What did you do in KSP1 today?

[SuperBigD60]

Got this little SSTO Space Place around Jool (Jool right above left RAM Jet Intake):

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3298063116892361733/24043C4A345803CBFC47BB8C0CC4EFABBDCBA498/

With the goal of flying landing then hopefully taking off from Laythe. I do Have a refueler that has followed the plane in. Might have to ditch the Nuke before landing as that will have some spare fuel that will be transfered over so the Rapiers have fuel to run off of. Hopefully it will be enough asumining I have enough fuel after getting a Laythe orbit.

That's a pretty neat idea to have that nuke detachable. I would say that would save you fuel, but I remember a discussion on rapiers that proved turbojets+nukes vastly superior in terms of fuel efficiency.

I still like your way better, though, friend.

[Wooks]

I built a VTOL Crew Carrier, it packs up to 7 Kerbals, it has a flying range of 300.000 km (half Kerbin), powered by the frame of my VTOL Flatbed Carrier"Hermes".

I am so tempted to call it "The Hot Dog", delicious Kerbal meat between two buns of flaming liquid fuel.

[Liowen]

So I decided to see if the Solar Probe could do one more thing today by having it go to Jool. This little craft is doing so much I am thinking of including it into my career mode series now, I may launch 3 of them out into the world.

Right now I am at 14.5km at 30m/s and falling down to the surface

[ArmchairGravy]

^ I'm also messing around with spaceplanes, it's getting pretty absorbing - so much so that my interplanetary explorations are getting behind schedule! Do you have a screencap of your new design?

I've made a carrier aircraft that can carry my spaceplane. I'll be doing some unpowered Enterprise-style approach and landing tests, before moving on to x-15 type powered flights. Then I've got to figure out if I want to hitch some boosters onto the wings, or to go with a traditional shuttle setup. I'd love to get the thing into orbit from a carrier aircraft launch though - that'd be so cool

I just watched the Dr. Who episodes with the flying aircraft carrier, and thought this would be fun to try. Please post your results!

[problemecium]

GUYS.

Just now I multi-docked nine ports at once, one of which was a jumbo. I think I deserve an achievement.

[EuSouONumero345]

Wait, you docked....

NINE PORTS.....

AT ONC???>><2121

http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesverdad/files/2014/01/014.jpg

Edited February 26, 2014 by Vanamonde
Please avoid reaction images.

[Aragosnat]

That's a pretty neat idea to have that nuke detachable. I would say that would save you fuel, but I remember a discussion on rapiers that proved turbojets+nukes vastly superior in terms of fuel efficiency.

I still like your way better, though, friend.

Think yer right too about jets and nuke. But, this was just testing to see how far it could go as well as hopefully being able to work just about any where else as well. Next Test will be Duna.I do like the fact I don't have to take down the engine if I don't have to. The only problem currently is that the nuke has no probe to make it not list as debries and second, no way for it to re-attach easily back to the plane. RCS would have worked very well in this case.

[OrianCEV]

While I was doing an operation with the Dragon, I got an eclipse!Two times in a row!

[Lundmunchkins]

Wait, you docked....

NINE PORTS.....

AT ONC???>><2121

http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesverdad/files/2014/01/014.jpg

So I'm not the only Whovian here...

[Xacktar]

I built a train.

It could almost hit 88 m/s.... almost.

Needs another 1.21 Jiggawatts.

[CornHuskerKenny]

The Kraken ate my career save. I doing a Minmus landing, and Jeb fell off the ladder. Then the altimeter went crazy and the space center won't work. Might try to fix it tomorrow.

[capi3101]

Launched a couple of space probes for challenges tonight. One successful, the other not; the successful one was sent out past the orbit of Jool - the second one was supposed to go on a Kerbol escape trajectory and the numbers said it should've been able to make it. Trying to figure out what I did wrong at this point.

[problemecium]

That nine-port thingy? I just did it AGAIN. So I suppose it wasn't a fluke, I've just become awesome at docking stuff.

The Kerbatar is now almost fully refueled and ready for its maiden voyage. Now where to send it...

^Best screenshot I remembered to take. It's just before the command module was attached. The Kerbatar is at left, my heavy lifter is at right showing off its uh... big-ass decoupler.

[Klingon Admiral]

Updated my spaceplane to version 1.1, now with 100% more utility. Promptly delivered a microsatellite into a polar orbit with it.

The cross-range capability on this baby is kind of sick, I wouldn't be suprised if it could still circumnavigate Kerbin after coming in from a polar orbit.

[TerLoki]

Tried making a "reusable" version of my standard Draco launcher, modeled after the Falcon 9. I got the look down pretty good, and when I got it off the ground it flew great; but the quad engine mount (I used 4 twin-nozzle 1.25m Mavericks from the KW pack) and service compartment tube kept acting up on the pad, falling off, dancing all over the place, going lopsided, etc. I can't wait for 0.24 to fix that.

[KerbMav]

Two probes flew by Ike and took a few numbers to sent back home - one shot past Duna into interplanetary space, the other did not survive the very close flyby; the science team logged in: "Ike has mountains."

The DES entered orbit around Duna in a 6min burn, aerobraking was deemed to dangerous.

The crew took all available readings, saved some more data for later evaluation at KSC, restored the science instruments built into the lander and The Three boarded and undocked it right after orbital nightfall. Landing coordinates were chosen to coincide with Duna sunrise to make best use of daylight.

My Duna landing took me <6> tries to not crash/cartwheel my craft - the entry angle was to flat, i came in from 60km with an PE of 15km.

Biggest problem was that I installed StupidChris Chute Mod AFTER I built and launched the lander/ship and could no longer adjust them to the thin atmosphere of Duna.

The other big problem was that my wide (to cover the high lander) heatshield - although way below the Rockomax 24-77 radial engines, but still only scorched the shield - could produce ZERO thrust while the heatshield was still attached, but if I jetisoned the heatshield earlier the drag would be reduced considerably and even make things worse.

So, there I was with a quicksave at 28km (how does that even work in an atmosphere?) and the stuborn intent to collect sensor readings twice in every atmospheric layer - once for transmitting, once for returning - and repeating the same steps of arming eight parachutes, collecting and sending readings (why the kerb does the antenna have to retract after every transmission in stock KSP??) and trying everything I could to lower my 800m/s horizontal speed, parachutes opening only at 10km altitude above ground (nearly useless until full deployment which happened a few secondes before TOUCH down) ...

I did it though and again I feel a bit more clevererer and pro!

Surface operations were smoothly, up to the point when Bill tried to recover the materials experiment attached under the lander: it was to high and the ladder to the pod on top of the lander to far away from the bay. He had to use his jetpack to crash into the bay after a hop in low-g.

They proceded to jettison the upper parachute and docking assembly. Upon launch back into orbit the lower tank also carrying all science instruments and the lower parachutes was decoupled with engines already burning at low thrust. After a minor adjustment the third orbit closed in on the mothership by 340m. Monoprop being at zero (deorbiting had to be done under RCS due to the heatshield-blocking-engines fiasco), KSC still debated about EVA procedures to return the landing party to the ship when Jeb called in completion of the docking maneuver. He simply flew under the ship's docking port, gave a healthy thrust upwards and spun the pod around to face the pod's port ahead. After a few bumps the magnetic seals did the rest.

To save Kethane (used in my universe as nuke fuel) thrice, the DES lowered its orbit to just above the atmosphere for 1. a low periapsis during transfer burn back to Kerbin with 2. lower mass by doing it with RCS using up a bit monoprop and 3. not touching the 1600m/d dV of the nukes.

130 days for a transfer window, Jeb is plotting a course to see if the fuel is sufficient to go earlier.

[Impatience]

Well, I now have proof that the mission isn't over until it's over Did my first high altitude flyby of Minmus last night, which was very exhilarating. Collected a TON of science from it and headed home with plenty of fuel to spare. However, my Kerbin landing didn't go so well. After touching down in what looked like the highlands, there was just a little too much angle on my landing struts and the ship tipped over, exploding several tanks and a couple of science pods. Jeb did survive the ordeal, but much science was lost. A new mission is being planned to regain that lost science

[RandomTask]

I decided to set up some seismic detectors on the Man. Of the 6 I sent only 1 actually "landed". Fortunately there was enough left of the remaining probes that the project was still a success. The subsequent impactors were able to get Max Science!

[Gaurdsman111]

Today I sent up the Orion 5 - Lone ranger, as part of my blog series, which took some incredible photos of the Mun at a close orbital distance (about 100'000 metres)

On the Launchpad atop the Magnesium B launcher

In orbit around the Mun

First image - Sunrise over Mun craters

Second image - Flying over the midlands

I also sent up the Communatron 2 satellites, which fly round Kerbin to provide mobile phone signals. Newest technology on the block!

The trusty old Ferrum Launcher for small satellites

In orbit around Kerbin. Its pretty much a block of comms units, the long one is for communication with long range satellites, like Lone Ranger.

That's what I did today!

Edited February 26, 2014 by Gaurdsman111
misspelt

[DesertWolf]

Long time since I've been on the forums.

Anyways, today I decide to work on pioneer jets. Started working on a Mig-21, turning out very well. It's very agile (tight maneuvering, and an unrealistic awesome takeoff), and topped out at 800m/s at 20000m.

Almost forgot, has 4 dumb bombs at the disposal of Jeb...

Mig-21.

I'll upload a .craft if anyone wants one.

[Deadweasel]

Long time since I've been on the forums.

Anyways, today I decide to work on pioneer jets. Started working on a Mig-21, turning out very well. It's very agile (tight maneuvering, and an unrealistic awesome takeoff), and topped out at 800m/s at 20000m.

Almost forgot, has 4 dumb bombs at the disposal of Jeb...

Mig-21.

http://i.imgur.com/Ke7u4IL.png

http://i.imgur.com/MFGqEnT.png

http://i.imgur.com/R8XnPMD.png

I'll upload a .craft if anyone wants one.

Ah, the venerable Fishbed, the most oddly-named aircraft ever!

[Sufficient Anonymity]

I played around with the KSO a bit more, and discovered that its tailplanes make for some rather manoeuvrable jets.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Once I get the chance, I'll put some footage of it up.

[Bigbootie]

Built my first deep space explorer....Well actually Jeb was so exited that we learned how to dock that once we had 2 landers docked we hastily left for Minmus on a test run. Thankfully I did not save because it ended poorly. (Not much left of the lander to screenshot) Ship flew great though. F5 here I come.

[magnemoe]

Build an new orbital dock as the old one was to small.

It used an innovative staging.

As it was no room for dropping stages I dropped the mainsails, they was heavier than the tanks anyway.

Its huge but its mostly empty tanks, 110 ton empty weight.

However the smelter was to slow so I made an new one and docked with the first, this is 150 ton empty.They can both produce ships up 100 ton dry weight, combined it will be 200 ton.

In shot I will not launch anything more than Kerbals.

Took the new to Minmus to get closer to the raw materials, keep the old in LKO.

Used the combined kethane and ore miner to do science on Mun, Worked well, dropped an mapping satellite in polar orbit had an module with lots of goo and material labs on top.

However I managed to loose an solar panel then landing, strange as it was retracted.

Edited February 26, 2014 by magnemoe

[TerLoki]

Designed a fuel/science station for Minmus orbit and all the different craft to service it, including a heavy tug (for lugging modules/fuel tanks to and from Kerbin), a light material handler (for docking said modules and fuel tanks), a science lander, and a drilling lander. Any combination of those PLUS one or more crew transfer vehicles will probably be on station at any given time. This will be quite the hub of activity.

Next step: Launching it all.