What did you do in KSP1 today?

[KerbMav]

My Duna probe finally arrived. Aerobraking at 10km (3500m above ground ) over Duna's south pole did not change my AP at all ... with fairings and FAR I seem to have a problem here. Good thing I did not drop the insertion stage, had enough fuel to establish an excentric orbit. But the whole thing proved to be a hell of a collection of design flaws anyway!

Staging got a bit confusing as I originally planned to decouple the insertion stage before aerobraking, the ground probe sat on top of the whole thing and when I started to jettison the fairings and opening parachutes and had to move stages around, the whole thing broke somehow - not the craft, the staging column. Had to rightclick myself through the landing ...

The orbiter - satellite for connection to Kerbin - had to change its orbit to stay in range and view of the ground probe till touchdown. Maneuvering was mostly guesswork and navigation by the stars, the probe body was set at a useless angle ... so I rotated the mapview, looked at the constellations and then rotated the craft for the engines to point in the correct direction - anything but clean burns along the six major axis was impossible, but it worked.

On top of the ground probe was yet again a smallish assembly to take surface samples with a cute little robot arm - yet the Rockomax Brand Adapter 02 is not a good (landing) base it seems, it exploded on landing, cant say at which speed as I launched it from the main probe body during the final stages of the landing.

Transmitted some 1000 science - did not get to do much during the sling around Duna while aerobreaking due to the comm disruption on the far side and it was an "old" design lacking a few science gizmos. At least the mapping works, no Kethane scanner though.

Next up: Moho flyby at high speed - didnt think of adding dV for braking into orbit ... and: waiting for .23 while randomly fooling around designing crafts.

[Madrias]

Oops. Guess I'm gonna have to think of a way to land what was once a seaplane a little differently. A note to the wise: hitting water at 100 m/s in a seaplane will not do your floats any good.

Edit: I have a radical plan to save it that probably won't let the Kerbals survive, but brings it up from a 0% chance to a non-zero chance.

Sorry for the night shot, decided to run the crippled plane out of fuel in order to try gaining a good chance to survive.

Edited again.

This was perhaps the most graceful landing I've had with an aircraft gliding in completely inverted. With no landing gear. In water. Turns out I'm still doing good for trying not to kill Kerbals with planes designed to mess around when I'm not grabbing science.

Edited December 10, 2013 by Madrias

[capi3101]

Turned my attention back to Operation Outland since I had finished up the Constellation Challenge. I'm starting to move into phase two of the operation - putting a pair of Hellhound rovers on every body in the Kerbol system - even though phase one (probe satellites around every body in the system) is still incomplete (I'm lacking probes around Moho, Eve, Duna, Bop and Eeloo at this point - Eeloo is currently en route and I simply haven't done Eve and Duna yet). Designed the rover deployment landers and launched three missions yesterday - one bound for Vall (Ranger Fox 7), one for Dres (Ranger Able 7) and one for Eeloo (Ranger Baker Two 7). The redesigned Storax Sedan 7 headed for Eve is already up and I plan on sending all four missions off to their various destinations at the earliest opportunity. Still haven't adequately planned phase three (a space station around every body in the system); might be time to get started on that.

Still making plans for the Vall Exploration Challenge - I might see how the Ranger Fox mission goes first. Something tells me I've over-planned that one.

[MrZayas1]

Almost made it to Duna, sadly, I was on my last stage using the poodle engine and a combination of the medium and small rockomax tanks, I was already halfway out of fuel once i got my Duna encounter and ran out of fuel whilst trying to bend into an orbit, I will try again!

[Bishop149]

I finally got the monster below into orbit. . . by far my largest SSTO, all stock.

Despite air intaking to the max (I don't stack em) I still couldn't get it to higher than 30km before flameout.

Still had 1800m/s of DeltaV left on the nuke engine once in orbit. I want to improve on this, burned half the orange tank getting to orbit on 3 areospikes from 30km up. I have designed a silly heavily overlapped air intake sub assembly consisting of 10 RAM scoops, lets see how it does with 6 of those. . . If I can fit them on!

Conclusions: Gigantic spaceplanes are rather tricky due to the lack of any HUGE air intakes. IMO exploiting the bug that allows them to be stacked on top of each other is cheating but each to their own. . . . my overlapped mega intake isn't much better.

[Keok]

First post so here it goes. I love this game by the way.

First orbital refueling station

^Helped to get my first drone on Eve\/

Edited December 11, 2013 by Keok

[Deadweasel]

This was perhaps the most graceful landing I've had with an aircraft gliding in completely inverted. With no landing gear. In water. Turns out I'm still doing good for trying not to kill Kerbals with planes designed to mess around when I'm not grabbing science.

Nedely looks like he's peeking over the console asking "Is it over yet?"

Patfred is asking "What the hell just happened here?"

[Puck Man]

Still early on the career mode. I have yet to lose an astronaut and I'd like to keep it that way. Instead of risking a Mun landing ,that would at best leave the kerbonauts stranded, I went with the safer option of sending an unmanned lab that doesn't have to get back. It is the first object I land on the Mun on this save.

[Madrias]

Nedely looks like he's peeking over the console asking "Is it over yet?"

Patfred is asking "What the hell just happened here?"

I love the Firespitter parts pack. Between Firespitter, B9, and a couple others, I have a nice collection of parts to pick from, but Firespitter kinda keeps me playing. After all, it's fun trying to get a propeller plane into orbit and get one of your friends to see it.

[FlamedSteak]

Got my little lander that could just into Laythe orbit, with a pinch of fuel left.

Then did about 7 orbital burns to get my fuel and service module into rendezvous with it.

Tomorrow I'll have to dock the fuel module with the lander so I can charge it's batteries and fuel it up (it's solar panels were eaten on the surface) and then dock the lander wih the service module to get it home.

[Spooks]

jool encounter is coming so orbit my transporter

[Bishop149]

Been quite SSTO focused recently. The below has a silly number of RAM intakes crammed into two giant intake structures, 10 RAMS per big intake.

Can get to nearly 40km up before hitting the rockets and makes orbit with over 3000 DeltaV Left in the tank.

With a few mods I reckon it could single stage to Duna . . . .

My aim is Single Stage to Laythe without having to use Ions, but it's a challenge. . . this was a test for a MUCH bigger version

[annallia]

jool encounter is coming so orbit my transporter

*snip x2*

What mod has those massive solar arrays? I've always wanted them but can never seem to find them.

[Whackjob]

My computer is down. But not yet out...

I think I found a way to break the symmetry tool. 17x symmetry, anyone?

[capi3101]

Installed Enhanced Nav Ball. Haven't had the opportunity to give it a proper shakedown yet but so far I'm liking it.

With missions headed for Eve, Jool/Vall, Dres and Eeloo already up, I decided to go ahead and get up some stuff to head to Duna and Moho as well. Decided to launch a Constipation XIII-C probe to Moho; with close to 14,000 m/s of delta-V, the damn thing had better make it. Did go ahead and swap out the Thanatos Heavy booster with a Zenith IX; damn thing never really was very reliable. I just plan to send a Sandstone Zebra probe to Duna; the Sandstone X-Ray I already sent to Ike had too much delta-V when it finally got there.

Sent the Ranger Baker Two 7 mission off towards Eeloo. I'll need to do correction burns there; still haven't figured out why Protractor and KAC give different launch window times, but I've been more apt to go with KAC's as they're generally closer to the alexmoon calculator.

[greg12]

I think this is the best helicopter I ever made in KSP. (yet)

Its fly really nice, Have 800 unit of liquid fuel. Its lift up around 40% of thrust. 5 Kerbals can fit in it. Top speed yet is 120m/s. (mods: Procedural wings, firespitter, aviation lights)

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I really enjoyed playing around with this beauty.

[Tokay Gris]

Yesterday, I finished a really big fuel station in high orbit (600km).

[Wahgineer]

How do you build something that big without insane lag?

[Tokay Gris]

How do you build something that big without insane lag?

That's just it. You don't....

Not without lag, that is.

[vetrox]

Been playing other games whilst waiting for 0.23 (i burned myself out on .22 so am having a breather)

I keep twitching everytime another game in my steam updates

[Traches]

I hear the weldit mod will go a long way. Breaks stuff like DRE and FAR though

[Spatzimaus]

That's just it. You don't....

If you ain't laggin', you ain't tryin'.

But seriously, yeah, when you get into things that big you just accept the lag. I launched another space station the other night, a 700-part station (871 tons) sitting on an 800-part heavy lifter (11848 tons at launch). That station is now in a polar orbit over Eve. Before ditching the booster, every second of in-game time would take about ten seconds of real time; after separation, the ratio dropped to about 4:1. This made the really long burns to and around Eve very time-consuming, and rotating the station between burns took forever, but I dealt with it by just doing something else for a half-hour each time.

(I don't really NEED a large station around Eve, since I've already got a couple smaller fuel depots there. But I had to send the station somewhere, and the angle was wrong for an outbound trajectory.)

[bptrav]

Just finished my final science gathering mission on the Mun in career mode, completing experiments at the polar regions/crater and canyons. I ended up with almost 4000 science for the mission It was also sort of a dry run test for a Duna landing. On a side note, is it just me or is it actually easier to dock without RCS? I towed up all this RCS fuel with me then didn't use a single liter of it.

[KerbMav]

Tried and managed to get this into orbit as a pure test - vertical, with boosters - but: no solar panels, no rcs, no docking/refueling ports, no comm systems, no landing gear, no atmospheric control capacity, no parachutes ... now, what to do with it?

I also seem to miss an appropriate adapter to the rear?

Edited December 11, 2013 by KerbMav

[FlamedSteak]

All 6 Kerbanaughts are out of the SOI of Duna (Bill and crew) and Jool (Jeb and crew) and prepping to do their Trans-kerbin injection burns with plenty of fuel in both space craft.

Today was a good day in KSP.