What did you do in KSP1 today?

[qzgy]

6 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

What's taking a hunk out of Kerbin, there?

I have no idea....

I do know that with the Spectra visual pack, it really doesn't like showing the map view during ascent....

[Haruspex]

Converted the old Jool-5 mothership (Fifth Interplanetary Expedition) mothballed at Minmus to a permanent science station.

Attempted to built a plane for the Kerbal Express Airlines - Regional Jet Challenge (Reboot) that would fit the challenge while still keeping my "ϴ-wing" design. 

Succeeded.
 

Edited September 17, 2017 by Haruspex

[Drakenex]

More texture love, Magellan

 

[MiffedStarfish]

I went joyriding round the KSC.

 

[The Aziz]

I started a race. With my wheels. Retracted.

So far, so good, I'm in the lead.

 

Well, I'm not the first, but I still have the chance to not be the last!

 

Wheel #2 seems to have almost stopped, but will Wheel #3 reach it? Or will I stay in the second place?

 

Nope. Official standings:

1st: Wheel #3
2nd: Wheel #2
3rd: Me with Wheel #1.

[Tw1]

In which I continue to experiment with  massively oversized communication towers:

Behold the Kerbin Communications hub!

One omni directional cluster, with expanded capacity horizontally.

Crew of 2 Engineers, 2 scientists, is fully equipped for research  and maintenance. 

130 meters up.

Also, it is armed, and fully capable of defending itself.

I figured, why set up several big antennae at different locations on the globe, each which only covers part of the  solar system at a time, when you could have one huge one at the pole, which covers everywhere at once. 

The North Pole is just over a kilometer away. 

A network of ladders leads to the top

Getting down  can be achieved quite simply:

But getting back up is a bit of an ordeal 

 

It's so tall, it needs an intermediate step.

Epic,

And the new backbone of this save's comms network, gives a clear, signal out past Jool.

Edited September 17, 2017 by Tw1

[Draconiator]

Right now I am testing various fighter designs and I just took a screenshot.

Have to mix it up every once in a while.  This is a save dedicated to planes.  And of course directly after the screenie, the DIX-21s spontaneously explode...lol...NEVER the same thing twice with AI...lol

[Nblimp]

I landed a fighter plane on the Mun and decided to fly it around till I crashed, check it out! 

 

[Nblimp]

Brought the mun plane back to earth and actually landed it without everyone burning to death or dying 

 

[invision]

did the Cassini mission in the mission challenge threads

[Geonovast]

Set up my first SEP station on The Mun!

[roboslacker]

I turned my SR-71 into a passenger plane. If I lower the takeoff speed from 120 to 80m/s, I'll be able to pass it off as an airliner.

[Zeiss Ikon]

(Career game)

Today I accepted and fulfilled a couple tourism contracts.  I'm still pretty early in the career; it's a little bit of a challenge to make orbit, still (requires careful pilotage, at least), and I don't have maneuver nodes; my only two pilots (so far) can only hold stable, prograde, or retrograde.

The first contract I grabbed was an orbital VIP tourist; I modified my Explorer II (the craft that took Jeb and Val on their first orbital flights) to be remotely piloted -- deleted all the science and the service bay, changed from Mk. 16 to radial parachute(s), and installed a Stayputnik on the nose of the Mk. 1 Command Pod.    The result was christened Explorer IIp (passenger version).

Even without SAS capability, it was a breeze to pilot.  The fins make it stable enough that Jeb's piloting technique (maximum yaw until the air's too thin for the fins to bite, wait for near apoapsis, and boost toward the horizon until AP and PE start to reverse.  Check PE is high enough and AP not too high, adjust if needed.  In this case, overcorrection led to running out of fuel just as the orbit was circularized with PE barely out of atmosphere, so control deorbited by waiting until the craft was a AP, pointed retrograde (manually, of course), and staged.  The staging impulse lowered PE to about 60 km, which was low enough (with an AP around 100 km) to do the job.

Taxicab I was created when I realized that two of the remaining tourism contracts were for suborbital flight -- one for two passengers, the other for three.  I originally intended to make a remote piloted version of this craft for the three-passenger contract, but after flying it, decided I could easily get enough performance to carry a second crew cabin just by stretching the upper stage tank.  And yes, those are basic fins attached upside down on the forward end of the passenger cabin.  During reentry, the pilot waits until there's enough atmosphere for the fins to start working, then turns the craft sideways and stages away the cabin.  The fins keep it heat shield forward during its reentry, and staging arms the radial parachute (hidden by a fin in this photo), which then automatically fires when it's low/slow enough.

Yes, this vessel has flown.  Jeb himself was in the command pod for the flight.  Next time it's Val's turn.

 

Taxicab II is more of the same -- a double crew cabin, doubled upper stage fuel capacity.  Given the low cost, there may be a test launch to ensure the double crew cabin slows enough during reentry for the parachutes to deploy (approximately double sectional density means a significantly higher terminal velocity) -- but the VAB systems say it should still be stable on launch.

Edited September 17, 2017 by Zeiss Ikon
typo

[harrisjosh2711]

Man there has been some awesome stuff posted in the past few days.

Worked a little more on the texture for my Dragon pod. Time to play tonight!

[Azimech]

Modified my STOL carrier cargo plane.

Also, here's the first stock turbo-electric hybrid, with variable marine propeller. More info and craft file here: https://kerbalx.com/Azimech/77I--Turbo-Electric-Hybrid-Propulsion

 

[[insert_name_here]]

Yesterday (not today) I made my first semi-successful trip to the Mun. It was manned (I hadn't researched Basic Science yet) and I got it into orbit. I had a contract that asked my to fly by the Mun, gather scientific data and return to Kerbin. Unfortunately, I hadn't brought ANY science equipment so I jut took a crew report while in orbit and prepared to return. I made it back to Kerbin OK and de-orbited without any problems.

However, when I separated my final stage and prepared for landing, I encountered a problem. For some reason the decoupler was clipping into the heat shield. I didn't know it at the time, but I had accidentally put two heat shields on top of each other instead of one. So I jettisoned the heat shield and hoped for the best. However, instead of getting rid of the first heat shield I stupidly got rid of the second heat shield, which the first one was attached to. Jeb blew up in the atmosphere.

But his sacrifice did not go in vain*! Now at least I know that my Mun lander can make it to the Mun. All I need to do is attach an antenna and some science equipment, as well as get rid of the second heat shield, and I should be able to land on the Mun!

 

*Jeb respawned two hours later so I guess it wasn't a sacrifice

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Been practicing my KSP driving for the Kurburgring Lap Challenge. 

At first lag spikes were resulting in rather... explosive driving tendencies. So I started using Better Timewarp to slow down time so I would have time to react to the lag spikes. It however results in weird pulsations in the speed of the video .

I kind of want to Tokyo drift - parallel park the car now tho.

[qzgy]

1 hour ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

Been practicing my KSP driving for the Kurburgring Lap Challenge. 

At first lag spikes were resulting in rather... explosive driving tendencies. So I started using Better Timewarp to slow down time so I would have time to react to the lag spikes. It however results in weird pulsations in the speed of the video .

I kind of want to Tokyo drift - parallel park the car now tho.

No offense, but the lag stutters make me shudder....

I am a bit spoiled though for my KSP system....

The car looks great though! I wonder if you can add more power?

Edited September 18, 2017 by qzgy

[Tw1]

1 hour ago, Azimech said:

Also, here's the first stock turbo-electric hybrid, with variable marine propeller. More info and craft file here: https://kerbalx.com/Azimech/77I--Turbo-Electric-Hybrid-Propulsion

 

 

This this is beautiful. The engineering, and the narrative. 

[JadeOfMaar]

Had more fun with the stock-ish Science Plane Mk2c and brought back a few loads of science from reefs, minor shores and inland water, but finally put it up for retirement as it's not expected to gain any boost in operating power or range close to where science planes need to go next. Scientist in the forward cockpit to get surface samples; pilot (currently the only one rostered) hidden in the rear cockpit.

I then launched an 11 ton payload to low orbit....then quickly de-orbited it, learning that the science device can only function in Sun Ciro orbit.  

Finally I did a little too much "test" flying and squeezed in some science farming with the next generation of science plane... And my sunflare is small.

If I was playing career mode I'd call this a tourist trap as it has no cockpit.

[CatastrophicFailure]

12 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

then launched an 11 ton payload to low orbit....then quickly de-orbited it, learning that the science device can only function in Sun Ciro orbit.  

Is that the solar experiment thingy from MOLE? It'll work in Gael orbit, but it generates "solar reports" to be used by one of the LDEF experiments. 

[JadeOfMaar]

9 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Is that the solar experiment thingy from MOLE? It'll work in Gael orbit, but it generates "solar reports" to be used by one of the LDEF experiments. 

Yes, it's the solar experiment thingy from MOLE.  Well I'm missing the solar reports resource bar if there should be one, and I don't know yet if it's meant to be part of a ship with an actual MOLE and a crew. #noob  

[CatastrophicFailure]

8 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Yes, it's the solar experiment thingy from MOLE.  Well I'm missing the solar reports resource bar if there should be one, and I don't know yet if it's meant to be part of a ship with an actual MOLE and a crew. #noob  

Hmm... IIRC, that shows up in the relevant experiment part, "solar something something yadda yadda experiment." You'd need the big antenna looking thingy, that experiment, and either a staffed lab or the automated LDEF thing. It's all pretty complicated, I still haven't figured most of it out myself. Tho I think Kerbalism is messing with it, too. 

[maceemiller]

Today, I put a simple scanning probe into a polar orbit over the Moon in RSS.....maybe not the greatest feat in KSP exploration but Im happy I got it there

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

8 hours ago, qzgy said:

No offense, but the lag stutters make me shudder....

I am a bit spoiled though for my KSP system....

The car looks great though! I wonder if you can add more power?

Yah, dunno what's up with the lag. KSP used to run buttery smooth for me, but it seems to have gotten worse recently. Might be the OBS that's eating up computing power or something. Definitely appears to be more laggy whenever I want to record video. 

I could double the power and still comply with the rules of the challenge. I might try that in a bit, but I want to actually make it through a lap before adding more power.

Heck, it can already take off like a rocket if you manage to get the nose up. Speaking of which, I might attach an extended blooper real to the video whenever I complete the lap. I've had an instance in which both car and Kerbal completely cleared an R&D building after a crash lol.