What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Lyra]

9 hours ago, Duke MelTdoWn said:

If you really, really want to reduce drag, you can also cheat. By moving the side pods inwards so that they clip through the cargo bay far enough, you can reduce their drag to 0  ("fairing occlusion"). 

Yep, I do that sometimes but prefer not to. I like to reserve part clipping for aesthetics.

[Duke MelTdoWn]

The search for aerodynamic exploits continues! By making a small Airstream Protective Shell the root part, and embedding this spine into the rest of the body, we can make KSP think that the body is inside a fairing. This reduces the drag of the entire body to zero. 
Note that the FL-800 is attached to the rear of the Rapier. This closes the backside of the Rapier, further reducing drag.

'MunAir OD': 8 Passengers; ~ 1500 m/s left in LKO with passengers; 1x Rapier; 27.6 tons; 31,865 Kerbucks

This is forbidden tech very similar to that employed by 'Teardrop' and 'Sancus'. These additionally have heatshield lift.

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

Returned to KSP and decided to slowly get back into making interplanetary missions.
Yesterday and Today, I made a mothership, and an SSTO that will dock to it. For added difficulty, I decided to use the FAR mod.

This was meant to be a small mothership, but I may have made it slightly larger than I was intending

Detailed refining spot, with Monopropellant, Liquidfuel, Oxidizer, and Xenon tanks. And a big ore tank in the center! (I am aware you cannot make xenon from ore sadly)

The initial climb for the SSTOs were done with an autopilot mod to keep it stable.

Made an initial design for the SSTO

Somehow, this was ok according to FAR, with a relatively low 0.45 m^2 wave drag area.

 

My SSTO ascents arent optimal, but are still...... ok.. 

SSTO in orbit with 2.4km/s of fuel left, burning towards the Mun to test a high speed reentry.

 

SSTO in orbit of the Mun. I was intending on landing on the mun, but realized it didnt have enough fuel so I brought it back to Kerbin.

Unfourtinatley, it was unstable at low speeds, and was not able to fly at all and splashed (relativley slowly) into the water.

 

So I modified the design!

Flying was the usual with the autopilot mod.

This version got into orbit with slightly less delta v in orbit, but optimizing the ascent profile can fix that.

As it still had 2.2km/s in LKO, I decided to bring it beyond Minmus, and fly it at Kerbin with this trajectory for a high speed reentry.

Although it was much more stable on reentry, the first attempt didnt go too well as it dipped too low in the atmosphere and disintegrated due to aero forces

After I quickloaded, I tried again and it went much better.

This spaceplane had very little drag, and glided well. It is stable at low speeds, but it can get into a flatspin, which is very difficult to get out of.

FAR does have a glitch where landing in water may detonate the craft.. thats what happened here after touching down at less than 1m/s vertical speed...

I quickloaded and managed to land it on the ground at the shore. I did lose a wingtip, but it was otherwise ok

[SchwinnTropius]

I flew my science chopper at night for three hours straight attempting to go to the North Pole for polar science. Since I'm on real-scale JNSQ Kerbin, this will definitely take a while, even from Woomerang. I landed the chopper to rest, and I plan to continue another time; Science won't gather itself!

 

3 hours ago, JcoolTheShipbuilder said:

FAR does have a glitch where landing in water may detonate the craft.. thats what happened here after touching down at less than 1m/s vertical speed...

Since I built my chopper for water landings in FAR, I'm going to need to remember this.

Edited December 23, 2024 by SchwinnTropius
Irrelevant pic.

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

I then proceeded to make the most irradiated porch in the history of all porches.

Jebediah sitting on a porch at the back of an nuclear mothership, being irradiated by the 42 NERVs that surround him

Why did I make this?
ehh.. idk.. just wanted something other than the bare end of the big tank at the back of a ship or just another thruster cluster.

Edited December 23, 2024 by JcoolTheShipbuilder

[Lisias]

So...

RealLife™ stoled me from KSP for some time, and once I managed to get back I wasn't on the mood for "serious" gaming (like this). But, still, something slightly more challenging that simply trolling tourists !

So wondering about what to do, I remembered that my SkyLab Program would need to kick some serious payloads into the skies eventually and wondered how would be the most ludicrous (and fun) way to put a 80 ton cargo on the highest Kerbin Orbit I could by reusing some already existent craft on KSP.

And so Dynawing MAX was born!

I took the stock Dynawing, made some adjustments and strapped some serious boosters on her.

And then lightened that candle to see what happens...

Hint: this report only depicts the last successful iteration of the project - Kraken knows there's not enough storage on Kerbin if I would do a full report on every failure!

 

Oh, boy... This thing looks menacing... 59M high, ~1090tons and 11MN of thrust!

 

And she barely cleared the launchpad!!

 

And rolling it into the correct heading was a huge pain in the hot end.

Jesus Christ, she fought back on this.

 

Leaving the Lower Atmosphere and staging out the SRBs, and she was still having an argument with me about the heading...

 

Eventually we came to terms: I decide the heading, she decides the roll attitude...

 

And there the main booster goes...

 

Surprisingly, we reached Main Engine Cut Off on a pretty decent attitude and altitude.

 

After circularization, we have a good orbit, 0.000 eccentricity!

Now I was wondering... How high I can push this envelope?

 

After intensive calculations and careful considerations - i.e., a lot of Quick Saves followed by Reloading - it was decided that the payload would be deployed on a 900Km orbit.

 

And there we are. 900Km Orbit, preparing to deploy the dummy cargo!

 

Cargo deployed, moving away from it...

 

Now, it's journey home time. But...

I spent the last days hunting and fixing small problems and glitches I detected while playing, and ended up running out of time to finish this mission!

I will conclude this Soon™!

Craft and (yet) more pictures on my site.

 

Edited December 24, 2024 by Lisias
Replacing some links.

[Kimera Industries]

The desk in my room is finally clear, which raises the possibility of bringing my computer out of storage. However, I must wait, because it may not remain clear after Christmas.  I shall remain hopeful and look forward to the day when I can play KSP again. There was this cool spaceplane I was working on, the Kestrel. It'll be fully reusable. As in, refuel-it-on-the-runway-and-fly-it-again kind of reusable.

[DennisB]

My plan for the holidays was, to work on (and maybe finish) my new spacecraft for my next large mission. Unfortunately, because of lumbago I wasn't able to sit for more than a few minutes during the last 5 days without making it worse. So I was limited to watch KSP videos only. And I've found some cool videos.

Spoiler

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOE8_CEK4IM

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJQhPPIVoSA

 

Edited December 25, 2024 by DennisB

[SchwinnTropius]

Updated my science chopper and had a blast annoying everyone at KSC with my fly-by antics. I can feel myself getting better at building and flying my choppers. RnD better be ready for my low-bridge flight testing.

For now, I'll just be casually trying to get Science from this big rock waaayyy over there.

Edited December 26, 2024 by SchwinnTropius

[Fizzlebop Smith]

Nothing fancy. I found myself going the extra mile x 10^15 with my newest PBC playthrough.

I put my kerbals in orbit and have started the first series of Tourist mission. But outside of flying a few tour busses... no one has left the KSC this career.

I blame the recent changes in NKO  laws and allowing the privates sector to colonize the space around Kerbin.

The program has only been up for 14 days and already went through an impressive 100 contracts.

Kizzy Kerpobolis is relying on increased automation and a reliance on UKV explore the local system. 

I'm pushing to finish a signal boosting relay and bounce it off minmus for a Deep Kerbin Insertion before pushing the PBC envelope to DUNA.

Now I can't help it.. I'm skipping all the non tourist manned missions for now an letting the machines sweep the system. 

Finished a multistage lander that returns a small science payload. Soon i want to make a micro Apollo with probe lander / rovers.

[miklkit]

On 12/24/2024 at 5:54 PM, Kimera Industries said:

The desk in my room is finally clear, which raises the possibility of bringing my computer out of storage. However, I must wait, because it may not remain clear after Christmas.  I shall remain hopeful and look forward to the day when I can play KSP again. There was this cool spaceplane I was working on, the Kestrel. It'll be fully reusable. As in, refuel-it-on-the-runway-and-fly-it-again kind of reusable.

Go for it.  Doing that opens up all kinds of possibilities.

[Duke MelTdoWn]

I continued to play on my career save, which I last touched 8 months ago. You join me on day 50 - 52.

A 'Reginn' ore miner had been dispatched from the Mun to the Gilly exploration stack 'Pannychis' being outfitted in low Kerbin orbit. 
It brought some more experienced crew from the Mun and also completed an ore moving contract.
After switching crew, it returned to its mining duties in Twin Craters, where the ore concentration is very high.

The Very Heavy Reusable Launcher that had brought the 130 ton Pannychis stack to orbit was recovered 270 km from KSC. 
Good that I wrote down the reentry procedure a year ago. Thanks for the 185,000 back!

Teardrop 11 (an early prototype) arrived at MunStation II from Minmus. It transfered some crew with Minmus experience, then picked up 4 tourists to return to Kerbin.
After 3 aerobraking passes, I overshot the arrival at KSC, but had enough fuel left to turn around and fly back to the runway.
Two tourist contracts completed.

MunMiner III returned to her berth at MunStation I.

I launched a 'MunAir RE' with 4 tourists and 3 rookie crew. They docked at MunStation II and will make a trip in MunMiner II to the surface, then continue on to Minmus.
The 'RE' iteration has a good tradeoff between range, TWR, price, passenger safety and ruggedness. The only drawback is that it only has a Clamp-O-Tron Junior docking port. No aero cheats this time!



 

To be continued ...

[Eclipse 32]

yesterday, i made my first standardized launchers for my career save. i have the Skywing 1, a "medium" range mainsail launcher in 2.5m, and i made the Nightwing 1, a heavy launcher, also in 2.5m designed to put my minmus station in orbit. the minmus station with nearly 4000 units of LF, for no good reason. goddamn weird station contracts.

[Eclipse 32]

also, i got the bug. the "we have entered into atmospheric flight above minmus" bug.

[Duke MelTdoWn]

Meltdowns career, day 50-52 continued

A 'Sandworm' prototype has made its way to Minmus. I drove it to a nice spot to deploy surface science, then started refueling. It was hard to drive in the low gravity. Another Sandworm is on its way to Moho and will arrive in about 70 days. I hope it will work better there.

A 'Fafnir' + 'Reginn' stack arrived at Minmus. It brought along a Relay Sat for a paid contract. I also finished a contract to have a base with ISRU by landing the whole stack. This wont fly on the Mun, but no problem in the low gravity of Minmus.

[Duke MelTdoWn]

3 hours ago, Eclipse 32 said:

yesterday, i made my first standardized launchers for my career save. i have the Skywing 1, a "medium" range mainsail launcher in 2.5m, and i made the Nightwing 1, a heavy launcher, also in 2.5m designed to put my minmus station in orbit. the minmus station with nearly 4000 units of LF, for no good reason. goddamn weird station contracts.

This is a worthwhile endeavor,  you can keep on polishing the design from launch to launch.

I like to build reusable launchers. Oversize them so they can get the target payload into orbit without staging (some expendable solid fuel boosters are acceptable). I use MK3 parts because they have high impact tolerance, then plaster the whole thing with airbrakes and parachutes. Parachutes only on one side so it lands on its belly instead of toppling over.

This is the Heavy Reusable Launcher that brought the 80 ton Sandworm shown in my previous post to orbit. After many tries to get the perfect reentry point and altitude, I managed to recover it very close to KSC. 

I made a collection of different sizes: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2995059664

Edited December 27, 2024 by Duke MelTdoWn

[Eclipse 32]

they aren't reusable, due to the fact that i can't focus on more than one thing at a time due to ADHD, and i don't trust my design capabilities enough to let them fall unguided. and i also can't land rockets on kerbin for money or love.

their fairly early game launchers, too. i don't have small enough probe cores to fit them in yet. might design reusable boosters later on, tho

[Duke MelTdoWn]

10 minutes ago, Eclipse 32 said:

they aren't reusable, due to the fact that i can't focus on more than one thing at a time due to ADHD, and i don't trust my design capabilities enough to let them fall unguided. and i also can't land rockets on kerbin for money or love.

their fairly early game launchers, too. i don't have small enough probe cores to fit them in yet. might design reusable boosters later on, tho

Landing is not very hard, but you need a probe core and power on the launcher so you can guide it. Just don't get in too steep and retrograde (engines first) so you don't burn up. It depends on the drag of the vehicle where you need to set the reentry periapsis. Roughly 42 km above KSC to return from 100x100 seems to be a good rule of thumb. Then land under parachutes.

Recovering keeps your orbits clean!

Here is a design for early game that is useful to rescue Kerbonauts from orbit: Cheap Orbital Launcher - expend  one Thumper but keep the Terrier, and it can fly without pilot.

[MarkedZero]

Today I started a new modded career game. For the first few hour I spend time earning funds and science point by missons and some research. Then I built an rover and harvested all possible science point that I can get in KSC  .  Next goal is to do a simple early game Minimus landing to harvest more science point!

[Vanamonde]

1 hour ago, MarkedZero said:

Today I started a new modded career game. For the first few hour I spend time earning funds and science point by missons and some research. Then I built an rover and harvested all possible science point that I can get in KSC  .  Next goal is to do a simple early game Minimus landing to harvest more science point!

It's a big jump from KSC science to Minmus. I usually land instrument probes on various Kerbin biomes between those. 

[MarkedZero]

Well... I simply want to save as more funds as possible. Also, Bio jump in big planet such as Kerbin is too annoying.

[Duke MelTdoWn]

I built a sky lounge and took up base jumping.

Agadock jumping from 950 meters.

Edited December 28, 2024 by Duke MelTdoWn

[Trollkowski]

On 12/26/2024 at 1:42 AM, SchwinnTropius said:

Updated my science chopper and had a blast annoying everyone at KSC with my fly-by antics. I can feel myself getting better at building and flying my choppers. RnD better be ready for my low-bridge flight testing.

For now, I'll just be casually trying to get Science from this big rock waaayyy over there.

Looking very good! I'm sure you've already experimented with it but if you add some flapping to your blades it should help extract some more high speed performance out of them, but it's a tricky pursuit. I would suggest trying different configurations using struts to dampen the flapping (or the game will throw the blades every which way it pleases). There is a really good guide made by Rpatto92 that could be of help in this regard

I saw your craft on kerbalx and sadly I experienced the same yawing/"gliding" with my tandem rotor but didn't manage to fix it.  I'm sure it's fixable but it would probably take a ton of testing and tweaking. I hope you make impactful gains with this design!

[ndiver]

It makes a while I had not payed to KSP (over a year). I recently reopened my save and found back what i was doing a year before.

I decided to send a small base, built a year before to Kerbin North Pole and then send my good-old design Caterpillar rover (thanks to the help of Bon Voyage) to the North Pole Outpost.

Here is the happy crew (including Jeb and Bill) once arrived. Notice the rover is bigger than the base !

This rover design was awesome, but now it even struggles to climb hills since the rewamp of the wheels.

Edited December 30, 2024 by ndiver

[Lisias]

Playing KSP is the better way to mod KSP.

I ditched everything else these days, and I'm just playing, having fun and... (crap) finding hidden bugs.

Spoiler

(I wish I wouldn't had to "waste" time on Day Job© these days... )