What did you do in KSP1 today?

[AccidentsHappen]

In my Career save, I decided to take up some defence contracts. I started with my ship-board fighter, the F/A-18 Legacy Hornet:

After having no luck with bombing, I decided I needed a new breed of Multi-role aircraft. Just as the USAF did, I tried out both the F-15E Strike Eagle and F-16XL.

I scrapped the aesthetic side of the Strike Falcon, as the second I took off, wing panels sprung off the aircraft in every which way.

I removed all of the useless bits and hooked it up with 6 Cluster bombs, 6 Snake Eye low altitude bombs and 6 unguided bombs, I was ready.

After using ALL of my bombs, I'd only taken out one target . I like to think I'm pretty good at flying planes, and after 5 or 6 years of KSP I'd hope so, and yet I was having no luck with my bombing runs. And then, while trying to drop a Snake Eye low over the target, I was hit by an unguided missile, bringing Deedee and Bill crashing to the ground, injured but not dead.

I figured stepping up my game would help bring an end to insanity, but my solution only made it worse. I rolled a workhorse of WWII out, a shell fit with new technology. 

My B-47 Stratojet was packed full of ordinance, ready to rain hell on that darn Mobile Missile Battery.

After carpet-bombing the area, dropping six bombs at a time, I finally took down one target and moved on to the other two, about 10km away.

I arrived quickly, and the second I was in-range the sky was bombarded by unguided missiles.

I bombed consistently, and soon ducked down to under 1000m to do a low-altitude run. Val rolled out of the way of one missile only to have another collide violently just behind the cockpit, bringing their attack to an end...

[Kertech]

Been flying 10k missions again, procedural tanks new for this save (they're not really needed normally other than for looks, but I need the extra fuel space!)

First satellite 

(big boosters for tiny payloads  )

Later on (much later, I've set science to 50% so it's pretty grueling!) I ran a lunar flyby with a modified Calliope capsule (ranger configuration) instead of a crew compartment it has an orbital module (USI-LS for hab time) and triple the fuel! Launched on a Mu-IV heavy (about 15 tonnes to LKO)

Sent crew and experiments up to olympus (after unlocking 3.75m parts I put up a science station, took a while)

Calliope-2 so less dv, but more crew!

Gem-1 which has two crew and an experiment transfer module for the Mole lab

Both docked to Olympus station

(I find that truss docking area thing quite satisfying for some reason)

 

Lunar comnet array was put in orbit by Mu-Ia's

(The atlas texture looks great on small rockets @Bornholio ) 

 

 

Now just waiting for another 500 science so I can get rockets big enough to put this in orbit

And then do a few missions (and complete doing it Apollo style in 10k, and maybe apollo applications after whilst I got the infrastructure)

Then after that I've started work on this

But this is no where near done! for a start the RCS on this is not balanced and not enough monoprop

 

Finally the long term goals for this save...

So if you look closely at the images you can see two (one in each image) bright red stars. Those are phoenix and valentine. Career goal is to reach them. Conventional rockets will take over a 1000years to reach them at the most efficient path (which is only about 8,500 dv from LKO) so this save has a few mods to give the speed of light a kicking!

If you now look back through the images you'll see them both sitting there, always good to have a goal that taunts you!

Edited April 17, 2017 by Kertech

[Julien Kerman]

I accepted a new contact. Mission Objectives:

-Acquire 1900 units of fresh ore from the Mun

-Put your ore in orbit of Kerbin.

So I used my biggest launcher. (Payload to low Kerbin orbit: a lot)

Low Kerbin orbit: 96km x 80km

Then I landed the Mining Lander.

[dangerhamster]

In a fit of enthusiasm and despite the strenuous objections of the finance dept the Deliverance upscale hit the 10m mark.

Faced with a bay with plenty of room for wide track modules but also ample headroom the designers took the only logical course.....

With the test rigs unloading went well except for the roof of the cargo bay having surprisingly sticky qualities. This was easily solved by opening the doors, although how well this will work in very low gravity will require some simulator time soon.

 

[TheJollyDodger]

Well, decided to get some much needed science from Iota today, did a surface flyby and these are some of the shots from the orbit and return to Gael.

 

On another note I also attempted to put the first module of my space station into orbit after performing a few Kerbal rescues (How do they get themselves into these situations anyways?)

It ended in abject failure (predictably so) I managed to get the payload into orbit, but when I went to perform some adjustments with my tug, I fired the main engines and catapulted myself straight into the new station module, shearing off the solar panels, batteries and antennas..... lol

So I guess that will be tomorrows project (clean up and start over)

Sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy the sights....

 

Fly dangerous!

The Dodger

[maceemiller]

I tested my new lander on Laythe from 65km to land on the ocean and retake off back to orbit at 65km and it weighed under 4 tonnes not the lightest craft ever made but I am over the moon with it!

[Flamingo]

Today the Minmus Portable Lab came down from the highlands to deploy a set of science equipment on the slopes, and later on on the great flats.

 

I also launched my first ever probe towards Moho. After it has collected some science and transmitted it back to Kerbin, it will work as scanning and communication help for future missions. I tried to land to rocket at the KSC, but as it often goes, it landed in the middle of the ocean several thousand kilometers away. 

The last picture in there is my Duna station that made its final correction burn just after the Moho Pioneer had burned towards Moho.

 

 

Edited April 18, 2017 by Flamingo

[bobcook]

Finished a workable original (original to me, at least) spaceplane design. It took eight iterations of design and testing  to get something reasonably aerodynamic with the right crew capacity and feature set, and could get to orbit without completely flipping or exploding. I can even land it. It flies slightly better than a brick with wings, but then so did the NASA Space Shuttle vehicle. I call it a win!

Spoiler

Not the prettiest thing, but it works!

[slubman]

Instead of continuing my mostly stock career, I found me playing more to my heavily modded GPP career.

Today I finally assembled my first outpost. The outpost is located on Iota. It was created mainly to complete two contracts (outpost on Iota, and ore extraction from Iota), and to boost research by having a lab on the ground there.

 

 

[Aragosnat]

Slowly getting better at SSTO planes. Now I don't need RAPIER engine so far. And I have a plane for it as well:

 

The only problem with it is. It does bounces when landing. Just means I need to make sure it does not hit as hard and likely it was terrain causing some of the bounce. Dispite landing near the KSC runway. Either I need to reduce the springieness to help reduce the bounce. Or try for softer landing which will take a lot of practice on my part. Edit: The other problem is the MK1 inline comes very close to over heating. Might need to use a radiator as a makeexcrements heat shield.

Edited April 18, 2017 by Aragosnat

[joacobanfield]

I goofed with Hyperedit and the sun ended up orbiting Gael. With a 1M KM periapsis circular orbit.

Whoops.

[Agustin]

Need help with sea planes. Is there any thread helping out? If not, maybe someone can give me here some examples or tips because I fail every time.

[Bornholio]

 

2 minutes ago, Agustin said:

Need help with sea planes. Is there any thread helping out? If not, maybe someone can give me here some examples or tips because I fail every time.

mods with seaplane floats (Rated ~100m/s).  or improvised landing plates (high impact tolerance parts)

Very good level control so you can trim out very low drop speed. high lift planes work better  because if you can get below 60m/s in flat flight you should be able to land fine.

 

[Agustin]

2 minutes ago, Bornholio said:

 

mods with seaplane floats (Rated ~100m/s).

What mods in particular have those?

 

 

[Draco T stand-up guy]

Came back to KSP after a few months away and started a new game.

Yep, I managed to kill all four initial kerbonauts on my second launch and I don't actually know what happened as I was alt-tabbed out doing something else at the time. Rocket must have fallen over for some reason.

[regex]

After ... what, more than a month? I finished up Dres station tonight. Brought in the science lander, the mining rig, and Klamath, inflated the main hab, ready for operations. Klamath had to dock "upside down" but this is space so no big deal.

[Cadet_BNSF]

I put a station in orbit around Minmus in my heavily modded career

Beautiful night launch

 

More pics

Sunrise

Orbital insertion at Minmus

Minmus in foreground with Kerbin and the Mun visible to the left center and Trao visible a little to the right

[fourfa]

3 hours ago, Agustin said:

 

You absolutely do not need mods to make seaplanes.  Almost everything in KSP is extremely buoyant, including Mk0 fuel tanks full of fuel (my usual wingtip floats) - in fact it's quite a feat to get something to sink.

Bornholio is right that you'd like to have a lot of lift so you can have a very gentle descent rate - it's fairly easy to explode nose cones and intakes on hitting the water, as you don't get the usual shock absorber effect of landing gear on the runway.  

But also consider that most planes launch from the runway by rotating on their rear landing gear, temporarily gaining a big angle of attack and tons of lift.  Seaplanes are less likely to be able to do that, meaning you need to generate a lot of lift at a level attitude.  And drag on the plane is much greater in the water than on the runway, so you are going to be moving slower.  Static angle of incidence on the wings, more than normal wing area, hydrofoil lifting surfaces, deployable flaps, VTOL jets, rocket assist motors, a pulse of RAPIER rocket power - there are many ways to attack the problem with stock parts.  It's a pretty fun challenge.

Speaking of which - here's a recent thread on SSTO seaplanes on the Spacecraft Exchange subforum.  Not much activity yet, but I posted up one I'm working on

Edited April 18, 2017 by fourfa

[astroheiko]

Update for the Tarsiss 6 Expedition.

Today the 4th of 6 conditions were fulfilled. The probe landed on Jannah.

Here is a picture of the arrival in the Otho system

 

Reaching the orbit around Jannah.

 

Descent to the surface.

 

landed

 

The probe was completely refueled and is now on the way to Gauss. There the spaceplane is to land on Tasrsiss and then on Catullus.

[Kertech]

I spent last night building shuttles (was humming "every night I'm shuttling"...) 

Wyvern 1

Titchy little one, but then my biggest rocket in this save can only lift 15tonnes. I'll probably use it mainly cause those wings look great!  But it's kind of a white elephant

Then something bigger, The Wyvern 2

Gets to orbit with 1,800m/s, full docking capabilities, yet to test deorbiting though.

Gonna need to make it a docking gantry though, it was a bit hairy trying to get it on the flush docking port and s currently blocking all bar the top port.

 

[astroheiko]

My spaceplane, which is/was on Catullus, has reached orbit again today.

All the biomes are explored, the spaceplane is refueled and parked at the
equator. I have tried to find a place as high as possible, which makes the start easier. In the
tests, however, I also managed to get to Orbit at places with less than 1500m altitude. I check
again the order as the tanks are emptied, the staging and emptying the ore tanks to be as easy as possible.

 

Here is the link to a more detailed description.

A Journey to Gauss

 

Greetings

 

Edited April 18, 2017 by astroheiko

[roboslacker]

For the first time, I flew a plane into orbit

I was also able to land it

[Bornholio]

9 hours ago, Agustin said:

 

SXT Has a nice modular set that has a snap together center float and outrigger.  It has lots of parts but it is pretty lightweight texture wise.

As @fourfa said you can even do it stock. 

Some people are doing a one way seaplane (landing only) but if take off is critical then make sure you have the surface contact bits mostly ahead of the CoM so you can take off without needing excessive forward velocity.

Alternately Improved Aero surfaces like flaps or deployed control surfaces to change your effective AoA help. 

[JadeOfMaar]

I finally delivered texture switching to my Airline Kuisine parts for TAC LS and USI LS.

 

Then I designed and launched a SpaceDock. It's been too long since I've had things built in orbit. Since I had to deal with unreal drag I kept my TWR at 1.6 and ascent speed under Mach 1 until about 20km up. this station will be the spawn point for modules for a Ceti surface base.

   

 

Edited April 18, 2017 by JadeOfMaar

[dboi88]

I've been testing new parts again (the launchpad, EPL compatible)