What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Respawn]

I totally suck at making 3d modeling however i do like custom parts, so today i've been making some custom textures for some stock parts.

After some hex editing and a lot of guesswork and a super old version of paint shop pro 5 (1998-ish). I managed to come up with this.

"stronger carbon struts" and "a bit stretchier and not so yellow fuel line."

Necessity is the mother of all inventions i guess

[MK3424]

Building a small MIR using stock parts and improving a miniature Soyuz from OKB-1 result: Soyuz is capable of reaching +200 KM orbit but... troubles with MIR: KVANT-1 docked perfectly but KVANT-2 teared into pieces and forced to redesign it, so it won't break up into pieces while docked.

[Meltro]

Initial crewing of the Jebediah's Manhood

The Manhood, still under construction. Visible are my standard fueling pod (left), crew hab modules (bottom, one has been removed and placed in it's final position at the other end), and three orbital maneuvering pods for positioning equipment that I'm about to just throw into atmo for how useless they've been. The large nacelle-bearing tugs have been doing 95% of the positioning work, and they were only supposed to be staging elements for a prior project.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Meltro
stupid imgur

[lajoswinkler]

Did two more dockings. More Kerbals and, finally, more fuel. I've managed to bring up a large fuel tank with a space probe on top and did a sideways docking, which was hard because I forgot to add more RCS thrusters. I had to rely on gyroscopes to correct my every move, which is hard when you've got a huge ass tank with uncontrolled inertia behind you.

This is after docking.

And this is the current look after excess stuff has been dumped away.

I've actually got a hang of this. Orbits must be at 0° (or better, NaN) inclination. Both at less eccentric as possible, but one smaller than the other, to facilitate catching up while warping time. When they catch up, two burns on apoapsis and periapsis to make the orbits nearly identical. After that, burning towards pink prograde a bit, then immediatelly yellow retrograde to reshape the orbit. After a couple of minutes, you're less than 500 metres away. Switch to RCS and combine rotation and translation. As you constantly correct your position, orbital fluctuations are nullified. Then more final RCS and voila, magnet lock catches up.

(I'd still like an option to do this automatically. )

The number of parts and the complexity of this structure is making my computer go mad, even at lowest graphic settings, so I doubt I'll be adding a lot more stuff.

It seems that decouplers allow fuel transfer after all. I'm not sure why it didn't work with my initial experiment.

Edited August 18, 2013 by lajoswinkler

[satcharna]

My first all-stock Eve return mission. Ran into some trouble when my ascent vehicle refused to dock with the orbiter for some reason, but Dudbus was able to transfer vehicles with his EVA pack instead.

[The Jedi Master]

Holy lag, Batman. What is the FPS on that thing?!

I tested MechJeb by paying Neil a visit.

Also, show of hands for anyone else who thinks this should be stickied!

[Skorpychan]

Dropped my first base onto Duna. With a crew, this time. Had to Revert To VAB because I forgot fuel lines, and only discovered it when fuel ran out. Durp.

Landed it with surprisingly little issue. Was a bit sketchy because I came in too fast at first, but it worked out, using the rockets to forcibly pop open the drogue chute. Landed nicely, dropped the rover, moved it from under the lander, planted the flag, and discovered that I didn't have a ladder between the lander-can and the hitchhiker pod atop it. Access to the housing module is now entirely by jetpacking up and grabbing for the ladder.

I'll fix the design in the VAB and call the next launch the mk2 version.

I also need to send one or three of my big roaming bases up there.

And drop a standard lander onto Ike.

I'm pretty sure that Duna is going to be my first major extra-kerbin project, after I get a Mun-base working properly. And figure out docking so I can actually get more stuff out to it in one go.

The interplanetary stage is working well, though. I just need the docking so I can attach more of them together. Not sure if I should just 4x the nuclear engines on the base model for larger hauls, or just stick nuclear engines on each tank I send up and treat it as a multiple unit.

[Scarecrow88]

I put a manned lander on Eeloo for the first time, using the ship I originally designed to go to Duna. Think it might be a bit short on fuel to get back though!

[Meltro]

Holy lag, Batman. What is the FPS on that thing?!

About 5, it actually has more parts attached right now than will be in the final (or not, haven't designed the probes yet but they should be simple-ish). Still useable, but annoying.

Also, vote for sticky

[Tw1]

Realy? You didn't see Tw1 needs glasses? Longsok clearly talks about "a Mun Satellite and manned lander" He never said anything about the sun.

Yeah... These things happen at 2 in the morning...

[Shania_L]

I had a little play with an old Plane design, Joy Rider Two just broke my speed and altitude records once again.

Then I started building a debris de-orbitron type thing, but it ended up looking more like a space telescope so I put some lights on it and renamed it

In true kerbal fashion I am now building a bigger version which WILL be a debris destroyer!

And then ofcourse there was a whole load of this as well

[Camelotking524]

"I'm going to land on that mountain one of these days"

Jeb Kerman, before the fiery crash that almost cost him his life.

[Deadweasel]

[TABLE=width: 1280]

[TR]

[TD]A lot of planning and effort completely undone in a heartbeat by that damnable vessel switching bug. >

Today, multiple long-term missions were recalled and placed on indefinite standby, pending investigation into the tragic loss of the Duna expedition.

The Duna mission's kickoff was highlighted by the maiden flights of a new long-range transport vessel and a matching variable cargo hull based on the Interplanetary Exploration Vehicle program.

IPCV Ronin took to the skies and proceeded to perform a flawless orbital insertion.

Even with all engines active, Ronin had more than enough delta-v to reach the Jolian system, though it must refuel in order to return. The mission plan was to perform a thorough flight testing of Ronin's systems, then launch its mission cargo vessel, Kalypso.

Kalypso was designed to be unmanned, though it is initially piloted by two crew members, one of which would join the Duna mission. The cargo vessel contained two light Sun Sprite-class landers, as well as a modified and expanded version of the HSTAC Silverhawk program's experimental power station and fuel conversion system. The fuel converters were intended to resupply the landers upon return, but could also be used to replenish Ronin's supply in an emergency (though replenishment of such a large ship takes hours to complete).

Upon arrival, the main engine and command sections were disengaged from Kalypso, the command pod then re-connected at the aft end, and completed Kalypso's docking with Ronin.

Once final docking was complete, Kalypo's systems were brought fully online for integrity and status checks of the power station and the lander modules, to be completed by Nelnard, while his partner Elner departed to retrieve the disengaged Kalypso drive section, to de-orbit and return safely home.

Kalypso's cargo and systems full tested and verified, Nelnard called Ronin to return all of the ship's systems to standby, and took his berth in one of Ronin's spacious crew compartments. The rest of their crew mates would be joining them soon.

Two days later, a Goshawk automated transfer ship arrived to deliver the final crewmembers, who transferred to their berths aboard Ronin without incident.

Ronin reached the transfer window to Duna a couple of hours afterward, and many aboard -as well as those on the ground- found themselves holding their breath, save for the Flight Director, who relayed the countdown to burn initiation. Mission commander Johnoly, at Ronin's helm, primed the main engines. At zero mark, he triggered the ignition sequence and began throttling up. After a couple of minutes at full main drive thrust, the final flight test was completed, and the mission designers' insistence that Ronin would require additional power to complete the transfer burn was now proven correct.

Mission Kontrol advised ignition of Ronin's four secondary engines, which Johnoly triggered right away, having been prepared for just this eventuality.

What nobody had been prepared for was just how sudden and strong the additional engines' power would begin to act. Within seconds, all aboard could hear the groaning of the hull under great strain, followed by what was later described as a blood-chilling "pop". Ronin lurched ahead, suddenly free of its burden. Kalypso's connection to Ronin had severed, and the cargo vessel was now floating free. The command channel was suddenly flooded with traffic from Mission Kontrol and the four mission specialists berthed on Kalypso, all screaming the same word: "ABORT!" Johnoly wasted no time and killed the drives immediately, then brought Ronin about to kill off the relative velocity to Kalypso.

The mission's transfer window for this orbit had been shot, but that gave everybody an opportunity to asses the situation.

It was determined that Kalypso's interia had simply caused the ship to break from its dock under the sudden acceleration of Ronin's secondary engines. After the docking ports were inspected, Kontrol gave assent to attempt to re-dock again.

Johnoly guided Ronin in, painstakingly nudging the ship back in-line with Kalypso, which now had no command and control functionality of its own.

At the final moment of the maneuver, however, none heard the expected telltale "ka-chunk" of a successful docking. Instead, they heard a soft, resounding "clong". The docking ports had contacted, but the locking mechanisms had failed to actuate. Further inspection of the docking ports revealed that while they were structurally-sound, the lock actuators themselves were damaged beyond their ability to repair.

The mission was over before it had even begun.

With the Goshawk now two days out from re-joining the mission to return the crew home, the decision was made for the specialists still aboard Kalypso to man the lander modules and abandon her for Ronin's service docks instead. They would be much more cramped aboard the landers, but at least they'd all be together and more assured of rescue, once Goshawk arrived. Their departure was marked by saddened silence, broken only by occasional automated positioning updates from Ronin's nav systems on the flight channel.

Two days later, Goshawk obtained Ronin's beacon and began its approach, guided remotely by Mission Kontrol. At 5 keks away from rendezvous, alarms began to sound on the ground. Tracking flooded the Flight Director's local channel with information that Goshawk itself was currently confirming: the area had become suddenly filled with numerous scanner pings that should not have been there. Medical quickly joined in, calling out loss of connection with all of the crew members aboard Ronin. The command channel was largely unintelligible, filled with screams from the Kalypso crew, still aboard the landers -or according to tracking- what remained of them.

It quickly became clear that for some unknown reason, Ronin had suffered a serious failure; one that had resulted in the ship's explosion and subsequent disintegration.

For the second time in a year, the Black Shoal protocol was initiated at KSC. A broad, temporary media blackout was enacted, and all attention at Mission Kontrol was diverted to saving what lives they could.

Tracking was able to lock on the lander pods, which had somehow survived the event intact, but tearfully informed the Flight Director that they were currently on terminal return trajectories, and they were now too far away for Goshawk to reach them before they re-entered the atmosphere. The entire crew of the Duna mission had been lost within a five minute span.

After the lander pods fell silent, the Flight Director ordered Goshawk to begin searching the debris field. Kalypso, unmanned and at standby power, was discovered a short distance away.

Its flight recorder hadn't captured the event that had befallen Ronin.

Kalypso was left where it was, to act as a memorial to the fallen crew, and to offer support services for future missions on-orbit.

Meanwhile, IPEV Tailwind, stationed at Münar orbit, had just overseen completion of yet another science mission on the surface. Tailwind, originally launched as a mobile exploration command station, had been temporarily re-purposed as a docking and service platform for the KSC's High-Speed Trans-Atmospheric Courier program. Expanded over a year ago with a disposable fueling and docking tower, Tailwind had not originally been expected to depart its orbit for another 18 months.

Tailwind had also suffered some damage during its initial launch, destroying its on-board fuel conversion and power storage capabilities. Because of this, Tailwind would be unable to resume its rounds to the other bodies in the Kerbol system without returning home for patch work.

With the still-unexplained destruction of Ronin, the decision was made to recall all fleet elements capable of returning home for a complete inspection and possible overhaul.

The HSTAC program was temporarily suspended, and all crew on or near Tailwind ordered to secure testing hulls to the fuel tower, top off Tailwind itself before disconnecting from the tower, and burning for home.

The fuel tower would remain powered and active to support possible future missions, with enough fuel still aboard to maintain the existing exploration vessels for another two years.

Tailwind returned to Kerbin and assumed a high parking orbit, there to begin its long wait for inspection and service teams. The flight crew were retrieved by the still-deployed Goshawk for some well-earned R&R while Tailwind was otherwise indisposed.

After an inspection crew had performed a thorough analysis of Tailwind's systems (or lack thereof in some cases), an ASV Sparrow-I was deployed with a module designed to replace Tailwind's missing equipment.

Once rendezvous was completed, the repair procedure was initiated, and the Sparrow released its payload in preparation for re-orientation, and began lining up to install the module in Tailwind's forward cargo bay.

Installation complete, Tailwind switched its power systems over to the new power plant, and the Sparrow returned to Kerbin to be discarded over uninhabited territory, fuel tanks dry.

With Tailwind returned and repaired, efforts to determine the cause of the Duna mission disaster are scheduled to resume. Tailwind will be tasked to the site of the accident, and will be joined by a pair of recovery tugs to begin the work of collecting debris for analysis, though it's widely believed the KSC will never discover the true cause of the destruction of Ronin and her crew.

[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

[MrIronMoose]

Tested the restroom function of Seanmore's suit

[lajoswinkler]

I wanted to scan the planet usin MapSat (yeah, it's a mod, but it doesn't give any benefits in flight, it's an add-on at best), but tired by all those huge tanks, I've tried to reach orbit using nothing but those tiny Oscar-B tanks and Rockomax 48-7S engines. Soon I realized that staging will be required, and after that I realized radial fuel attachment is needed to lift all that up. So I used Rockomax 24-77, too.

This is the design.

It might've been smaller, but I didn't care. I made a lightweight probe consisting of a 1x6 naked solar cell, OKTO2 and a MapSat.

After I circularized at almost exactly 100 km of almost perfect polar orbit (90.1°, I think), I was left with approx. 1 unit of fuel so I dumped it.

90.1° and 100 km is obviusly not very good for orbiting and scanning because you end up following the same path, but that's the best I could do with this simple design and also wanting to reach such inclination.

(another visible orbit is a recreation of Sputnik 1)

[capi3101]

Couple of flights in Wing Commander replicas today. Rapier-II/G went okay; tore up half of the bird on landing but Jeb still lived. The Ferret...well, I don't like the Ferret much. Good in space shooting the Cats, explodes a bit much when you hit the tarmac too hard.

Also typed up the mission log for the Castle Romeo mission and posted it to the Apollo-style Mun Challenge thread. Getting ready to move on at this point. Occurs to me I need to test the Kerbal space taxi lander design in 0.21 (worked okay in 0.20, but not everything transferred over well).

[Geschosskopf]

After over a week of tinkering with various airframe configurations and a variety of powerplants, I finally succeeded in making a Kethane-electric hybrid airplane that can land initially, taxi over hills, take off again, and obtain at least a 5km altitude on Duna. Making this work was the biggest challenge I've faced yet, harder than getting an SSTO spaceplane to work, so I'm kinda proud of it. I call it the D'OH (Duna Overflight Hybrid), it's unsuccessful predecessors having been the large and diverse DORK family, the DOPE, and the DRUNK. It takes off and lands like an albatross and turns like a cow, but it flies. And if you can fly on Duna, you can fly anywhere .

[annallia]

Continued planning the next stage of my Duna outpost/shipyard. New tug has been developed and tested.

The initial attempts to get the behemoth of a tug into orbit didn't go as planned...

Amazingly little left of the 80 ton tug and the 350 ton launcher when the core stage explodes....

[Tassyr]

LAYTHE! I LANDED ON LAYTHE! For the first frigging time since laythe was added I managed to get something on the beach moon!

It was completely accidentially, too... originally the plan was to put this thing in orbit around Jool and then fire the probe into Jool itself- and then I realised I way overestimated my delta-v, and might've had a shot at Laythe. So...

I finally landed on LAYTHE!

The main craft had a whole 30 fuel left, too. Out of 1872...

Edited August 19, 2013 by Tassyr

[Deadweasel]

LAYTHE! I LANDED ON LAYTHE! For the first frigging time since laythe was added I managed to get something on the beach moon!

It was completely accidentially, too... originally the plan was to put this thing in orbit around Jool and then fire the probe into Jool itself- and then I realised I way overestimated my delta-v, and might've had a shot at Laythe. So...

I finally landed on LAYTHE!

Congrats! It's so cool isn't it?

I wish there were more worlds where aircraft worked. Even better, I wish we could build aircraft on those worlds, just to have the challenge of adapting to new and different flight dynamics.

[Tassyr]

Congrats! It's so cool isn't it?

I wish there were more worlds where aircraft worked. Even better, I wish we could build aircraft on those worlds, just to have the challenge of adapting to new and different flight dynamics.

I swear I literally jumped out of my desk chair and cheered so loud my neighbor thought I'd been attacked. Hah.

.... man, my next planned mission to Minmus feels so small now...

Edited August 19, 2013 by Tassyr

[Niccolo]

My probe arrived on the Mun, which was good. However, it arrived at 200 m/s, which was not good.

[User Unrelated]

I took a little stroll down the road, and ended up with a crazy girl called Eve.

She smells like bad perfume, but her looks make up for it.

It was a challenge for me to get here, but I'm getting better!

I just really wish that I hadn't left the job of orbit circularization to 3 radially mounted ANT engines, when my whole probe probably weighed about 7 tons when full of fuel it took FOREVER!

The good news is, my new launcher design is proving to be very versatile (I also launched an empty fuel storage tank up to my station with it earlier today) I still have about half of the fuel tank left... not quite enough to swap my polar orbit to an equatorial orbit, but it might come in handy if I ever decide to use the clamp-o-tron that I've started adding to every single craft I launch "just in case" I decide to use it later.

I left my first bit of debris outside the Kerbin system, too... I've got a tri-strut nuclear bell floating around Eve in a massive elliptical orbit now haha

Edited August 19, 2013 by User Unrelated

[Tex_NL]

3rd and probably final version of my K-Nor class outpost. I'll bring it into orbit with Orbital Construction so I've made it a single piece construction. A few strategically placed struts should be able to hold everything together.

It weighs in at a massive 174.5 tons and can house a total of 145 Kerbals.

Used mods: B9 Aerospace, KW Rocketry, Large Structural Components, MechJeb (optional)

[Kimberly]

3rd and probably final version of my K-Nor class outpost. I'll bring it into orbit with Orbital Construction so I've made it a single piece construction. A few strategically placed struts should be able to hold everything together.

It weighs in at a massive 174.5 tons and can house a total of 145 Kerbals.

Used mods: B9 Aerospace, KW Rocketry, Large Structural Components, MechJeb (optional)

I don't know if you intend to rotate the station for artificial gravity, but if you do, the housing units are upside down.