What did you do in KSP1 today?

[The Destroyer]

Landed a science lab for ~90 days on Minmus poles 

 

But I forgot parachutes so needed a rescue mission!

 

It went fine

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I've been working on (or rather, attempting to work on) a BAE Systems Hawk.

The game however does not seem to like my plans. It has crashed 7 times so far during the build (I wasn't even in dmp for all of them). I've taken to saving every other time I add/remove/move a part. 

 

[Halfdan]

the mining rover has landed on duna and the korolev began her journey

[septemberWaves]

I made Sputnik...

...and subsequently discovered that I'm going to have to increase all dimensions in order to give it enough delta-v to reach orbit around a 6.4x scale Kerbin.

[Kertech]

Took some time off revising for exams (I do not enjoy psychiatry) to sedately fly rockets (kind of...)

You don't quite need an R-7 on Kerbin for sputnik 

 Tried some American designs as well

 

Viklun looks cool but doesn't have much practical use in career mode (well short of going Saturn I on it and strapping a load together and deciding that constitutes a new rocket!)

Mercury has to be tested as well

 Finally been making some light aircraft, jeb's first "delicate" landing usedthe nose as a crumple zone effectively 

 Second model better luck

 

I think I've fallen in love with the mk0 foldking wing...

 

[septemberWaves]

3 minutes ago, Kertech said:

You don't quite need an R-7 on Kerbin for sputnik

Maybe not on the regular Kerbin, but when the planet's diameter is increased by a factor of 6.4 and its atmosphere is twice as high, a realistic-looking rocket tends to work best. I need to scale up my R-7 for it to actually put Sputnik into orbit, and I think I'll keep using it and other semi-realistic replicas.

Nice Mercury, by the way. It's the one from BDB, right?

[XB-70A]

The next days will be pretty intense for me, so today was the occasion to launch the full stock Duna's rover Singularity : 

Yep. She's far from being sexy but also is my second rover ever made since I'm playing KSP... the first one being destined to Eve under 1.0.5.

Two drague parachute and a main braking one assisted by four engines during the last seconds. Once landed four Sepatron will expulse it out of the rover.

 

The rover will make the whole trip in the fairing which will be release some seconds before the heat shield to brake a bit more. The Gamma II launcher second stage will ensure the Kerbin SoI escape while a third stage with around 2500 m/s of dV will take care of the insertion in Duna, circularization the de-orbiting before being released.

 

Gamma II is waiting for the countdown.

 

With a mass of approx 18 tons, this was the heaviest payload I ever put in that launcher. The first two seconds were pretty alarming but then it lifts perfectly under the thrust of its Mainsail and six of the nine Thumper it accelerate well. Two Twitch are serving as vernier engines aside the main engine.

 

First SRB separation and ignition of the last three Thumper.

 

While it keeps on accelerating I was surprised to see that even with that payload the first still got about 2/3 of fuel remaining. At this time the use of the optional 3rd stage looked useless to me.

 

See you Thumper, that's clearly one of the few time you don't disappoint me... like with the Delta II launch visualization I decided to keep the fairing even with the second stage.

 

First stage smooth separation then ignition of the Skipper (badly) simulating the real launcher second stage.

 

Fairing separation and positioning of the Ap at 700 km.

 

It will have some potential. Can't wait for the arrival in more than a year.

 

Aww... still 152 days to wait now... also my precedent launch of Eve Express was already in orbit when I discovered today that another one was already here... at least I will not have to warp again before the transfert window opening and keep on completing the contract for points.

Edited December 10, 2016 by XB-70A

[Kertech]

8 minutes ago, eloquentJane said:

Maybe not on the regular Kerbin, but when the planet's diameter is increased by a factor of 6.4 and its atmosphere is twice as high, a realistic-looking rocket tends to work best. I need to scale up my R-7 for it to actually put Sputnik into orbit, and I think I'll keep using it and other semi-realistic replicas.

Nice Mercury, by the way. It's the one from BDB, right?

Yeah I saw your post just after mine loaded up. 6.4x is a nice challenge, when I get time I hope to explore it properly (and then go for the full 10x!)

I was looking at a pack of soviet rockets and probes the other day, they look fairly texture heavy but realistic! 

haven't got round to it yet myself though.

yep that's @cobaltwolf (linking doesn't seem to work for iStuff) excellent BDB! 

[LaytheDragon]

_{(Large amount of less important pictures in spoilers)}

Spoiler

The HexaHauler made Kerbin orbit!

Spoiler

_{^{(I didn't lie, it IS called the HexaHauler. But I had an earlier ship design prototype steal the name, so I saved a normal and launch-ready (the normal turned into a backup) version of this design under the name HaulerHex)}}

The Kerbin atmosphere color didn't look as good up close as it did from afar, I will try to fix that.

Well, it made Minmus orbit too!

The ship is running a wee bit low on fuel. It has about 3.8% of its fuel left, but it only took 33000 units of liquid fuel for a 200 m/s capture burn around Minmus, so the remaining 87000 units should be able to squeeze out about a nice 500 m/s for the landing, I would imagine. (On the other hand, it took 250000 units of liquid fuel for an 850 m/s (according to stock maneuver display) Kerbin circularization burn, so I may be wrong)

 

Edited December 10, 2016 by LaytheDragon

[Clipperride]

Year 2 Day 100

To think I was worried about funds playing Career rather than Science Mode! Playing on default settings for funds, rep and science I now have over 9 million in the bank.  Time to start building some fancy stuff to go and have a look at the rest of the planets as the transfer windows open up.

[Triop]

"Stop asking me what I did today..."

Edited December 10, 2016 by Triop

[N_Danger]

10 hours ago, Leafbaron said:

how did you just get clouds and nothing else that comes with EVE/SVE?

Just this at default settings. I just loaded up the mod and left it at that.

[Brownhair2]

Unlike last time, I didn't miss my encounter and happen to get a new one during the Kerbin return window. Which means the Horizon and Amber will have to stay at Laythe for a while.

Which gives me plenty of time to build rovers!

This one can carry stuff!

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, although I'm not sure how I'll lift things onto the back.

As a little test drive, I took two kerbals to the Astronaut Complex:

Edited December 10, 2016 by Brownhair2

[Triop]

1 hour ago, LaytheDragon said:

_{(Large amount of less important pictures in spoilers)}

The HexaHauler made Kerbin orbit!

 

  Reveal hidden contents

_{^{(I didn't lie, it IS called the HexaHauler. But I had an earlier ship design prototype steal the name, so I saved a normal and launch-ready (the normal turned into a backup) version of this design under the name HaulerHex)}}

The Kerbin atmosphere color didn't look as good up close as it did from afar, I will try to fix that.

Well, it made Minmus orbit too!

 

The ship is running a wee bit low on fuel. It has about 3.8% of its fuel left, but it only took 33000 units of liquid fuel for a 200 m/s capture burn around Minmus, so the remaining 87000 units should be able to squeeze out about a nice 500 m/s for the landing, I would imagine. (On the other hand, it took 250000 units of liquid fuel for an 850 m/s (according to stock maneuver display) Kerbin circularization burn, so I may be wrong)

 

Dude, WTK ?!!eleven111!!

That is a beast !

[Halfdan]

the Korolev reached duna orbit, and started its cargo drops for the assembly of the colony

First to touch down was the lab modules wich carries the connector tubes for the colony structure

keeping it all nice and tidy until final assembly

[Triop]

Setting up the Kerbal Dakar.

[KevinW42]

I decided to give this style of launch a shot:

 

 

Full disclosure, these screenshots are from three different flights. It took a lot of reverts to get this working right. The staging was a little wonky so I had to use action groups for everything and switch craft after every separation. Also, I intentionally made the payload heavier than necessary as an excuse to use a bigger rocket.

[LaytheDragon]

_{(more images are in first spoiler)}

Spoiler

The HexaHauler about to land on, or crash with no fuel into, Minmus.

\

Descending.

About to land the HexaHauler on Minmus...

Bounced off the surface... a long scrape with the terrain follows.

Spoiler

It took many attempts to get this landing right. Relying on only gimbal for rotation is hard during landing. At least in orbit, I could put it on 4x warp, set it to turn to a marker, and walk away, or do such a small boost with the engines to take ages to turn but waste little fuel. I ended up having 2 m/s sideways velocity when about to land on the flat. The very large majority of attempts were trying to remove this 2 m/s of parallel movement, but the successful attempt not only was controlled better to keep the ship exactly parallel to the flat, but also ignored the lateral movement, and touched down with as little downwards speed as possible. The massive ship bounced very lightly on alternating sides of the bottom of the ship, with little rotational movement, until it stopped.

^{("boring" details are in spoiler above)}

Landed and sturdy! 3.8% of the ship's fuel was a bit more than enough fuel for this less-efficient-than-most-due-to-no-non-gimbal-control-authority-on-short-timescales landing.

Time to Mine! Drills deployed!

Wait, there are no ore tanks? How was this overlooked?

It looks like I'll be docking an ore tank as the first use of the cargo bay...

[LordFerret]

SunDiver did just that today, all for science. This model didn't fair as well as previous versions (done in previous versions of KSP). Its heat shielding went at 668,495K, although I did get to send out some science before it did. I didn't get to run all of the experiments however, as I was wanting to get in much closer. The unshielded batteries went next, and that put an end to sending science. The remainder of the ship folded gradually, a bit here, a bit there, starting around 280,100K. Kerbol was mighty big at that point, filling the screen... and it just kept getting bigger. Finally at 139,635K, falling in at 75,303m/s, the rest of the ship folded. It was of course an unmanned probe!

 

I'm still having problems with Imgur. They've got my email hosting service's domain blocked, something about spam accounts. So, until I come up with an alternative, no pictures ..... but I promise you, it did happen!

[septemberWaves]

6 hours ago, Kertech said:

6.4x is a nice challenge, when I get time I hope to explore it properly

I'm not doing regular 6.4x. As soon as New Horizons updates I'll be using that too.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

A quick and dirty SSTO using some Mk2 and Mk4 parts. Ridiculously overengined, but it means I should be able to lug some pretty big payloads into orbit.

[Moh1336]

Today was spent deciding on the best way to achieve some of my tourist contracts and a couple of other things.

Trip one involved several Kerbals that wanted a Minmus Fly-by, Mun orbits, 2 Mun landings. While I had many Kerbals to get through, the first trip was more aimed at money. I had a nice little vessel that I had previously used for a Minmus Satellite, with a little retro-fitting, a 2 man passenger pod, some food, and a little extra delta V. Mr Mun Orbiter and Mrs Minmus Fly-By went on a many day adventure.

Step one was the Minmus Fly-by, there was a little panic as we reached Minmus as there was a moment when we lost contact with the vessel as somebody decided to clear some clutter and land out satellite on Minmus and not bother to tell Gene about it. Fortunately all was well and as we came back on our approach we got a lovely Mun encounter, because kerbals are very smart this was entirely planned and certainly not a "see what happens when we get there" scenario as proven by the fact Bill and Bob did not spit-take their coffee on realising we got a Mun Orbit. The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful.

With the money coming in from the last trip, it was decided a little science would be used to get some better tanks, some of which turned out to be nice big orange ones.

With a nice new design, access to a 4 person passenger do-hickey and the 3 man command module. The last five tourists, accompanied this time by Jeb as Pilot, went on the hardest mission yet. Land tourists on the Mun... and bring them back. Pssh. Take-off was a slightly slower affair than expected as someone didn't do the math as effectively as possible, since there are no mechanised robotics help at this KSC. Still, enough Delta-V was there to get out of the atmosphere and begin a circulation burn. Upon looking at the projected flight plan neither Bill or Bob did a spit-take on realising that the Mun was perfectly positioned to go straight into a Trans Munar Injection burn without the need to circularise beforehand. Again, we at KSC are highly smart and this was totally planned.

The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful going perfectly as planned, the Munar orbit, decent, Lystan moaning about his missing relief tube, the sudden and sharp direction change so our passengers could see the rim of a crater that we certainly would never had landed on 300metres from the ground, a lovely barrel roll to show off how awesome low gravity can be, and the jettisoned landing leg we surely didn't need. Jeb took the time to plant a flag to finish a contract, unfortunately the plaque he left with it was destroyed on takeoff, so there's no way for us to repeat what it said.

With the completely successful trips, it was decided the final mission for the night would be to try and do a KSC first. Two completely different contracts at the same time. One was a mission to put a new satellite in a rather eccentric Mun orbit, while the other was to recover some weirdly named Kerbal from a low Mun orbit, which is odd because no one reported seeing him yesterday when we asked them if they saw a stranded astronaut while orbiting the Mun. Do to an unfortunate incident with Lystan falling eyeball first into Jeb's wrist, during a passive discussion about missing relief tubes. Jeb was unable to undergo the mission and decided to let Valentina take this one.

With a little retrofitting, the removal of the side tanks and passenger compartment and the addition of a satellite in a fairing a fuel tank that we didn't need to mention, we had a nice set up. The Command module, a small skipper engine and small tank, intended for return and sub-orbital trajectory, the satellite fuel tank, some big orange tanks staged asparagus style, and some more big orange tanks. At the time, no one was sure how we would release the sat fuel tank. Whether the final engine would be used to get it into it's rather eccentric orbit, or if it would have to be released and use it's own small tank, and Valentina use the last stage to get into orbit and rescue the silly Kerbal stuck in space.

As we approached the Mun, we realised we could line up with the descending node, the last main tank was on fumes, so Valentine made the call to stage the tank and release the satellite fuel tank, whose sides accidentally fell off, and manually control it into its designated orbit. This entire procedure seemed to go off without a single hitch. Valentina certainly did not use too much force in the stack separator sending it flying towards the staged fuel tank. She certainly didn't over correct with the thrust crashing it into her own fuel tank and nearly breaking off the antenna. After getting the, it really was just a fuel tank honest, into orbit and getting confirmation that it was in an acceptable orbit from the contractees, Val looked into altering her orbit into a keosentric orbit with a peri of 9000m and apo of 12,000m.

This all seemed to go to plan, the usage of 8 days food to get this simple procedure done was stated to be because she was hungry. After a very short period of time, Val managed to get a rendezvous with the stricken vessel. Billy looked rather relieved, but was babbling about seeing relief tubes, landing gears, and ships flying past him for the last 2 weeks. Poor guy, clearly delirious.

[N_Danger]

 Satellite launch to Duna.. 

which did not go well shortly after SRB jettison. 

But after a few trips to the VAB and further tweaks to the ascent profile. Orbit is achieved.

And the adventures at Duna included: Orbital insertion with limited control and then waiting until the next conjunction of Duna and Kerbin to transmit the science.

 

 

 

[XB-70A]

21 hours ago, KevinW42 said:

I decided to give this style of launch a shot:

 

There was a really nice book (can't remember the title right now...) with a part about these test made with a Galaxy. The final step should have been to modify some KC-10A into multi-Minuteman launching platforms.

 

Edit hours after : I finally remembered the book, An Untaken Road

Edited December 11, 2016 by XB-70A

[Halfdan]

airborne launching of ICBMs seems about as thought through as the davy crocket system, but the cold war era was full of nutball ideas ^^

i am proud to proclaim that phase one of constructing the first colony is completed and i have now a hab for 16 kerbals on the surface of duna



further modules for expansion will follow with phase 2

also there is no lack of mobility, here`s the rover parking lot , all for doing really cool jumps over du... i mean, performing long range expeditions