What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Lambert2191]

FINALLY!

Today I science on Duna for the first time!

http://i.imgur.com/2tQe1hb.jpg?1?2666

you and me both buddy!

[Geschosskopf]

I made another airplane that can fly on Duna. This one can land safely at about 4000m elevation, an improvement of over 50% on my previous record, besides being much easier to fly in all respects.

But having such a huge amount of wing made it difficult to launch, even with a spaceplane SSTO ascent stage on the rear. So in the end I had to drag it up backwards beneath a strange SSTO rocket .

[Gaurdsman111]

I started colonising Eve - first to land was an automated science vehicle, followed by an inflatable habitat. They're only a few km apart, thanks to some luck and the judicious use of F9, but I want to send a rover out there to link them - I'm tempted to use a nuclear-powered airship.

http://i.imgur.com/cXB65pt.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/zWfgZ0C.jpg

How did you get the parachutes like that? Mine just overlap and it looks bad...

[Jart]

Preparing for first interplanetary excursion.

[John Crichton]

Tested my Kethane SSTO...by flying by the Mun, then Minmus (overshot because I time accelerated too quickly) and then the Mun again (also overshot) before landing back on Kerbin (not anywhere near the KSC). Jeb is just too damn fast!!!

[SuperBigD60]

I didn't have any probe cores unlocked in my new career in Alternis, but I wanted to scan Minmus for Kethane and Ore, so I sent the dumbest Kerbal I had and just left him in orbit.

I may come back and rescue him at a later date.

[Silverchain]

I thought I was going to lose a wing...

[Jank]

Preparing for first interplanetary excursion.

http://i.imgur.com/TG4QAkZ.png

Landing legs?

[Jart]

Lander and rover will come on a separate craft.

[TerLoki]

Found my first post 0.23 anomaly on Minmus, now my science station and its lander crew have new landing site for tomorrow. This one's too important to leave up to rookies, I'm sending up Bob on the next crew rotation to command the mission.

[Concentric]

Did some testing for my Aegis Mun mission, a multipart Mun mission with rovers, Mun Escape Systems, a separate orbital service module and the intention of landing in two biomes, doing science and taking off, leaving a rover and an escape system in each. It also happens to be my first time using nuclear engines, both for the transfer/service module and the lander. I expect this mission to give me experience in some of the important aspects of interplanetary landing, before I actually attempt such.

Tested the lifter, first with SRBs attached, then without. The first launch reached orbit having barely touched the central Rockomax Jumbo-64 of the lifter stage, however, all the asparagus stages had been dropped on a decaying path. I also checked the docking/rotation of the service module, but my attempt at a universal docking port went poorly (actually, does that only work if one port is a Sr.?) and the service/transfer module was unable to dock to the lander. Instead, it nudged it away at every turn.

To fix this, I removed the Clampotron Jr. from the service module's Clampotron. The second launch went very well: the point at which I felt I should begin my gravity turn was also the point at which all but one of the asparagus stages had been dropped, reducing spinning and rotational imbalance, and a 100km circular orbit was achieved with a little fuel to spare in the lifter. When I went to repeat the docking test with a slight difference (not staging off the fairings until docked to avoid damage to the nuclear engines) on the second launch I ran into a small issue. Almost unnoticable, really. The service module was empty. I had launched it without a crew, so I had no control. Whoops.

Next on the testing list, dropping a rover/escape system pair and checking lander flight balance without them, then a confirmation of that twist maneuver, and a test of the service module's reentry ability before giving the full mission a go.

(Despite being called Aegis, this mission has nothing to do with shields, except perhaps the radiation shields on the nuclear engines.)

Coming for you, Mun old buddy... with a nuclear heat.

Edited March 4, 2014 by Concentric

[Aragosnat]

Well, Anming Kerman has Finally returned from Laythe aftert 1600+ days away from Kerbin. Had to aero-brake to make it down as there was not enough oxidiser for the nukes nor did I feel like waiting till Kerbin slows me down enough to enter with what little fuel I did have left. Fortunately the I had Rapiers on that where able to slow down my re-entry enough to enter as well as drop off the not supposed to come with it pusher that had a lot more science I could have gained (true I have nothing to spend it on, tis the thought that counts). Anyways... Had more then enough fuel to turn to the nearest land as I was above water at the time and glided my way down to safety. Sadly the Rapiers broke off during landing when they should not have. Must have been a steep enough incline at the rear of the craft even though it looked flat enough:

[kelmv]

Started a new career save and built a small munar orbiter. Screwed up the transfer, so I burned to return and decided to come straight down. Jeb hit wat doing 3k/s. I still have to learn how to handle FAR

[Gaurdsman111]

Today i completed my first SSTO!

Flew it into orbit, then tried to land it in the sea, promptly crashing.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

@Gaurdsman111

RealChutes by /u/stupid_chris

It doesn't stop parachutes clipping through each other (yet) but it includes parts with multiple canopies.

[capi3101]

Made a bunch of science runs to Minmus yesterday and one to the Mün. Last launch, got a Kerbin orbit of 80,346m x 80,327m, eccentricity of .000014. Nineteen meters difference; a personal best. Somebody should make a challenge out of that...

[Gaurdsman111]

@Gaurdsman111

RealChutes by /u/stupid_chris

It doesn't stop parachutes clipping through each other (yet) but it includes parts with multiple canopies.

Thx Muchly

[Concentric]

More testing. The above occurred in LKO as a new version of the ship moved towards apoapsis for circularisation, specifically during a little time warp (not physics warp). Lander testing on Kerbin (replacing the LV-Ns with three radial engines each to multiply thrust by 6, the same fraction as between Mun and Kerbin gravity) lead to the addition of ballast to reduce imbalance after the release of the first rover/MES pair. Then a test of the twist maneuver, which went well up until the nuclear fairings were staged off, destroying the engines and their attachment to the fuel tank.

Then, more modification lead to the version that spontaneously disassembled itself into dozens of pieces, then some further redesigning. This version didn't put fairings on any of its nuclear engines, instead putting them on cubic octagonal struts around a long girder that provided the structural spine of the service module.

This went well enough that I decided to test transfer, getting only a little over halfway there. I still had RCS, but didn't want to need that for transfer to the Mun... So more redesigning of the Service Module, changing the fuel tank for a bigger one, adding two more small tanks, using only two engines rather than three... Will test that later. Here's hoping.

[User Unrelated]

Worked on my budget minded Minmus Express one-way shuttle.

Patbald got to test the new design... He was a little weary when he found out that the main ascent stage was a surplus intercontinental ballistic missile, but everything ended up working fine.

He was sent up to retrieve a lost load of science. Girbald had a bit of trouble when he ran out of EVA fuel at 200m on his way back to the capsule from a trip to the top of a nearby mountain, and the craft was left stranded.

(the pod in the second pic isn't landed, it's on it's descent. You can see the stranded craft down in the distance.

I also started a high-orbit space station

It has one of 2 habitation modules attached right now, I forgot to take screenshots.

and just because:

[Bigbootie]

Continued building my deep space explorer. Ran into many snags. I tried to dock the last rover about 600 times over 4 days and it would not dock no matter what. So I ditched that plan. Decoupled the other rover and went to Minmus for science.

[capi3101]

I was thinking about how I could make a circularizing challenge work, and couldn't come up with a method that would be 100% fair. Couldn't come up with anything that would cover the bases, so I figured I'd just post this here and be done with it...

[Barney]

My first ever Duna mission in career mode. I used 3 different crafts, science module (SM), living module (LM) and a rover. Here some have some pictures!

Only mods i use are one to help with docking scansat and the one that makes your rockets less wobly...

And for some reason when i first sent the SM and LM, midway to Duna game crashed and i lost SM, that is why you might see 200+ days they have spent on Duna.

This is my main rocket for lifting heavy stuff with LM and duna transfer stage at the top, i dont bother with parachutes and stuff because i'm lazy and parts are free...

Here is the same craft near Duna

Because the landing for the science module went 7km off target i had to go with my rover to get it and drive back to base.

It weights about 40 tons total but did get to speeds of 15-20m/s...

And here we have the whole family together.

Next mission will be bringing everybody home with some samples and leave the base for future use.

[mellojoe]

EEEEeeeeeeeellllloooooooooooooooooooooo.

Thats what I did.

[John Crichton]

Tinkered around with my SSTO a bit more...and gave a few mods a try and it's now pretty insane. Achieves orbital speeds at 40km on air-breathing Rapiers...and has plenty of fuel left to reach Minmus/Mun/Duna and probably stuff further out. Also has a Kethane miner and refinery, so I can refuel easily. If I land on the dark side of a planet/moon, I can switch on the Kethane generator...which of course slows down refueling a bit.

Jeb mostly enjoys the orange lights and flames on the way up...

TWR of 2.36 at KSC fully fuelled...I wonder if I could use this as a Tylo lander. Got 8.5k deltav left in LKO...according to Mechjeb at least.

Edited March 4, 2014 by John Crichton

[Jouni]

Today I went to Eve and back. It was just as tedious as I expected.

I've been toying with Eve lander designs before. Because setting up asparagus staging takes a lot of work, and modifying the design usually requires starting over from scratch, I always got bored before I managed to build a good enough lander. This time I was able to get 9800-9900 m/s of delta-v in a reasonably compact package, so I decided to try it. With most of its fuel tanks empty, the mass of the lander went down from 110 tons to 60 tons, so I could lift with my existing rockets.

This was also the first time I found any use for Aerospike engines. While promising in principle, the Aerospike has too little thrust for a size-1 engine to be useful as a first-stage engine in most cases.

Then it was time to fill the fuel tanks. I built a custom fuel tanker for the task, and even put in somewhat balanced RCS to make refueling quicker. Upon reaching orbit, I realized that the launcher still had so much fuel left that I didn't need a second tanker, so I hauled the entire rocket with the tanker to rendezvous. So much for RCS balance.

The final launch contained the transfer stage and a return ship/utility tug hybrid. Because the ship had very low TWR, I moved it to a 600 km orbit for launch.

The hardest part in the whole mission was finding a good landing site. Because of my limited delta-v budget, I tried to land above 4 km. Unfortunately the game doesn't really provide better tools than the abuse of quicksave/quickload for this. When I finally found an acceptable landing site, I faced my first major mistake. Deploying parachutes pull much harder at Eve than at Kerbin, so I had to waste about 200 m/s to slow down just before the drogue chutes opened. That required a couple of tries more, but eventually I managed to land at around 4280 m.

Then it was time to depart. I'm not sure how kerbals make their parachutes, but the materials used seem quite explosive.

Then I faced my second mistake. I didn't have enough engines in my upper stage, so it wasted most of its fuel fighting gravity. Ultimately Jeb had to abandon ship and circularize with his jetpack.

After a succesful mission, it was time to return home. When approaching Kerbin, I made a tiny mistake. I chose a bit too low periapsis for aerobraking, and crashed the nuclear-powered transfer stage on Kerbin.