What did you do in KSP1 today?

[voicey99]

I found out the hard way that trees from Stock Visual Terrain ARE solid and WILL nick your wing if you fly into one. How rude of them.

EDIT: The second time it happened, the plane got wedged in the tree with the engine still running, meaning the back was pinned against the tree in midair.

Edited October 25, 2017 by voicey99
Them trees again!

[Galileo]

2 hours ago, voicey99 said:

I found out the hard way

Muahahahahahaha!

**turns and swipes towel up towards face like a caped villain and runs away**

Edited October 25, 2017 by Galileo

[Pthigrivi]

Duna Advance en route. Resource scouting and communications networks to lay the groundwork for the upcoming crewed mission. 

[klond]

26 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Chocolate hazelnut pressurized tanks.

 

Edited October 26, 2017 by klond

[Pthigrivi]

3 minutes ago, klond said:

Chocolate hazelnut pressurized tanks.

And yummy to boot!

Edited October 26, 2017 by Pthigrivi

[DAL59]

31 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Are those timberwind nuclear rockets from interstellar mod? 

[Pthigrivi]

They're from Nertea's Kerbal Atomics. Great man, that Nertea. *misty eyes*

 

Edited October 26, 2017 by Pthigrivi

[Zeiss Ikon]

I spent some time last night designing what has to be my most Kerbal vessel to date.

If the new "stretched" tourist bus doesn't reenter well, but you need the capacity to launch four tourists at once, what do you do?

How about, couple-and-strut two very slightly modified (for strap-on clearance) two-passenger buses together, belly to belly?

With six Swivels and four Reliants ignited on the pad, Taxicab V flies just like Taxicab III, and is capable of reaching orbit with significant fuel remaining in its twin booster cores.  From there, the orbiters can be separated for individual missions, or can continue into Munar orbit and return as a unit before separating.  Operational doctrine is to separate the orbiters before burning for Kerbin return, to avoid confusing Mission Control with concurrent reentries, but in practice this decision will be left to the command pilot; if sufficient fuel remains, the option exists to return to LKO parking orbit before separation for reentry.

 

[MinimalMinmus]

Today, I recieved a postcard.

https://imgur.com/a/hHdyV

Dear Jeb,

I've finally finished my trek on Eve! As you can see, I'm having an evening bath on the beach. The temperature is good and hot at 120°C, and the explodium is just right. I heard explodium is excellent for girders, so I'll sure bathe a lot during my exploration of Eve.

I'm not a good swimmer however, but even dipping my wheels feels quite good!

Yours truely

exploration rover "Carmine"

 

To: Jeb

279, Explosion Ave. KSC

Edited October 26, 2017 by MinimalMinmus

[Slam_Jones]

Continued with my RSS Career (Funds: 250%, all other settings standard... though I wish I had put Science rewards higher) I sent Jeb to orbit the moon.  Rocket had something like 15km/s of dv on the launchpad.  I actually wasted a bit too much fuel trying to match the Moons orbital plane and had to quickload back to low orbit once.  The final stage was a few large LF tanks and a stock NERV, producing somewhere in the vicinity of 7.5km/s of dv, which I assumed was enough for orbital plane changes, interception and circularization burns, and finally return burn.  The second attempt after the quickload, I made it into a very very large, but stable, orbit around the Moon.  After conducting a few experiments and stretching his legs outside the pod, Jeb set a course to return to Earth.

Having installed TAC-LS, I provided Jeb with approx 36 days worth of Life Support.  He "died" of oxygen deprivation about 1 day from Earth...   The medics pulled him from the pod (which splashed down off the west coast of Africa) and patched him back up at the Space Center.  By the time the next rocket was ready to launch, Jeb was back to normal.   (My headcanon is that he passed out and entered hibernation when the oxygen ran out.)

I also worked on some new Medium Launchers, and put a relay sat, equipped with an ion engine and something like 12km/s of dv, into Earth orbit.

Also realized that a parts mod I had installed apparently had some incorrect values for fuel tank weights... apparently when they reached a certain level, they would end up having negative mass, which would cause the rocket to flip and be dragged slowly upwards by the negative mass being pushed away by gravity.  When I checked the forums, I realized there was already a new version of the mod that fixed the problem...    This means I'm not getting 7km/s out of my upper stage anymore, but it also means it won't randomly start tumbling at 80km either...

Edited October 26, 2017 by Slam_Jones
Additional details since I get excited and forget stuff... :)

[Haruspex]

It's Year 57, Day 334 of the Kerbal Space Age. After rescuing five kerbals stranded in orbit of Eve, the Sixth Interplanetary Expedition stops to refuel and plant ceremonial flags at Gilly.

 Two detachable ore tank modules separate themselves from the mothership and are docked to the front of the Explorer module, which then heads down to the asteroid. Because of Gilly's tiny gravity, this tall assembly won't fall over when landing; it's highly unlikely than this can be pulled off at the Mun. Not even mentioning that the lander won't take off from a heavier body with all tanks full of ore.   

 This allows the Explorer to get 4200 units of ore per run, fully refueling the Expedition Orbiter in 3 runs.

 The landing is a success; the Eve crew enjoys Gilly while the mining machines work to fill the hold. 

...And a little hello from home with a nice cash bonus!

[Zeiss Ikon]

3 hours ago, Slam_Jones said:

Having installed TAC-LS, I provided Jeb with approx 36 days worth of Life Support.  He "died" of oxygen deprivation about 1 day from Earth...   The medics pulled him from the pod (which splashed down off the west coast of Africa) and patched him back up at the Space Center.  By the time the next rocket was ready to launch, Jeb was back to normal.   (My headcanon is that he passed out and entered hibernation when the oxygen ran out.)

How does it take 36+ days to get to the Moon and back?  Apollo did it in three days each way?!

[Slam_Jones]

17 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

How does it take 36+ days to get to the Moon and back?  Apollo did it in three days each way?!

Yeahhh...  Not proud of it, but I kinda messed up one of my burns and ended up with a very large orbit around Earth after leaving the Moon... it took far too many days to get to the apoapsis so I could perform the re-entry burn.  Since I almost never play with it, I had kinda forgotten that I had TAC-LS installed, so I just time-warped and didn't pay attention to how long it would take.  I was mostly trying to minimize dv usage instead of keeping track of Life Support, I suppose.

Plus, NASA calculates everything beforehand... I kinda just throw stuff into orbit and see if it works

Jeb's strange-looking ship which he took to orbit the Moon, shown here circularizing (slowly) around Earth.  At low Earth orbit, it had about 6.5km/s of dv left.

Edited October 26, 2017 by Slam_Jones
Grammar, corrections, image of craft

[The Flying Kerbal]

What did I do in KSP today the thread asks, and not a single thing is the answer... I haven't even booted it up today yet, but yesterday - ahh yesterday...

Ever since a pre-historic Kerbal first stumbled and fell from its tree, landed on its back and looked up at the the sky, Kerbalkind has gazed at the Mun and wondered...  For those with slightly better eyesight - and not suffering from the effects of concussion after falling out of trees - there was from time to time, a small reddish dot that seemed to wander across the sky, and that give them something else to ponder over!

I'd fired at Duna in a previous game, but alas something went wrong and the file was corrupted, so that was the end of that attempt.  This has meant that I'd never actually landed on any body outside Kerbin's SOI.  This couldn't be allowed to continue.

Here is the "Project Adventurer" payload that would be sent to the Duna system.

Everything from the heat shield up is the Duna lander, and below the shield down to the decoupler makes up the Ike lander, although this section also plays the crucial role of relay for the Duna lander until all science possible has been transmitted from the red planet's surface.  Both landers carried a thermometer, barometer, seismic accelerometer, two goo containers, with a science junior also being added to the Ike lander.

The whole lot was placed in a fairing and put on top of this rocket:

It would be up to the four LV-T30s and one LV-T45 to lift this into an LKO, with another 45 on the stage that would push the vessel out to Duna.  The best launch window was to be on Day 239 of Year 1, but the flight actually started on Day 179 after a cleaner at the KSC accidentally hit the launch button and sent the rocket off early...

Early or not, the launch was without incident, and the ejection burn, which cost 1,074 Dv, resulted in a Duna Pe of just 70K!!  I don't know if that's an easy number to hit, but I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself for nailing that one so well.

Months went by...

Finally the vessel entered Duna's SOI.  All reusable science was performed in space high above Duna and sent back to Kerbin.  As Adventurer came out from behind Ike, it turned on its cameras, this is the first image taken by the vessel as Duna came into view:

The plan was to get captured by Duna for free, aerobraking in the planet's atmosphere to get into orbit without using its engine but, even with a Pe reduced to 25K, I still had to put in a quick burst from the Terrier to make certain the vessel wouldn't shoot by Duna and escape from its SOI.  This was the only slight hiccup the mission had to deal with, and although I pressed F5 many many times, I'm pleased to say I didn't ever have to use F9 to go back in time.

After capture was successfully achieved, and Adventurer sped off towards its Ap, the time had come for it to say farewell to the Duna lander; this shows it just after separation:

Tests carried out at Kerbin showed that, even with four drogue chutes and a Mk16, only landing on low ground give the package any chance to survive the impact.  The heat shield was designed to act as a shock absorber after serving its primary role of combating the heat of tearing through the atmosphere, as it could withstand a higher impact than the battery pack attached to it.

As mentioned earlier, the Ike lander would remain in orbit, using its RA-2 antenna to enable the Duna lander to send its findings back to Kerbin.

Back at Kerbin, nails were being eaten, coffee consumed by the gallon, and pens tapped on tables as everyone watched the seconds pass like hours on the clock.  It wasn't possible for a signal to be sent from the Duna lander while travelling through the planet's atmosphere, so there was no way of knowing if things were going as planned, or if a mountain had become the last resting place of the little probe.  What they didn't know was that this had happened...

...and a few minutes later, this!

Everything had worked perfectly so far.  The heat shield had indeed been destroyed on impact, but it had served it's purpose and the probe was completely intact.  Just one more system now had to work to make the lander fully operational:

The Mk 16 parachute was blasted off using small SRB's...

...to expose the solar panel which would enable the probe to generate sufficient power to complete it's mission.

The first image ever taken from the surface of Duna:

With all possible science and research completed and transmitted from the surface of the red planet, it was time to break the radio link with the heroic little probe and send the Ike lander to the Dunian moon.

It's not very far from Duna to Ike, much closer than from Kerbin to the Mun for example, and it took only a couple of hours before the lander approached its final destination.  It went into a 30K orbit around Ike while technicians on Kerbin insured to pick a landing site that would give them the greatest amount of time possible before losing control because of signal blockage between the KSC and the lander.

Finally the descent started...  Designed to use the Terrier engine if there was still fuel in the tank, the lander broke orbit and shaped course for a landing site in a valley in Ike's South Easter Mountain Range.

The engine remained attached until the lander was 500 meters from touchdown, when it jettisoned the Terrier, activated the RCS (used as descent engines), deployed the landing gear and began it's finally descent.

Just a handful of meters to go...

... TOUCHDOWN!!! 

The mission was a huge success with the rocket and both landers performing perfectly.  The only slight hiccup was the aerobraking in the Dunian atmosphere, I guess I need to look a little more at how deep I need to dive down into it to insure being captured?  A total of 746 science was sent back to the KSC, which will be used to develop new technologies to further advance Kerbals conquest of the stars, and new snacks to keep Jeb happy.

A great time was had with this and I look forward to planning a similar venture for Eve and Gilly in the near future.

 

Postcript:  The Kerbal responsible for launching the rocket is no longer employed as a cleaner by the Kerbal Space Agency.  She now works full time in Mission Control as Deputy Launch Controller, making full use of her gifts and talents in this field.

 

Edited October 27, 2017 by The Flying Kerbal
The usual... I can't spell! :(

[Jack5.exe]

crashed the game with mildly infuriating explosion

[Tw1]

*ffffffffffwwwwwww (whistling noise)*

I spend a while building towers. Didn't have enough stone to build in walls, but I always build them eventually. 

Wait, which game was I playing?

Anyway....

Pow!

Zap!

Towers. Don't mess with them.

Edited October 27, 2017 by Tw1

[Julien Kerman]

Today I placed an Orbital Bunker in Low Earth Orbit!

Launch on Saturn V, of course  

The total mass of the bunker is around 80 tons.

So, in case of a natural disaster, you can stay up there with enough supplies for over 16 years.

[Slam_Jones]

Sent Jeb back to the Moon.  This time, to land on it.  Packed 36 days worth of Life Support again, and planned my manuevers a bit better so Jeb could survive this one.  This time, my manuevers were a little tighter, and Jeb returned to Earth safe and sound with 26 days of life support remaining.

 
The initial launcher, weighing in at over 2,200tons, taking off with a sluggish TWR of 1.10.

Jeb's LV-N-powered ship, producing almost 7.2km/s from LEO.

Totally forgot an obligatory pic of Jeb standing next to the flag in front of the ship.  2.2km/s of dv left, which shot up to 2.7km/s or so once I staged away the three radial tanks and landing legs.

A reasonably quick return route.

 

After bringing Jeb back, I installed a few visual mods and sent up a probe to check them out.

Lastly, I put it into a geostationary orbit and took a short video, which I may make into a gif.  (Although I may need a re-do since I just realized my mouse cursor is visible in the video... )

 

Next, I'm going to attempt to land Jeb on Mars and get him back home again.  Only need another 5km/s of dv past what the rocket I used in this post had... I figure that putting my science points into more efficient nuclear engines might just help me get it done!

Edited October 27, 2017 by Slam_Jones
Spoiler ate my pictures, correcting misinformation (put kg instead of tons for launcher mass)

[NotJebediah]

Today I went to Eve in a ship designed to go to Duna... Yeah, it turned out as good as it sounds...

 

A little backstory: Right now I'm playing in science mode, and after a botched Mun landing I needed some serious science points to progress. I've already been to Minmus (in a Mun lander, but halfway in the burn I realised that I don't have enough dV, so I went to Minmus with a Mun assist {more about that mission later}), but I've never really left the Kerbin-Mun-Minmus system...

 

So I designed the Duna Express Vehicle (D.E.V.), a permanent in-space craft (kinda like the Hermes from The Martian), with more than enough dV to move around Duna and Ike.  After putting it into orbit with minimal fuel and a refueling mission I noticed that I'm in the middle of an Eve transfer window. Quickly sent out the D.E.V. to Eve and soon after I sent a lander probe to gather more science from the surface. It wasn't until the D.E.V. left Kerbin SOI that I realised I forgot to bring the barometer and the thermometer (yeah...) The probe had them, but it couldn't communicate with Kerbin directly. So, I made a course-correction with the probe so it arrived at Eve 12 days before the D.E.V. and instead of directly descending to the surface it stayed on a highly elliptic orbit over Eve. I made the high- and near-space tests and waited for the D.E.V. When it arrived I got back the com. link with Kerbin, so I sent back the data and prepared for the actual descent. Meanwhile I realised an another design flaw in the D.E.V.: it doesn't have enough dV... (again...) Similar to the descent probe I could get a stable elliptic orbit but not enough fuel to leave. Since I was stuck I did the science, relayed everything back to Kerbin and received some data from the surface via the probe.

 

At the end of the day I got the science I needed, but I have 4 kerbals in a highly elliptic Eve orbit in a fairly heavy craft with about 300 units of fuel left. I'll have to plan a rescue mission... 

Moral of the mission: Next time I'll need more fuel...

Edited October 27, 2017 by NotJebediah
Typo

[The Flying Kerbal]

1 hour ago, NotJebediah said:

(...I went to Minmus with a Mun assist {more about that mission later}), 

Excellent... I'll be really looking forward to this as I love the idea of assists but have no idea how to plan 'em.  I do get the odd one occasionally, but it's always by pure chance, so I'll be eagerly awaiting to read more about your assist around the Mun to Minmus.

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

I designed a new tug.

This is the third revision of my "Interplanetary Pusher" line of large-payload, long-range tugs, however unlike the Mk.2 this one is a total redesign from the ground up. While the original version only had one 2.5m docking port on the front and the Mk.2 added two additional 1.25m ports to the sides, with this one I moved the engines to the sides and placed a single shielded docking port on the back. This means that, unlike the Mk.1 which could only dock with Clamp-O-Tron Sr. ports, and the Mk.2 which required precise weighting to use the 1.25 ports for anything other than refuelling this one has both ports inline with its centre-of-thust and can easily transport cargos using both port sizes at the same time.

I've also put its more fragile components (such as its antenna and RTG) inside the service bay at the front, which means that with the shielded port closed (or a heat-resistant cargo docked to that port) this vessel is capable of aerobraking. I haven't tested braking from interplanetary velocities, but if I drop it from just above Minmus's height to 52km the only parts that get anywhere close to dangerously hot are the A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S., and I can just retract them if I need to do some more intense braking.

On top of all that this craft has more powerful RCS engines than its predecessors, includes two external command seats in its service bay (allowing it to transport Kerbals in emergency situations) and is still slightly lighter than the Mk.2. I think I'm going to wait for some of my Mk.1 tugs to return before I start launching these "for real," but I can see them becoming an important part of my fleet.

[dvp]

One of my space stations just flat out disappeared. Four Kerbals lost and no small amount of science/data, too.

 

RIP, guys. I'll send a followup mission someday.

[KerbalTween]

Today I Got Atlantis Space shuttle Docked with Liberty station And Is Last shuttle in my fleet for now and it has been in order the first part was nebula the oldest and the one that lifted the most 40 tons to orbit and back  Columbia Which bringed the Adapter for shuttles and a Hab Module and Lastly Atlantis which added the science lab in between nebula and columbia is The Solar array Launch By the Minotaur launch vehicle  

Picture  

Edited October 28, 2017 by KerbalTween

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I've been working on a script to assist, and possibly eventually control part of a shuttle reentry. One of the first things I thought I should do was create a function that calculates and displays the instantaneous Lift to Drag ratio of my shuttle.

I however think that I did my derivation from the acceleration vector wrong because it does not make sense for this thing to have a LD ratio of 29...

Let alone of 117...

It should probably be closer to 1 when hypersonic... Though given KSP's errordynamics, I wouldn't be surprised by 5.

 

[Yakuzi]

I recently got back to playing KSP (took a break for more than a year), and today I started working on my first* stock orange tank to orbit SSTO. It barely makes it to LKO, however, and re-enters the atmosphere on fumes:

* After KSP 1.0 released that is

 

Also, I updated my stock SSTO spaceplanes on KerbalX , so be sure take them for spin in 1.3.1 if you're keen

              Sherpa                                      Bushido                                       Nova                                       Super Nova

              

Edited October 28, 2017 by Yakuzi