What did you do in KSP1 today?

[leax256]

I built a functional shuttle. works perfectly.

[Hannu]

I got little bored with KSP after intensive gaming period and thought to take a little break (two weeks perhaps). During couple of last days I have programmed a little software to calculate porkchop plots and show these orbits graphically in Kerbol's solar system. User interface is far from completed but mathematics works now.

[Brapness]

Dropped 2 rovers, Scott and Kurt - named after 2 of my dead Kerbals-, on Eve. Scott landed fine but Kurt ditched in the water.

[Meltro]

I continued work on a fuel-to-orbit system capable of refueling my big boys without a dozen launches

This design showed quite a bit of promise

...up to around 5,000 meters

*sigh*

[ZenithRising]

In a word, Science!

A few weeks ago I participated in a lengthy discussion (on this thread:http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/41209-How-salty-is-Laythe), about the salinity levels on Laythe. We wondered if we could come up with a conclusion based on the ability of Laythe's ocean to remain liquid despite the relatively low temperatures. We talked a lot, and many interesting points were made, but it became clear that we needed MOAR DATA! What exactly is the temperature, and where, and when? Thus began a multi-week mission I just completed successfully today.

The Mission:

I built Pandora I, a deep space probe with 7 identical detachable probe landers. Each lander weighed less than a ton, was fitted with every scientific instrument available, a parachute, and about 1000 delta-v worth of thrust and fuel. The plan was to launch from Kerbin, do a fly-by of Duna where I could drop off the first pair of probes and then slingshot my way on to Jool.

I reached Duna easily and detached the first pair of probes. Using their rockets, one was aligned for a temperate intercept path, and another a polar intercept path. It took a number of save reloads to get them landed on Duna with the thin atmosphere and those spindly probe struts, but eventually I did get them both down safely, and returning data. As a bonus I flew by some sort of crazy Mt. Doom on Duna's north pole.

Now unfortunately my gravity slingshot was terrible, and I ran out of fuel trying to normalize my orbit around Jool. Mission aborted.

Pandora II featured slightly more fuel, a slightly lighter payload and somewhat better flying. It got depressing close to Laythe, but due to an eccentric orbit around Jool was unable to actually reach her SoC. Mission aborted.

Finally, Pandora III was launched, this time with twice the fuel. It attempted to slingshot around Eve, and dropped a couple of probes off on the way, which landed easily in the thick atmosphere. The slingshot was mediocre, basically just getting back the delta-v I lost going to Eve, but with the extra fuel I made it to Laythe, established a ~45° orbit, and began dropping off probes.

The probe landings required some reloads again, but were all ultimately successful. Shifting Pandora III's orbit from 45° all the way to a polar orbit allowed me to establish landing sites at a variety of latitudes and altitudes around Laythe, both on the shoreline, and far inland (or as inland as you can get on Laythe). Also, I got one probe right on the little island in the middle of that huge impact crater. Effing A.

All of the exact data I collected can be found on a google spreadsheet here if people are actually interested: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuvW-Ya0mDJDdFpXbHpweHhWd1o1azFiY3I3MXR5RlE#gid=0

General Things I Learned:

1. Time of year, time of day, and latitude do not matter at all for determining temperature in Kerbal Space Program. This was born out by all nine of my probes on three different bodies. For the purposes of crunching numbers and doing fun science on KSP celestial bodies, we should probably assume that the temperature readings then are a general average of all times of day, seasons, and latitudes.

2. Altitude and/or barometric pressure do matter for determining temperature in KSP. The higher and thinner the atmosphere, the lower the temperature. This was also confirmed by all nine probes. In fact, the correlation was strong enough across all three bodies that the formula "t = 48p - 34", where 't' is temperature, and 'p' is barometric pressure, will yield reasonably accurate answers on all bodies (within about %5).

3. There is a small glitch with the in-game thermometer when switching focus to a ship. For whatever reason, when you switch the thermometer always starts at 0°, and then begins to rise or fall to the actual temperature. The speed of the rise/fall is exponential, beginning fast, and slowing as it gets closer to the proper number. The time this takes seems to take about 60 seconds, regardless of whether the temp is 2° or 200°. So, when reading temperature data, make sure you always wait at least minute after switching craft focus to record the number.

Things I Learned About Laythe:

1. It's warm there! Relatively at least. While the temperature does drop below freezing at higher altitudes, anything below about 600m is above freezing. In fact, my warmest reading (pictured below), taken from an altitude of just 10m and a barometric pressure of 0.7979, was a balmy 4.59°. That's jacket weather! Ironically, this reading came from atop Laythe's northern ice cap. Latitude definitely doesn't affect temperature in KSP!

In Conclusion:

Due to Laythe's relatively warm temperatures at sea level, I cannot conclude much definitively about the salinity levels of her oceans. I can however conclude that no exotic substances or compositions are necessary to explain Laythe's largely liquid surface. It could be fresh water and we would still expect it to remain mostly liquid. Given that information, my assumption is, lacking evidence to contrary, that the salinity levels are similar to those on both Kerbin and Earth.

[Tw1]

Today, I continued testing a nuclear engined space shuttle.

Had a few hitches.

A small fuel tank fell of, but I decided to keep flying anyway.

Exept I ran out of fuel in the droptanks before my apoapsis cleared the atmosphere. As fuel lines were playing up before, the main engine was only connected to a small reserve of on-board fuel, the rest linked only to the Lv-Ns.

But, things were looking good. My Periaps was raising, and I was still gaining speed.

In fact. I made it.

I'm going to call this technique the "Skip Orbital Burn"

I even had enough fuel left to do a flyby of the Mun, with a big correction as I botched the free return.

That correction would've given me a Kerbin escape had I not aimed into the atmosphere.

Then I doged the trees to land.

The shuttle still tends to tip to one side, and doesn't fly stably enough to make orbit reliably, so needs more designing yet. But it should be much more useful than its predecessor.

[UH60guy]

Today, when prepping for my midcourse correction halfway to Jool, Jeb found that the central tank holding most of his fuel and an engine had fallen off:

Tomorrow we'll learn about abort scenarios and rescue missions...

[Kinglet]

Testing new Guided missiles in my A-10... it's going well.

Amazingly one of the missiles went through the building...

That building is messed up. I once landed a VTOL on it, but it fell through it, blew up, and only the cockpit survived.

[Randox]

Completed most of the testing phase for a Duna mission. Found out that My orbital tug with a Kethane mining module handles like a garbage truck. Part of the mission profile was for it to be able to land on Duna in the event a surface evac was required, and I'm not convinced it could come even close to this, given that the Kethane gear has the landing equipment as well. I was going to ditch it for the flight up, but I don't think I can land it, so I am looking at adding an engine module to the ship for it to use, if needed. The space station/refinery it's carrying around also could be lighter, and it needs to have LV-N engines installed. It might be departing with engine pods. These revisions will not require testing.

There are also some questions about whether the ship, as tested, even carries enough fuel to get anyplace. My guess is it's going to get about halfway to Duna, so my Kerbals are currently acquiring Kerbal Engineer to answer this question.

However, during the testing, Bob Kerman decided that a mission to the Mun was pretty pedestrian, and that he should absolutely set some sort of record while he was there. Category of choice? EVA travel. Up till now, the longest flight I can remember making in any version was perhaps 2.2km one way (ship to ship on the Mun), and 1.4km when investigating the Mun arch (which holds the current altitude record for the Mun I think, for me). After planting a flag a good 1.2km from the Miner and flying back, he saw he had like, 40% of the tank left, and he'd been goofing off a bit.

So we set out again, to fly to the other side of the crater/valley I had landed next to, planning to head back no later than 50%. It wasn't a strait path, he decided to go further about halfway. Tried to turn around at about 55% fuel left. It took until 48% to be headed back the 5.4km to the mining rig. Not good. No one else is on the Mun, and the station in orbit wasn't capable of any kind of landing. If he got stuck in the crater, it would be a long wait for help. Going in a strait, getting up to a good speed, and praying really hard got him pretty close. He crashed into a small very steep slope using the last fumes of fuel to slow him down, still about 200m out. It didn't really work...

Three large bounces off the surface later, he was nearly a km away from the miner, and had to walk all the way back.

It was worth it though, because he absolutely shattered the round trip record (an estimated 10.8km, accounting for the original change of direction), and going 'super fast'.

[Flooger]

Today i sent my first probe to orbit the Mun after finally buying KSP

[Zeroignite]

I made a white texture replacement for the Mk1 Pod [universe Replacer]. Being invisible on the nightside was bugging me.

[gslarmour]

Been bored with launches and docking. Decided to work on a low altitude scout vehicle. Named it the Krab. First successful test flight. The only non-stock part is the Salyut RCS block, using them because I wanted better lateral control than the linear or rotated stock RCS gave. Album link: http://imgur.com/a/wpdWx

Edited September 11, 2013 by gslarmour
Change link

[Aragosnat]

Got this SSTO pure rocket craft into oribit yestarday:

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/1100291843003651963/C1867D860FDF97A9C28850C4DF462BB88959400A/

Nice little orbit it has achieved:

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/1100291843003678354/4039EDEB388C6B37C6E6F3B1032EC79EBAFEBF57/

And this is what happens when I do water landings:

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/1100291843003697501/514AB8D5B1BAE2F377C25D930C12B5C80DDE77E8/

I was wondering if I had all my parachutes along one side would that help? Going to try that anyways. Maybe it will work.

[Slur]

Today i sent my first probe to orbit the Mun after finally buying KSP

~snip~

It's always fun when your first few missions go right, or wrong sometimes. After a while you begin sending things to Laythe. Harder than a Mün orbiter.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Slur

[geb]

I decided that despite the name, dunebuggies do not belong on Duna.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Guest]

Where is that city?!

[Guest]

I started building my cargo spaceplane that will fuel my unbuilt undesigned space station.

[SeventhArchitect]

Hm. Lets see. Had to remove my Jump Jet from service today. Sent it from Kerbin, to Duna, then Eve, then back to Kerbin, and thats when I updated the KSP interstellar drive mod. The "warp" drive no longer would charge, so, after emptying out the drive's hold of the Exotic matter which powers it, I sent it into orbit of Moho, it's destination of the day.

Then I sent a Jump Jet Mk II to retrieve Jebediah, so that I may return him to Kerbal Space Command a lot more easily.

Also built a solar station that orbits the sun closely, and transmits microwave power throughout the solar system.

[cici002]

landed on Duna

[sparty48]

I did work. And I killed jeb.

[Meltro]

Continued work on a fueler for my toys

Stability issues corrected

We're a little short on power (failed to achieve orbit)

[regex]

Did one of my heaviest launches to date, put a tug into orbit that massed 115 tons, 937 tons on the pad. It'll take 23 tons of whatever split between up to three docking points to Moho (or Jool), 5.6km/s delta-V with a full load.

Here it is loaded up with two landers:

[capi3101]

Built a small Mun lander just to see if it would fly; it did. 28 tonnes overall, 7300 m/s of delta-V. First time I skipped re-acheiving Munar orbit before burning for Kerbin; made it back with 5 units of fuel still in the tank (12 seconds left according to KER).

Built a new interstellar tug in the Thunderbolt family. 160 tonnes, 11,500 m/s of delta-V unloaded. Still have to figure out how I'm gonna launch the SOB since I've been having problems using the Zenith subassemblies in 0.21, but that's a problem for another day (it'd be right at the mass limit of the Supernova anyway).

[Tw1]

I finished my space shuttle. It now can place small payloads into useful orbits, or take crew to stations, and everything except the droptanks is re-usable.

I made an album of the flight here:

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I think the "Shtuule" will be one I use regularly.

(That is the only way something like this would be cost effective, after all.)

Edited September 12, 2013 by Tw1

[Vanamonde]

Parked a rover on the little hill that marks the precise location of Ike's south pole.