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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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(1.1.3, FAR to go) Later in the day yesterday, I began my activities by having Next Objective shove off from the Minmusport space station and burn for Kerbin with Ziggy in the command chair and eight tourists, regular pilot Buremy Kerman having given up his seat so that the Ziggy could finally make it back to Kerbin and fulfill his rescue contract. About the time Next Objective was escaping Minmus's SOI,  the Overlook Hotel expansion module arrived at Minmus and was put into orbit, and then made the burn to land near the Hojo Beta outpost. The craft successfully made planetfall almost exactly fifty meters away from Hojo Beta; Edner ran out to hook up the winch cable and suddenly I was √450k richer. With the contract fulfilled, the winch was disconnected and reeled back in before anything could go boom. The transfer stage of the Old Bessie 7 refueling lander that had been sent to Minmusport was mostly drained of remaining fuel, with most of it going to the Spamcan 7a lander attached to the station. Enough fuel was left in the stage so that it could de-orbit for a crash landing on Minmus after being discarded. Shortly thereafter, the Deepwater Horizon refinery craft arrived at Minmus's SOI in a 105-degree inclined orbit. I searched for a relatively ore-rich landing site close to the equator along the craft's flight path. Locating one, I went ahead and set down the refinery and began drilling operations, refilling the refinery's tanks. I'm not convinced that the site I'm at is optimal, but that's something that will have to wait until the arrival of the Hellhound 7 rover I dispatched to Minmus - taking the time to add a surface scanner prior to launch. The rover should arrive in another six days or so.

This morning I had another overnight shift and I spent a few hours playing KSP. I had a contract to test a 3.5 m heat shield landed; I went ahead and popped one aboard the Lusitania 7 even though I didn't need to go into the water with it. Easy cash. Next, I loaded Jeb, Buremy and scientist Milfred Kerman into the Spamcan 7a lander at Minmusport and sent them all down to Hojo Beta, where the trio planted flags. Edner climbed out of the outpost, planted a flag his own self, then got aboard the Spamcan and the four Kerbals returned to Minmusport, where they'll wait for the arrival of Big Stink in a few days to take them all home. Val and Bill will make a similar journey to the surface when they arrive. The Spamcan should have enough remaining delta-V for the trip without a refuel, but with Deepwater Horizon down on the surface now a refueling hop may be made if needed. Big Stink will probably need more fuel once it arrives anyway; she wasn't fully fueled before leaving Kerbin in the first place.

Next up was a Bill Clinton 7a grabber probe mission to retreive craft and Kerbal from Münar orbit, a job made somewhat difficult by the craft - a Mk2 lander can. Probe and target returned successfully to Kerbin; all I can say there is that I really like the 10 meter airbag heat shields - I was convinced that one was going to go south at one point during entry. 

Finally, Next Objective returned to the vicinity of Kerbin and performed an assisted aerobraking maneuver, entering LKO after a single pass. The ferry then affected a rendezvous and docking at the Kerbinport space station. With thirteen Kerbals at Kerbinport all needing to return to the surface, an Auk II passenger plane was dispatched to the station, performing a successful rendezvous and docking. Capacity of the Auk II is eight Kerbals maximum; five Kerbals were selected from the group of thirteen to head down, with plans for a second Auk II run made. The Auk II returned successfully to KSC 27, clearing one contract and netting me somewhere around √500k. The second Auk II flight is scheduled for later today - and I expect that one to be particularly lucrative (it will clear seven contracts simultaneously), if it's successful of course. I have no reason to expect it won't be, but then stranger things have happened...

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19 hours ago, dangerhamster said:

As a bit of light relief from crawling across Mun in a rover....... gliding across Kerbin in airships.

screenshot41_zpsot0e5qlh.png

After a few test hops Val took a transport prototype out, initially landing practice.

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Followed by a speed test out over the ocean. And yes the antenna broke after someone forgot to retract it. Slowing down over the island for another landing temptation took hold and after much backing and filling the behemoth was tucked away in one of the hangers.

screenshot44_zpsqyzbu6po.png

"I'm sure no-one will notice it's missing"

Guilt took over and the duo returned to base, writing the incident up as testing wether steerable nose gear would be useful.

 

12 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

@dangerhamster

rrIEKNI.png

ntj9JPe.png

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The KSNS Massive has a beam of 30 meters. Twin airship hulls with aircraft elevators to the hangar decks. Somebody in the Heisenberg thread was asking about larger diameter hulls. I don't think it's necessary... :wink:

How do you make airships fly?!

Yesterday was a quickie contract night.  Added a quartet of Sparks and a pile of Oscar Bs to the wings of a standard Kerbjet 2 (simple mid-wing, fixed tricycle gear, Juno powered Mk 1 aircraft) to boost the high-altitude capability.  Managed to grab two out of three sub-objectives above 17,000 m in one go, and was just short of the third, so Jeb had to return and refuel to grab the third.  Removing slightly more of the main tank LF may have given enough delta V on the Sparks to get the last 2,000 m needed, but the Kerbjet 2 Hi makes tidy, repeatable runway landings.  Each outing costs just a few hundred units of LF and an even smaller amount of oxidizer.

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15 minutes ago, dangerhamster said:

Essential reading @HalcyonSon

 

 

6 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

@HalcyonSon First you'll need Hooligan Labs Airships mod (link is in the first post of the Heisenberg thread). That has the plugin and several airship parts. The Heisenberg pack is available separately from Hooligan labs.

Nice.  I wondered if it was just hacked gravity and a lot of creativity.

I'll bookmark that for later.  Hands full right now just exploring the Kerbin system (Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus) in my early 1.2 career.

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Bill and Val have been derping around with the scout prototype currently known as Wallis, virtual cookie to anyone who gets the reference. Parked up and planning the next sortie they heard a strange howling noise......

screenshot48_zpsukj8mfgx.png

Which turned out to be Jeb in the all electric version which he insists on calling the "Big Buzzer". Delete that browser history now...

However his showboating coupled with a small miscalculation of the pitch response led to an undesirable air to ground interface.

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Followed much later by possibly one of the slowest crash landings in history.

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Parachutes? Who needs 'em.

 

Edited by dangerhamster
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24 minutes ago, eloquentJane said:

@DunaRocketeer That's an interesting rocket, but it doesn't look Eve-capable. For one thing, you need a nosecone on that docking port, since it creates a significant amount of drag. Secondly, you probably need some asparagus-staged boosters.

I think you're right that it would underperform on Eve - it's got no issues achieving over 3000m/s on Kerbin, but I get the feeling that it'd start strong and then fade quickly whilst fighting the soupy atmosphere on Eve. 

I'd like to avoid asparagus if possible, (I don't like fat cargo sitting awkwardly/unrealistically on the top of my rockets) and I think Eve is doable in a conventionally staged rocket, it just needs the right design - that includes putting nosecones on the top :) 

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Well I thought I'd be cheeky and launch a minmus biome hop mission from my 18 ton SSTO. The Lander had enough dV to make at least 3 stops from the pole to the equator and back to kerbin. Well I got greedy and made 4 stops. SCIENCE DAMN YOU! After the final stop and back into orbit I had ~66 m/s of dV left and it was just enough to escape Minmus SOI but not nearly enough to make it back home....so Bob was unenthusiastic happy to get out a push....a dozen time or more.

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Waders 5 and 6:

Wader_Island.png

Wader_Fin.png

Also decided to check up on the Crystal. I'm so close I can see Vanor if I zoom in all the way!

Vanor_from_Afar.png

It's still going to be a bit less than 8 years before I arrive. Everything moves so slow in the outer solar system :(

 

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23 minutes ago, Leafbaron said:

Well I thought I'd be cheeky and launch a minmus biome hop mission from my 18 ton SSTO. The Lander had enough dV to make at least 3 stops from the pole to the equator and back to kerbin. Well I got greedy and made 4 stops. SCIENCE DAMN YOU! After the final stop and back into orbit I had ~66 m/s of dV left and it was just enough to escape Minmus SOI but not nearly enough to make it back home....so Bob was unenthusiastic happy to get out a push....a dozen time or more.

That's the most Kerbal thing... and I didn't think to do it when Val ran out of gas on the way home from Mun.  Instead, I launched a Klaw Return Vessel to grab her capsule, which took several days to reach her.  If I had had her get out and push, she could have been home much sooner.

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Using the ancient art of guesswork, I assembled a basic mission to Arkas to test delta-v numbers. I got the transfer delta-v right, and I gave my lander about 6km/s of delta-v to be safe. Orbital velocity shouldn't be too high for Arkas due to its 420-ish km radius and 0.8-ish g of gravity, but it has 3atm of pressure so 6km/s seemed safe. Unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity to test my lander, because I was missing 600m/s of the 1800-ish m/s required to circularize.

Here's the vaguely N1-inspired rocket:

I3oHaD0.jpg

With a launch mass of over 1.2 thousand tonnes, this rocket is one of my largest. It's far from my best work though. At some point I'll improve it because I like the concept - the main problem was the engine configuration, which is nothing like the N1 configuration because I was getting lazy at that point.

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It flies surprisingly well considering its size.

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Stage separation works well too. To get the shape of the rocket, there were a lot of fairings used.

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Here's what actually got to orbit. The N1 upper stage started the transfer burn, and the stage above it completed the transfer. Unfortunately the stage above had 600m/s less than I needed to circularize at Arkas. I'll probably play around with this more another time, because I do need to test how much delta-v is needed for the landing.

I did get a good screenshot of the vehicle as it approached Arkas, for what would end up being merely a flyby:

mMikosM.jpg

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