and also behind the Center of Mass. Any thoughts on how to fix this?

[capi3101]

3 hours ago, TwoCalories said:

I've been designing a new plane for the first time in a while, but I've had a lot of trouble with the plane swerving on takeoff. I encounter this issue a lot when using the KS-16 Slanted Landing Gear from the Airplanes Plus mod. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, because the landing gear is completely straight and also behind the Center of Mass. Any thoughts on how to fix this?

A lot of the folks doing Scott Manley's Runway Project would tell you that there are known issues with the gear in that mod, and that you probably shouldn't use them. One thing to check before swapping them out - how much weight do you have underneath them? Too much will cause them to buckle. You can try strutting them down if you don't mind the extra drag. But yeah, you probably want to use stock gear instead.

[Krazy1]

On 5/28/2024 at 8:56 AM, capi3101 said:

Game wants me to go to Eve before Duna, which is irritating...

So annoying... all contracts for Eve and then Moho.

On 5/29/2024 at 9:20 AM, Beamer said:

Minmus City OMB Bar

Well, that's... creative. 

On 5/26/2024 at 12:04 AM, MythicalHeFF said:

twice the radius (1400 km), gravity (3.4 G), and atmospheric pressure (10 atm), and a temperature of 687 K

What the what. I'm dreading JNSQ Eve. That's also 10 ATM but "only" 1.4G. 

After the  crew finished hopping around Duna, they went back to Ike. 
Repacking the drogue in the pic below. The mains won't deploy on JNSQ Duna... min. deploy pressure is 0.04 Atm and that's also the zero altitude pressure. Lesson learned.

They found the Ike anomalies:

Spoiler

 

Now they are waiting almost a year for a transfer window to return the science to Kerbin. The final challenge will be sending an impact probe from Kerbin to strike Duna for seismic data. The atmosphere will make it difficult.

 Mission control has shifted focus to Jool. The original 4 kerbonauts have arrived and landed on Vall. Unfortunately, the scanner probe is a year behind due to absurd planning. Fortunately they landed in a biome with enough ore to refuel. (Roughly 1.5% ore is the minimum needed to refuel using fuel cells.) Kuston told them to wait for the scanner probe and not risk hopping to another biome. Jeb has insured that message was not received, retroactively.

Spoiler

@king of nowhere I'm amazed you could build your ginormous ships in the stock VAB. Make sure you're using the latest LGG version: HangerExtenderExtended

Edited June 3 by Krazy1

[RunaDacino]

In Kerbinside Remastered GAP, I managed to land on Harvester after way too many tries.

On approach I was flying IFR as I couldn't see jackexcrements due to the thick clouds. I finally saw the ground, and it was waaaaaay too close so full throttle and pull up.

Then I realized we're 6 DME from touchdown so cut throttle and try to kill 200 m/s speed while the thin air makes gliding impossible. I tried over. And over. And over. And over. And over again. I made a quicksave like 10 DME out.

My final successful landing was to cut thrust, disable brakes, set leading flaps to 30 and nose up to 20 degrees until my descent is 0, then enable brakes and maintain descent at ~5 m/s to slow down just enough for the runway.

And on touchdown, proceed to balance on my main gears to try and use my deltawing as an airbrake. This took tries as I tailstruck. A lot.

But finally we landed.

https://imgur.com/a/Ot5umPh

 

 

 

[Kimera Industries]

I continued testing the HX-TSV-01, mostly refining its STOL capability. Long story short, elevons inside the wings provide a crazy amount of lift on takeoff when deployed. With some refinement, taking off from an aircraft carrier unaided might be possible. 

Then I scouted out a place for my MKS colony on Minmus. I found two locations with almost everything (assuming they share resources, which they will) and attempted to land some preliminary supplies. 

To make another long story very short, EVA construction is not my favorite. By "not my favorite," I mean I hate it when it makes rovers fly hundreds of meters and spawn parts inside the ground, which is all the time. Imperfections aside, I do have a lot of fun with KSP.

For example, I did another traditional IVA landing at the Island Runway with the HX. It's my version of a plane's "baptism of fire," it's not a plane until I've landed it that way. The problem is IVA is rather laggy on my poor potato, so I have to switch to map view to reduce lag. And to look at the navball as well, because my textures are one notch away from the minimum quality. I refuse to go any lower despite the benefits it might give me.

[KeaKaka]

First, I spent a bit too long building an accurate service tower for my Atlas II and III builds

 

Then, I dug up an old mod from 2015 in the name of corporate sponsorship science

[Krazy1]

Today I wondered what's up with KSP2 and discovered it's all in flames. Even this forum is possibly doomed in 4 weeks. 

So anyway... back to Vall... the Laythe SSTO ship (yet unproven namesake) refueled.  The crew observed a transit of Laythe but even more extraordinary, Bop and Pol were both visible between Jool and the horizon. Bop is retrograde using Principia so it's a brief alignment. 

[boriz]

"this forum is possibly doomed in 4 weeks" - what? What makes you think that?

[Krazy1]

@boriz well I really don't know about the forum... at least it looks like KSP2 is kaput. Follow the link above to the IGN link. 

[Tecorian]

Semirealistic and selfbuild skycrane landing on Duna

 

 

https://imgur.com/KzXdR94

 

Another sort of landing - truss-construct with parachutes and engines for a heavy Rover

 

Expedition-Ship entering Duna-Orbit.

Ion-Propulsed engines, travelling time about 145 days, 10 Kerbals-Crew, supplies for 4 years stored, two emergency landers attached

 

 

 

[Tecorian]

Duna-Crew Lander descending

Selfmade central lift for crew-boarding

Landing in a dust-storm

touchdown

 

 

 

[miklkit]

Since KSP2 is dead, I DLed some spaceplane mods and have been doing lots of dumb stuff.  This is V1 and it actually worked, sorta.  Up to V4 now.

 

Another V1.  V3 is better.

[cubinator]

Barely made it to Mun yet this game, but downloading as many interstellar planet packs as I can