What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

Today I finally set up my next generation heavy rover - the Hellhound 7 - for Munar launch. I need to reload an update of Temstar's Zenith boosters for 0.21, it seems; the struts were messed up on the ones I imported from 0.20, so on the first launch I had a UVD about 2000 meters up. The hound hit the ground at 70 m/s and survived without a scratch. I kinda wish I hadn't reverted the flight now (it did shower the launchpad area with a hell of a lot debris when it all happened).

Ultimately set up a primitive DSTO/transfer stage rocket and lifted it to the Mun. Off-balance, so steering was a bite right up until separation of the skycrane (I'd balanced that bit). Using my previously established "Tranquility Base" (the Cerberus 7 lander - the one that delivered three tiny rovers that couldn't handle the new Munar terrain) as a target, I was was able to land about five kilometers from the Neil Armstrong Memorial. The drive there broke two of the rover's six ruggedized wheels, but at this point it's shining its headlight on the memorial's plaque. Turned out that Tranquility Base was about 700 meters off the target. Renamed the Hellhound "Bullseye".

Now I just need to redesign my Apollo Munar lander.

The Hellhound flight was also my first circumlunar free return trajectory flight (thanks Johnno!!); prior to this flight, my trips to Mun had all be cislunar free returns.

[JeramyM]

Well, hmm, this is unfortunate. So I was trying to do the historic missions from the tutorial section of the wiki. Had Luna-9 in orbit around the Mun, turned the ship retrograde to get ready for my deorbit burn, apparently retrograde at that time was also the perfect angle to block all of my solar panels from the sun. So now Luna 9 is orbiting the mun at 10k above the surface, with a full tank of monoprop and about 1000dv left in the transfer stage.

[Geschosskopf]

Previously, I built a flotilla of 3 ships in Kerbin orbit. Today I sent them all off to Duna. The 1st to arrive (2nd to depart) aerobraked successfully and shuffled off to Ike, it's intended target. There it split into 3 pieces, 1 to map Ike for topography and Kethane, the 2nd to then go down and load up on Kethane, and the 3rd to wait in orbit for the 2nd part to come back, then push it down to Duna orbit. But the ship this is all going to meet in Duna orbit won't arrive for another 20-odd days so for now this is all still sitting at Ike. But in 2 days another ship (3rd to depart) will arrive to keep me occupied until then. And I wrote a mission report about all this.

Edited August 5, 2013 by Geschosskopf

[Cydonian Monk]

Today I learned that landing on the edge of a mountain is a "Very Bad Thing ."

[LameLefty]

Today I learned that landing on the edge of a mountain is a "Very Bad Thing ."

Ditto landing on the inside wall of a crater on the dark side of the Mun without a good set of floodlights on your lander. The result wasn't as bad as it could've been but it broke the lander pretty badly; destroyed one of the legs, one of the engines and tanks entirely and all of the solar arrays. Oops. Fortunately I had quicksaved before I initiated the descent. On the second try I realized I was on a serious slope as soon as I cut power. I was able to lift off immediately and hover around looking for a better spot to land; Neil Armstrong would be proud. I got the lander down safely but used so much fuel I couldn't return home. I sent Gus out on EVA to plant the flag and as soon as he got back inside, we managed to limp up to a low Munar orbit and await rescue. This evening at 8:50 pm CDT, the crew of Mun-7 arrived home safe and sound. The crew of Rescue 1 returned safely 20 minutes later.

[BahamutoD]

Today, my Kerbals went around acting like they were humans, using shuttles to build a space station and surviving the return trip. Silly kerbals.

[SDIR]

Today, I captured two tugs into Minmus orbit, one of them carrying a self-propelled fuel tank for my Mun space station, which was detached and the tug sent back to Kerbin, and another carrying the actual space station which captured into an elliptical orbit so that I could do some adjustments for the final orbit later. Also planned two orbital corrections for two more ships on their way from Mun to Minmus on a crew and equipment transfer between the two space stations. And found my University class schedule and practically fainted.

[KC5SDY]

I successfully completed my first dock. I am so drained by how stressful it was and how long it took, I am tired and ready for a nap. I was trying to go by the tutorial, I was just having the worst time getting everything to work out right. I did the next best thing, lined up the orbits, waited until I got close enough to work with and about pulled my hair out from there on in until I bumped into the other orbiter and suddenly everything lined up right.

[Longsok]

I finally learned how to land using a probe on the Mun. Next is a rover with an Mun escape vehicle, so if my Mun Lander goes south I can get my Kerbals back safely.

[The Wrong Stuff]

I crashed into the Mun (loss of 3 including Jeb, however they all somehow survived and were waiting back at the KSC when I finished my Duna mission)

Launched a second space station (why have one when you can have two for twice the cost?)

Mostly successfully sent a spacecraft to orbit Duna...it ran out of fuel before the orbit became circular...but oh well, it made it.

[annallia]

I learned how to edit the persistence file to fix my glitched docking port.

I also finished my station finally. Want grueling? Try moving a 700 ton station with only 3 NERVA engines and only being able to throttle up half way (otherwise everything got bendy). But I eventually made it into a near perfect 1000k orbit. I was building it in LKO but then decided why keep it at about 180k when it is intended to refuel vessels headed for other planets? So had to move it. Now I have to refuel it...

[Aragosnat]

Well my Kerbals stranded on Duna made it back in Kerbal fashion and still kicking.

[lammatt]

add another ride to my minmus amusement park.

(gonna start working on my bungee jumping platform and a roller coaster track tomorrow)

[lincourtl]

I visited KSC 2/Area 51 for the first time in 0.21.1. Looking great, and no anti-gravity present. Curiously though, I did experience that bug(?) where I left a Kerbal on the KSC 2 launchpad and then when I went to launch another ship, KSP told me he was there, asking if I wanted to recover him. Noticed in the tracking station map, it identifies ships at KSC 2/Area 51 as "landed at KSC" even when they're quite a distance away from the second launchpad and VAB.

[ash73]

I did a Pathfinder landing on Duna!

Airbags mod is here

[Guest]

Today, our three main Kerbals went on a nice little grand tour of the Kerbin system.

Launched from Kerbin, orbited the Mun, slingshotted to Minmus, landed on Minmus, planted flag, returned to Mun orbit, realise you don't have enough fuel to get back if you land, leave for Kerbin.

[Cotux]

Today i docked two craft together for the first time. It took alot of fuel and time but nearly no rcs

[Buckshoot]

upgraded the SS Overseer with a more powerfull telescope. Had to pickup the kerbals before decommission of the old SS

SS Overseer MKII

Rescue ship

Approaching and docking

Return safely

Attach engines. Opps forgot RCS

Decommission

[McFarnsworth]

I may or may not have stranded Bob and Bill on Eeloo without any snacks, since they had only planned on a quick orbital trip and back at most. Kerbal mission planning at its finest.

I removed the chutes from my atmospheric lander and placed my rover at the bottom so it could be used on bodies without an atmosphere. Stuck that on top an untested interplanetary stage/comm satellite, which in turn was placed on top of a poorly assembled, improperly strutted up experimental launcher. One of the SRB's clipped an engine when detaching, but I managed to deactivate the opposing engine before the rocket went into an uncontrollable spin. I decided not to inform Bill and Bob of this incident.

Poor construction resulted in my main engines falling off my final ascent stage during the circularization burn, but luckily there were some strapped to the side that were still working. Since shedding this weight made me gain dV I've decided this is a design feature and I had planned it all along. This was also how I explained it to a terrified Bill and Bob after their main thrusters came floating by their window.

Despite these initial setbacks I considered going to the Mun, but noticed a launch window to Eeloo was only a few hours off. In typical Kerbal fashion I messed up my interplanetary burn and concluded that the Oberth effect doesn't work as well when your trajectory passes through the atmosphere. This also messed up my rendezvous with Eeloo so lots of dV was spent correcting my error.

My interplanetary stage ran out of fuel during the circularization burn around Eeloo so it was dropped and repurposed as a communication satellite. I used its RCS system to further circularize its orbit. When switching back to the main craft the Space Kraken decided to eat my landing legs. Earlier in flight testing revealed that they were too short anyway ever since the rover had been attached at the bottom. So yet again I claimed this was intended as yet again random parts drifted by a rather worried looking Bill and Bob.

Landing what was left of the craft proved to be rather tricky. The plan was to drop the lander right before touchdown and put down the legless lander a bit further out. The actual execution of said plan left a lot to be desired however. The lander landed on top of the deployed rover breaking off one of its solar panels and the lander tipped over falling on its side. The rover still works fine though, and I managed to right the lander without any bits falling off. Bill, Bob and I are now wondering if it's possible to get back from Eeloo with a little over 3000dV left, some RCS fuel and full jetpacks?

[capi3101]

Tinkered with the Castle Zulu design a bit to get all the criteria in for the Doing it Apollo Style challenge. After my changes, the booster could no longer make orbit (not enough thrust in the second stage). So that's going to have to get redesigned.

Decided I should try a dry run, so I fired up my first ship - the Fireball 7 - and sent Jeb out to Tranquility Base (the Cerberus 7 lander) for an attempt at a targeted landing using Bullseye (the Hellhound 7 rover I'd left parked at the memorial). Jeb landed a little over a kilometer from Bullseye and about 900 meters from Tranquility; he's going to have to do better than that if he wants to get maximum points for the challenge, of course. He did take the opportunity to jetpack out to Bullseye, plant a flag in its place and take Bullseye out for a little jaunt, fixing the two wheels it broke on its initial trek to the Memorial. He drove up to Tranquility and then headed back to his Fireball. Once aboard, Bullseye drove itself back to Jeb's flag and Jeb came home. All in all a successful mission, but I think next time we'll try things in an Apocalypse 7 lander - for all its shortcomings, the Fireball is less massive than the Apocalypse lander and therefore has a higher TWR (both are powered by LV-909s). The redesigned Castle Zulu will probably be harder to land than either of them, but the Apocalypse should be closer to the final "experience".

Actually, something just occurred to me...I should take the Castle Zulu lander out there by itself.

Edited August 5, 2013 by capi3101

[Matticus88]

I landed a scientific lander on the Mun. not special at all, but it was for me, first time without mechjeb, first time using a skycrane style landing method, first time using the smaller lander legs without snapping them off.

[Feldynn]

I accidentally made my first SSTO Space Plane last night while fooling around in the SPH for the first time. I had an urge to make a sort of boxy old fashioned biplane but with jet power so I set about fashioning a worthy contraption, after a number of test crashes / flights and some design adjustments I settled on a reasonably stable craft. Some proper test flights proved it could take off, circle the KSC reasonably well and land without any problem so I went for a longer flight and ended up around 12k meters up going at a reasonable speed.

Of course being in Gravity Turn Country the Kerbal in me immediately blurted out "Add rockets!" so of course I did! I strapped on some rocket fuel tanks and aero spike engines, an appropriate amount of struts and even a docking port on the front for good measure. After a very slow ascent I got back to about 12k, hit the rockets and cut the jets then proceeded to a mostly circular 110k orbit!

I did discover one major flaw in the design, that being I forgot to add solar panels because I wasn't expecting to get into orbit . Or course there's also no escape pod / parachute stage either for those "in atmosphere" emergencies but that's not really important right now, really the solar panels aren't either because I don't have any plans to actually use something as clumsy as that but it was fun to make!

[Loerelau]

Testing my new rover! He should be able to build my planned base... I hope!

[ash73]

Landed a probe on Tylo, I guess it's staying there.

[SRV Ron]

Designed a probe launcher using NovaPunch parts for the rocket and the strap on liquid fueled boosters. Asparagus staging worked most efficient placing the third stage into orbit. All eight test probes were sent to Mun at once five minutes apart. Due to variances in their capture burns, some arrived ahead of the others and at different paragees, from 48,000 meters to 1,000,000 meters. All ended up nearly in the proper plane with no correction burns halfway as is customary to fine tune such encounters.