What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Numerlor]

Trying to do Jool 5 challenge, was on Tylo 3 times forgot crew everytime

Edited February 27, 2017 by Numerlor

[joacobanfield]

I put a station with capacity for 20 kerbals in orbit around Duna.

Look at them. They´re having fun!

Also, took my first tourist to the Mun and back.

[CatastrophicFailure]

6 hours ago, eddiew said:

Resolved my Kerbal R&D issue! Or at least, brought it down to a shortlist of 7 mods that might be breaking it. Going to suspect Tweakscale, tbh, since I know that rescaled parts do not carry any KR&D improvements with them. Will figure it out properly later  

FWIW Tweakscale and KR&D are known not to play well together. CKAN won't even let you install both together. Give me a shout when you figure it out, I'm thinking of swapping Tweakscale out myself. 

[eddiew]

29 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

FWIW Tweakscale and KR&D are known not to play well together. CKAN won't even let you install both together. Give me a shout when you figure it out, I'm thinking of swapping Tweakscale out myself. 

Yeah, it turned out to be Tweakscale vs KR&D. I knew they weren't "compatible" last career, but that manifested as any part that had been scaled up or down wouldn't carry it's R&D'd stats with it. Now, if you have both installed the KR&D window will be empty for anything that can be scaled. 

I get why they don't work together, but I wish the old behaviour was still in place... Things like wing parts are good when scaled up, but there's not a lot you can R&D with them. Still, I can either find or fudge some proper scaled up parts if I need them - already have a 2.5m rapier and intake that I made last time, for exactly this reason  

[justidutch]

It's exciting times at KSC.  The long-awaited transfer window to the Duna system is finally upon us, and a flurry of activity kept us busy over the previous few days.  We have created a fleet of four ships to travel to our red neighbour which shall be detailed below.  But first, we had to get all hands back on the ground and feed them snacks…

 

Over the past two years we have placed stations in orbit of our planet and moons, and our scientists have been performing lab experiments on data and physical samples from different points of the moons' surfaces.  We have also picked up a number of astronauts who were abandoned in space by other companies.  Two of these new recruits along with all the station staff had all made their way to Kerbin Stayshun 250 and were awaiting a ship to take them back here to KSC.  So our first mission of the weekend did just that, in a rather stylish manner too, I might add.  We could have just sent up a single large 16 seater crew cabin and parachuted it back down to the ground, but we wanted to get funky so we built the following ship as an experiment, and it performed so well that we may use this design often going forward.  It's four of the four-seater crew cabins surrounding a gas tank core; the nose is a docking port and the tail is an inflatable heat shield, all balanced in such a way that it is easy to de-orbit through the atmosphere, not much piloting is required.  The following pictures describe liftoff, reaching orbit, docking with the station and the ballistic return flight ending with a splash down about 60 km east of this very press office.

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reason we are sending four ships at the same time is because we have been contracted to complete numerous missions.  For instance, the following ship that will eventually orbit Ike is tasked to four duties: deliver a satellite, send data back, plant a flag on the surface, and to be a permanent station.  The following pictures don't really show the details close up and aren't too exciting, but this science station ship includes the necessary satellite and a small lander that can hop around the surface to gather surface samples and data, then return to the station.  There should be enough fuel for numerous such trips.  This ship, along with the other three, is currently loitering in LKO as the four crew members do final checks on all systems; they're awaiting the optimal moment for the transfer burn which should happen in a few mere hours.

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second ship we sent up will complete another set of contracts, this time focussed around Duna.  Two satellites this time, one destined for a polar orbit and the other a more standard equatorial orbit.  The transfer stage uses standard engines, but the station's main and permanent engines are nuclear.  There should be enough fuel after the burn capturing orbit around Duna to either act as a fuel dump, or to even travel to another planet.

Spoiler

 

 

 

The third ship we sent up is actually not so much a ship in itself, but a delivery of two small probes and a big transfer stage engine that docked with our nuclear taxi.  This taxi has been in service for a few months now, used to shuttle crew to our moons and back, so now it will fly out as part the armada, deliver the two small probes, and wait at the station until the need arises for some crew to come back home.  The two probes are basically dumb little things that will attempt to land on Duna's surface and hopefully radio back some basic data about the planet's gravity and atmosphere.

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

The final ship in the flotilla, much like the third, is completely outside the scope of any current contracts.  Because we have a slight surplus in our budget we have taken this opportunity to experiment; we've created a ship that will reach orbit around Duna, and when the time is right, land a brave explorer on the surface, take a number of scientific readings and surface samples, and then return to the station in orbit.  We have not, of course, tested this at Duna nor been able to do accurate simulations, but we have tested and performed these manoeuvres here at home with this exact setup.  We are confident that it will work as planned!  The central core is the return-to-orbit vehicle, it is surrounded be three stacks of fuel, parachutes and scientific modules which will detach and stay on the ground when the ascent back to orbit begins.  There should be enough parachutes, along with the inflatable heat shield and some air brakes, to bring the craft to a gentle un-powered landing, but we can only know that for sure when we get there!

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

[MikeZDB]

Today the Marks 1 with the Molniya R8K1 launcher, lift off from KSC.

The Marks 1 mision report here and the image album report here.

 

We still doing it well!

[astroheiko]

@HalcyonSon

Do you have a picture of the monster? Sounds interesting.

I have now finished my new mothership and also made a rocket to get it into the orbit. Unfortunately, the first attempts went wrong. RedShirt would be proud of me - I have produced a lot of garbage.

 

After I strengthened the link rocket-mothership, it ran as planned. This is the biggest thing I ever brought in orbit - 3728 tons.

 

The "SSTO" rocket on the way home.

 

I received 765,000 funds back. That was worth the effort.

 

The rocket had no trouble at all with the 400 tons payload. I still had 825 m/s dV left in orbit. Possibly, it could even raise 450 tons or even more.

Now I have to fill the ship. It is only half full, over 700 tons I have not dared to put on a rocket.

 

Greetings

 

[Tyko]

Several Missions running - Iota crew transfer returns from SkyLab 1 using older tech 2 crew capsule - the crew is happy in there for up to 7 days

 

New 5 crew capsule works great for 2-3 Kerbal crews heading out to Ceti - gives a little more elbow room for longer 12 day transits. As a side note, a 2 crew lander can, inverted under a mk 1-2 capsule, makes for a great design. it still has a low enough CoM to orient correctly during reentry.

 

Valentina nails a precision landing dropping her 2 crew lander within 5 meters of the robotic target.

[HalcyonSon]

1 hour ago, astroheiko said:

@HalcyonSon

Do you have a picture of the monster? Sounds interesting.

[HalcyonSon]

Ugh... the forum software is real flakey with quotes, isn't it?

Anyway, I do have pics of MIRV, but I didn't have time to throw them up on Photobucket yet.  It's not that impressive compared to a lot of stuff I've seen, but it's the biggest I've managed yet.  I'll try to get them up tonight.

In the meantime, I'm debating how best to deliver more Xenon to MIRV.  Use chemical rockets because the payload will be smaller, and the required dV less?  Or Nukes for novelty?  Or maybe build a monster ion powered tug with a huge number of batteries for one big pulse?

[BubbleWrap]

Sent a shuttle carrying a fuel tanker lander to refuel my shuttle stranded on the Munar surface, then they met up in orbit for a second refuelling before heading home.

[joacobanfield]

I delivered a rover to my Mun base, but landed 17 kms. away. It was a loooong trip home. But flooring the brakes upon arrival, dismounting, and seeing poor Val fly away into the base and spaghettify was worth it.

[Leafbaron]

9 minutes ago, joacobanfield said:

I delivered a rover to my Mun base, but landed 17 kms. away. It was a loooong trip home. But flooring the brakes upon arrival, dismounting, and seeing poor Val fly away into the base and spaghettify was worth it.

seeing kerbals get spaghettified always makes me laugh. 

[cantab]

Mars stuff :-) My flotilla of probes arrived at Mars going a lot faster than planned, and even the one with the most delta-V couldn't make a powered capture, so I F9ed and went for some unscheduled aerobraking! And luckily it's worked well. Kerbal parts might be made of iron but evidently that has its advantages. On the downside my comm network is being stretched to its limits with signal around 5 or 6 percent. I guess that's what a 244 Gm link does.

[Ultimate Steve]

Post number four of "Steampunk Space Program."

Due to my future plans, I need more escape capacity. Cue Britannia VI.

That is 55 Kickbacks on the first stage. And I actually had to use some of the second stage to get my apoapsis in space.

From there, the mission preceded nominally (Well, as nominally as a precision landing solid fueled Mun lander can be) until I began the landing burn.

Note: This is not the landing burn. This is the plane change burn.

The landing burn was eventful! First off, the three motors I used for the landing burn were mounted off center, so there was an uncontrollable roll. However, you can edit autostruts in flight (hooray!) so a quick quickload fixed that problem. Now, the second problem: The landing motors had twice the amount of Delta V I needed. So I had to spin it really fast so the motors would cancel themselves out...

By that point I was a bit off course and only had 24 separatrons left, providing barely 60m/s of Delta V. I used 12 of them to realign my landing site, and the last twelve to brake. I hit the surface at around 30m/s. Luckily, that batch of de-orbit motors that I forgot to put on a decoupler absorbed most of the shock of impact...

This picture shows the entire base. Left: Most of the base. Middle distance: American Ascent Vehicle. Right: Britannia II. Foreground: Britannia VI.

 

So, now I have ascent capability for 20 more Kerbals! That's 29 total I have now. The base currently supports either 11 or 12, so I have room for up to 18 more flights (If I have 1 Kerbal each on them - which I probably will not, so more like 8 flights) before I have to launch another one. I have plans for an American habitation module, a medical center, a few more train cars (Fuel tank cars, mostly, so I can maybe drive to the crashed UFO site), a British train (maybe), a skyscraper of some sort, a castle (Hey, this is 1890 Britain), and eventually a Duna mission.

Now, I wonder... can I use the train to drop the train car down a large hill and have the crew in the train car survive? I probably won't be able to work the brakes, but it's worth a shot...

[Brownhair2]

13 hours ago, astroheiko said:

In the year 23 and 160 days, I was in no hurry. Before I was still at Niven and I have maximized my TechTree. A few years before I sent a ground probe and a sattelite to Tellumo. But I do not know anymore when the start window for the Probe.

That's fine, I can just make a new save and timewarp.

Alright, the transfer angle is ~45°, which is what I thought. Yay!

I also launched a second Javelin to visit Ceti. This one has tail landing gear, because that's much easier then trying to land on horizontal landing gear and I don't know why I didn't think of this in the first place.

[JadeOfMaar]

Deep Sky launched their first local relay + scanner probe into a 140k polar orbit, dubbed the "Homer Mk0 #0" or simply Homer 0. A second on was to launch but the main objective was return the science boxes from the obsolete CardPicker probes around Iota and Ceti, and unlock more/better scanner parts.

 

@Galileo  The hiring process finally began, looking for extra hands in order to accomplish the science box return project. Among the accepted nominees was a very promising female pilot, Haidrien Kerman. With her name strikingly similar to the first moon of Nero, both reputation and skepticism followed her about the KSC. Maybe she's a messiah? Lead the way to Nero's holy food kourt?

She's done one thing no kerbal has done before. With an experimental new VTOL she scienced the depths of an ocean, and boldly launched alone to intercept the CardPicker probe in Iota polar orbit. Unfortunately the retrieval operation failed; she could not access the science box's contents to transfer them to her ship. She can't be held accountable for that though. She never promised to be able to do a scientist's job [or maybe there's something I'm missing].

  

 

Repeat mission a few days later, she didn't go alone. The third namesake kerbal from the group with Eiyuu and Samael Kerman rode along with Haidrien, a male engineer with Mass Effect powers? The recovery vessel was also fitted with a klaw and it captured the science box without any RCS. With @Enceos KIS omni-tool, Jade Kerman detached the bottom of the probe from the box (and kraken-ly flung the whole heap a few hundred meters away). The top of the probe was removed by a decoupler--that upper part meant to be disposable in the first place.

The operation took place during a deorbit, preventing 99% of orbital debris (the 1% turned out to be one of the recovery ship's radial tanks ) and a tricky and lengthy return phase was  executed, filled with a needless repeat encounter with Iota and far more LS being consumed than ever expected. (Packed 53 days worth, expected to consume 12 ~18 days, came back with only 8 days remaining). Along with that decoupler, the science box had two full-sized chutes attached, allowing the recovery ship to skimp and be fitted with drogue chutes.

It was a wild ride, dropping in on Gael at 3200m/s and almost losing the klaw, maybe the lander can, and the mission ending in a catastrophic... but it was a success... [I got only 1 science point for the whole mission. I'm tempted to simply delete the Ceti probe and spare the effort.]

 

 

[SleepyMan]

After my previous attempt for a first landing on Mun was foiled by a minor technical hitch [could not separate lander from the return vehicle] I returned for another go. Separation went off with only a minor hitch, the decoupler ended up wrappped up amongst the landers engines. The actual landing went well though I still need to work on picking flat landing sites:

Returning back to orbit went well, I only smacked into one mountain  But F9 fixed that ...

Couldnt get a contract to complete in Mun orbit but aside from that glitch everyone retuned home safely

Next Goal is to launch a lab into Mun orbit and research the various biomes with a lander.

[septemberWaves]

I sent several Constellation payloads to Duna. Complete mission report can be found here.

[Red Shirt]

4 hours ago, SleepyMan said:

Returning back to orbit went well, I only smacked into one mountain

Just spit my green tea latte on the screen. Thanks for the chuckle.

[TheEpicSquared]

4 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

I sent several Constellation payloads to Duna. Complete mission report can be found here.

What mod gives duna rings? 

[septemberWaves]

21 minutes ago, TheEpicSquared said:

What mod gives duna rings? 

Xen's Planet Collection. It's a set of five mods, three which modify stock planets, and two which each add a new planet. The Moons of Duna sub-mod also adds a moon to Duna, as its name would imply.

Also, you might not realize unless you're very familiar with the stock appearance of Duna, but I'm also using Duna Restoration Project to improve the geographical features and appearance of Duna (by reverting it to what it once was in stock before an update made it look less interesting).

[TheEpicSquared]

Just now, eloquentJane said:

Xen's Planet Collection. It's a set of five mods, three which modify stock planets, and two which each add a new planet. The Moons of Duna sub-mod also adds a moon to Duna, as its name would imply.

Also, you might not realize unless you're very familiar with the stock appearance of Duna, but I'm also using Duna Restoration Project to improve the geographical features and appearance of Duna (by reverting it to what it once was in stock before an update made it look less interesting).

Thanks! And yeah, I use duna restoration project myself.  

[SickSix]

(I really need to get my imgur account back so I can start adding pictures)

Last night was a big success for the United States of Kerbal space program! We got our first Minmus orbital station in low orbit and flew a crew out to it. Bob manned the science station while Bill checked over everything and Jeb fiddled with the lander.

The lander was carried in a 2.5m cargo bay (mod). When Jeb went to board it he realised the engineers loaded the the door to the back of the cargo hold and he couldn't get in. So after firing the decoupler, the lander went spinning out of the cargo hold, Jeb performed some serious EVA maneuvers and got into the lander. 

A successful landing and rendezvous with the station yielded lots of science data to take back to Kerbin. Unfortunately the lander had to be left in orbit. 

So with Bob in the science station Bill and Jeb headed back to Kerbin to get ready for the next mission. With the science brought back the KSC now has the ability to build bigger rockets and a bigger ground mission go Minmus is in the works with a ground base on the drawing boards.

[joacobanfield]

Did a contract launchpad test...

In style.