What did you do in KSP1 today?

[CatastrophicFailure]

8 hours ago, nosirrbro said:

Nuked the poop out of minmus with North Kerbin Dynamics.

 

Sure it was a waste of time, but the scale of a tsar mushroom cloud on such a tiny moon is FANTASTIC!

From orbit? Only way to be sure. 

10 hours ago, Kerbol Macrosystems said:

Mission control in lieu of the EVA we have elected to run the brown goo experiment. We're going to call it a day and come home

This actually happened one of the Apollo flights. There's a transcript mentioning a turd floating around. 

[KerBlammo]

33 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

 

From orbit? Only way to be sure. 

 

One of the best movie quotes ever

 

[Francois424]

7 hours ago, Mister Spock said:

@McFarnsworth and @Francois424, where do you get those beautiful torus/ring parts from?  Are they part of a mod?

Stock as well (Except for the 2.5m nuke engines). 

4-way symmetry, place the first fuel tank on one of the arm, then place your second and use the rotate gizmo in the editor to give it a slight angle. Add the second one to the first one and adjust as need be.
Repeat until you have the ring shape you want.  Careful tho, it's really part-count inducing and without struts (further adding to part count) very fragile.

Shadowzone on YouTube has a good tutorial on how to do it, but his method although rock solid was twice the part count of mine. 
My poor PC could not keep up and I refused to use a cheat to put it in orbit, so I sacrificed rigidity (support beams ShadowZone used).

Have fun building yours, and make sure you show us.

Edited December 16, 2015 by Francois424

[DunaRocketeer]

My recent Minmus-science-extravengaza allowed me to begin a new test campaign in my career game. It's my biggest launcher for quite a while and is hopefully going to be a rugged, reuseable way of getting cargo to Duna. I'll be sending several of these up every transfer window, initially to get infrastructure up and running. Ore mining is especially important, or else they won't be coming back again! I'll also need to send parts than can create a ramp that can be used to offload cargo once on the surface: I think one of the flights will need to be full up with KIS containers to aid all the construction.

It can get to Duna without refuelling in Kerbin orbit, but I think the margins will be slim for landing so making tanker versions will probably be necessary. The following images aren't of the final 'production vehicle', but test articles that are helping me to refine the design, there are still performance gains to be eked out of the basic design. One of the more unexpected changes I've had to make was ditching the fins on the upper stage as they were causing uncontrollable roll motion during the final stages of descent back down to Kerbin. To compensate, I've finally started using the vernier engines - and I love them! Such a useful part to have in the inventory.

Here it is sitting pretty on the pad.

Unsurprisingly it's a beast to pitch over, fortunately I'm favouring a steep trajectory on this vehicle.

Seperation of the stages after the suborbital boost phase

...And a simple circularisation burn gets it into orbit with plenty of propellant reserve.

...Whilst the booster flies back to the runway in much the same fashion as my previous fly-back boosters (although this one's a good deal larger...)

Also drawn up some preliminary mission plans:

Transfer Window 1

1.) MkI lander can, rover tug, basic ramp
2.) full ramp
3.) hab/life support/rtg
4.) drill, ore tank, refinery, solar farm, driveable, high mounted grapple
5.) resource scanner (light cargo launcher)

Transfer Window 2

6.) hab/life support/rtg
7.) hab/life support/rtg
8.) hab equipment
9.) KIS pods

Edited December 16, 2015 by DunaRocketeer

[Bev7787]

This

 

 

Edited December 16, 2015 by Bev7787

[McFarnsworth]

12 hours ago, Mister Spock said:

Wow, nice.  Did you build the torus in the VAB, or in space, using something like Kerbal Attachment System?

Built in the VAB, I wouldn't have the patience to assemble anything like that in orbit.

The torus part of the ship takes up 60 parts + 12 struts

[Mister Spock]

Pretty ingenious torus-making.  I might try my hand at it.  Though I dimly recall that there was a mod that supplied a torus or a ring.  Am I mistaken?

[Cuky]

Today I have started new career save in 1.0.5 on a bit modified Hard setting (I have enabled revert and quicksave). After some usual science grinding at the very start I have finally launched small constelation of 3 Remote Tech satellites for the first time since .24.2. All 3 were just like the one on the picture below, with one of them carrying materials bay and mystery goo since I got a contract to place a satellite in syncronous orbit with those onboard

Edited December 16, 2015 by Cuky

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

Yesterday, I docked a manned spacecraft to one of the docking probes I already had in orbit, and began planning my space station

 

[Geschosskopf]

I discovered that you can now climb the big statue at the Pyramids

And also that ancient mystic forces cause Kerbals to levitate when they reach the top.

Or maybe it's just that this particular Kerbal is the Chosen One.  All hail Lizula!  But probably not.

[waterlubber]

Annotated over a hundred images for my Elcano entry.
Fun.

[Superfluous J]

Today - in my first real solid play since before 1.0.5 came out - I built 3 ships and tested them as well as I could bother to before starting a big mission this weekend.

1. A scout probe to go to Dres and find Dresteroids.
2. A refuelling ship for the below ship
3. An "Astro-driver" that will capture a Dresteroid, take it down to the surface of Dres, and drive it around the surface, hopefully Elcano-style but if I get bored or it's too hard to control, just having it there will be enough for me.

My only real concern (other than that I'm going insane) is that the car may need to be a bit bigger. It appears that there are no A or B class Dresteroids, and the smallest one I'll be able to use is therefore a C.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Today - in my first real solid play since before 1.0.5 came out - I built 3 ships and tested them as well as I could bother to before starting a big mission this weekend.

1. A scout probe to go to Dres and find Dresteroids.
2. A refuelling ship for the below ship
3. An "Astro-driver" that will capture a Dresteroid, take it down to the surface of Dres, and drive it around the surface, hopefully Elcano-style but if I get bored or it's too hard to control, just having it there will be enough for me.

My only real concern (other than that I'm going insane) is that the car may need to be a bit bigger. It appears that there are no A or B class Dresteroids, and the smallest one I'll be able to use is therefore a C.

I can only give 25 likes in 24 hours...  Oh well.

[Bill Zarr]

Added a few more modules to the LKO station I've been building to replace the one that was built earlier in career. 7 construction flights, 106 parts not including the SSTO space-plane. The ISRU is to see if I can make use of those ore from Mun/Minmus to Kerbin orbit contracts.

[cubinator]

I launched a ship to complete a few contracts, went to Mun orbit, left, got another Mun gravity assist to "escape" Kerbin for another contract, then map view told me that the force of the decouplers from the contract have put me back into an orbital trajectory! So I timewarped up to apoapsis to do a retrograde burn to get back closer to Kerbin to deorbit, and then the game says *nope* and ejects me into solar orbit anyway. I used all my fuel trying to get back an encounter with Kerbin, but *just* ran out. I decided to load my last quicksave, which happens to be in the middle of the last mission where I was rescuing a Kerbal in LKO. I re-finished that, deorbited, landed safely, and pressed recover, and the game crashed. I doubt I'll have any time tomorrow to do anything, but Friday I might redo today's mission with more quicksaves and a nice, big retrograde burn after testing the decouplers.

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I started the Genesis space station (my first)
So far, I have the core, a small tug, and an itty-bitty crew storage module.

Kinda lame, but I'm proud of it.

Edited December 17, 2015 by Choctofliatrio2.0

[nohelmet]

Congrats! Building and expanding stations is a lot of fun!

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

2 minutes ago, nohelmet said:

Congrats! Building and expanding stations is a lot of fun!

Thanks I'm still getting docking mechanics down.

Isn't the game supposed to show a little marker where your target is? Like when you leave map view, you should be able to see a little green mark when your target is less than a certain distance out? Because that doesn't show for me, which makes it significantly harder. Is there a way to get the marker to reappear?

[War Eagle 1]

I tried making a battleship.
Ive spent over 5 hours so far and its driving me nuts. Mostly due to wonky symmetry  
So now its just a really big paperweight that has a tendency to burst into smaller paper weights 
On the flip side look at the part count and no I'm not using rescale mod

[Kerbol Macrosystems]

1 hour ago, Choctofliatrio2.0 said:

Thanks I'm still getting docking mechanics down.

Isn't the game supposed to show a little marker where your target is? Like when you leave map view, you should be able to see a little green mark when your target is less than a certain distance out? Because that doesn't show for me, which makes it significantly harder. Is there a way to get the marker to reappear?

Did you set up targeting map view? You have to click on the object you're trying to meet and then click "set as target."

[MaxwellsDemon]

Started a new career campaign with Kerbal Construction Time.

[capi3101]

9 hours ago, War Eagle 1 said:

I tried making a battleship.
Ive spent over 5 hours so far and its driving me nuts. Mostly due to wonky symmetry  
So now its just a really big paperweight that has a tendency to burst into smaller paper weights 
On the flip side look at the part count and no I'm not using rescale mod

She's a pretty nice looking boat. Should be nice and buoyant, too.

Given the length and the mass, I'd strongly recommend Kerbal Joint Reinforcement if you aren't using it already; I've had some issues with the connections on those Mk3 parts in the past. If that doesn't work, moar struts.

Edited December 17, 2015 by capi3101

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

9 hours ago, Kerbol Macrosystems said:

Did you set up targeting map view? You have to click on the object you're trying to meet and then click "set as target."

Yeah, I can select my target, and the option to turn to face the target appears in the navball, but when I'm in "real" view (IDK what it's called. When I'm not in map view,) I can't see the little indicator of where the target is, if that makes sense.

[monophonic]

1 minute ago, Choctofliatrio2.0 said:

Yeah, I can select my target, and the option to turn to face the target appears in the navball, but when I'm in "real" view (IDK what it's called. When I'm not in map view,) I can't see the little indicator of where the target is, if that makes sense.

The game does not show the marker if it thinks the target is close enough. Its idea of close enough is quite far away though, and sometimes when the target is in the shadow of the planet or moon it can be very difficult to see even if the distance is just a couple of hundred meters. Since you have the target autopilot available, you can use it and look carefully in the direction your craft is pointing. I have once or twice resorted to scanning the screen with the mouse pointer until a part on the target highlights.

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

11 minutes ago, monophonic said:

The game does not show the marker if it thinks the target is close enough. Its idea of close enough is quite far away though, and sometimes when the target is in the shadow of the planet or moon it can be very difficult to see even if the distance is just a couple of hundred meters. Since you have the target autopilot available, you can use it and look carefully in the direction your craft is pointing. I have once or twice resorted to scanning the screen with the mouse pointer until a part on the target highlights.

Yeah, the thing is the marker never shows, regardless of distance. So yeah, I'm forced to stare at space looking for the little sparkle of a ship

 

And, if I remember correctly, the marker showed for my first docking, but none of the following ones.

Edited December 17, 2015 by Choctofliatrio2.0