What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

Most of my day yesterday involved misadventures with the Tater Catcher 7 mission to put a B-type asteroid in orbit of Mün. If you'll recall from my post yesterday, I had managed to get said rock and said mission into a stable orbit around Kerbin, but it had ran out of gas and I was trying to figure out how I was going to refuel the craft so it could complete its mission. I had the bright idea to go ahead and convert the asteroid's ore directly into fuel, and to that end, I designed the Leech 7 ISRU probe and sent it up to the rock. Rendezvous took several orbits to complete, during which time I returned tourist Liseny Kerman to KSC 09 safely aboard her Auk XIII single-passenger spaceplane and retreived an LV-T45 Swivel engine from orbit for contract. When I got back to the Leech, I realized something quite important - if I was going to drill ore and convert it to fuel, I probably needed some effin' drills...

So I designed and launched the Vampire 7 drilling probe, and got it up to the rock.


Drilling operations on Asteroid PDM-700 in a 118x110 kilometer, 53 degree inclination orbit over Kerbin, with Leech 7 (top), Tater Catcher 7 (left) and Vampire 7 (bottom) in view.

The Vampire sucked the rock bone dry and the Leech converted it into about 600 m/s of delta-V. Still not enough to get to put the craft into an equatorial orbit around Kerbin, much less get to Mün. 

So it's on to plan B - I did have the foresight to put a docking port on Leech 7, so I could send a traditional refueling flight up. Tater Catcher needs about 200 tonnes worth of fuel to tank up completely; I got about ten tonnes worth of gas out the rock itself, so 190 to go. It would take six Auk VIII heavy spaceplane flights to fill it up to the brim - and that's a plane I hate to fly, so at this point I'm thinking one big honkin' tank of gas on a rocket. Turns out I've already built a booster that will handle a 300 tonne paywad to orbit (the Piper Alpha 7a, two of which were launched to Duna), so I'll be working along those lines later today.

Also already did the calculations - I could get to Mün from where I'm at for just 850 m/s of delta-V. I'd still have to get it in orbit after that. The whole mission is still doable, and at this point I just need an orbit at Mün - any orbit - to clear this particular contract. The rock's pretty much worthless now; I've given up hope for a profit here - I just want to clear the contract at this point. Next time I'll do better.

[TheKorbinjer]

my little brother built his own plane, i told him a few things that he put on it wouldn't work out, such as 3 ton TweakScale batteries mounted ontop of it. I told him what engines would work well, and what wings would work out. He followed along with me, and he built a masterpiece capable of sustained flight at 22 km at mach 4.3, 1,300 m/s and made it 8 THOUSAND KILOMETERS BEFORE IT RAN OUT OF FUEL.

My little 7 yo brother bested me at hypersonic flight, at a huge range too! 

I told him that i would steal his design and try to make it better. If anyone is interested, i could put it up for download tonight, Just requires tweakscale (The wings and elevators are bigger)

Edited December 1, 2017 by TheKorbinger

[Corona688]

34 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

The rock's pretty much worthless now; I've given up hope for a profit here - I just want to clear the contract at this point. Next time I'll do better.

I hope it still counts, that asteroid may not be class B anymore

It's tough to make these profitable.  You need to make big changes in a big rock's delta-v without hauling up a good fraction of its own weight in fuel, not even ion drives are that magical.

If you catch it far enough away, though, you've got plenty of time for interplanetary billiards, which you play by almost-but-not-quite hitting the other balls.  Gravity slingshots can slow you down, too (or, rather, speed up the other direction).

[capi3101]

4 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

I hope it still counts, that asteroid may not be class B anymore

It's tough to make these profitable.  You need to make big changes in a big rock's delta-v without hauling up a good fraction of its own weight in fuel, not even ion drives are that magical.

If you catch it far enough away, though, you've got plenty of time for interplanetary billiards, which you play by almost-but-not-quite hitting the other balls.  Gravity slingshots can slow you down, too (or, rather, speed up the other direction).

Yeah, ideally I'd have made the necessary adjustments to the trajectory right after I'd picked up the rock, when I still had a fair amount of delta-V available. The Tater Catcher was designed back in v. 1.1.3 - before CommNet. Botched this one up good all for the want of a lousy antenna...

[ProtoJeb21]

1 mile long and over 200 meters wide...still not big enough.

Also, here's the new model compared to the first model, which I posted a picture of a few weeks ago:

[Tynton]

Well,

[Servo]

16 hours ago, MattJL said:

Been working on a stock Saturn V/Apollo spacecraft replica for the last two weeks-ish, and just had the opportunity to test out the LESS/Long-Range Flyer this afternoon.  (LEM and CSM got a major overhaul as well, which I'm pretty happy with).

The CSM is based heavily off of @Servo's absolutely fantastic design from the Apollo Applications Program challenge.  I added some tweaks to allow for a jettisonable SIM bay cover, but that's still a work in progress (test below).

Go check Servo's design out, it's beautiful.

Thanks a lot! That challenge was a ton of fun to build and fly for - I totally recommend it.

 

Recently, I've been taking on another 1:1 replica craft, this time the AV-8B Harrier II.

It'll take a bit more tweaking to get this ready for release, but it's almost there.

Getting the swiveling lift jets was the big challenge here. I actually considered doing a 1.5x scale to allow me to use wheesleys instead of Junos, but I like the 1:1 much better anyway. 12 juno's isn't that bad, right?

[DAL59]

Recreated the apollo direct ascent proposal.  

 

 

[eddiew]

[Kosmonaut]

A very canadian-themed post

3 hours ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

1 mile long and over 200 meters wide...still not big enough.

Using metric and inferior imperial in the same sentence... you must be a fellow canadian!

2 hours ago, Servo said:

Recently, I've been taking on another 1:1 replica craft, this time the AV-8B Harrier II.

Last weekend at the Ottawa Aerospace Museum I had the opportunity to see, among other jet fighters, an AV-8B Harrier II- it was a surprisingly small craft compared to the CF-18 or CF-104 (the C denotes that it is upgraded and used by the Canadian military), actually not that much larger than the MiG-29. I always thought it was much larger than that.

[ProtoJeb21]

6 minutes ago, Kosmonaut said:

A very canadian-themed post

Using metric and inferior imperial in the same sentence... you must be a fellow canadian!

Nope, I'm American. I haven't even been to Canada before! 

I also scaled that craft up EVEN MORE. It is now around 7,950 meters (4.92 miles) long and about 1,375 meters (0.85 miles) wide and weighs nearly 7 BILLION kilograms. However, the top half has started disintegrating at launch, which is annoying. I'm probably going to half to change the main laser array to make sure things don't start randomly exploding. 

Edited December 2, 2017 by ProtoJeb21

[MattJL]

7 hours ago, Servo said:

Thanks a lot! That challenge was a ton of fun to build and fly for - I totally recommend it.

 

Recently, I've been taking on another 1:1 replica craft, this time the AV-8B Harrier II.

<snip>

I'll have to take it on, then, I think I've got every craft needed for the challenge.  (Also finally got the SIM bay where I want it, test pictures incoming).

That Harrier is mind-boggling.  How on Earth do you rotate all the jets simultaneously?  I'm assuming they're paired off, but that seems like a real trip to fly.

Thread-relevant, I just ran a "Gemini to the Mun" run with a lander I prepared earlier.  Not fully satisfied with this yet, more revisions needed.

Happy with the Saturn C-3, though.

 

EDIT:  SIM bay test:

Edited December 2, 2017 by MattJL

[Corona688]

Made my first "by the numbers" asparagus superlifter:

Using thuds lets me stage it normally while fueling it asparagus...ly.  All engines fire while only the bottom tanks drain, eject, at the appropriate time, rinse, repeat.  As drawback, engines don't run out, you have to watch tanks.

The ultimate goal is to place that satellite in a really eccentric solar orbit, so I took along lots of fuel and went up retrograde.

Target was 4km/s for a 9-ton payload.  Payload ended up being rather heavier than that, requiring a pair of kickbacks and a really direct ascent curve, but it made it to retrograde orbit with significant leftover fuel on top of that in the payload, so I was in the ballpark.

Manuevering with only a pair of thuds is really weird.  if you only have a pair it may be good to just lock their gimbals.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Corona688

[GDJ]

Built one heck of a race car for a challenge. 54m/s, straight electric, 1.67 tonnes total mass, AWD, and tough as nails.

[harrisjosh2711]

Got a little bored after a long day of studying for finals. Decided to take a few minutes to check out the new plumes on my engines courtesy of RP and @mrtagnan. I have certainly launched the falcon 9 more times than I can count so if figured lets try something different. 4 scaled BFR fins and a set of landing gear. Lets do it! You wouldn't believe it, but jeb was mad we decided to use a un-manned command pod.

Upper stage heads into orbit.

Of course it wouldn't be SpaceX worthy if it wasn't reusable. I couldn't try to bring her in for a glided landing because I stupidly placed the front wheel on the upper stage. doubt it would have worked anyways. I designed it the kerbal way- It only took a minute and all testing was performed in flight. This was not easy. Luckily I figured out right before I got to the ground if I cut off the elons it would be a lot more stable. Those things don't like going backwards. No RCS, no landing legs, or any gridfins and I stuck it. Elon Kerman would be very proud RIP. unfortunately, he perished at some point or another in a spectacular crash. We kerbs aren't exactly known for our record keeping.

Edited December 2, 2017 by harrisjosh2711

[eddiew]

Since it seems like a bad idea to land on Europa, naturally everyone wants to land on Europa. In which case we'd sure better build the most rugged, versatile, and capable landing vehicle we can possibly imagine!

Handily, the moon is just slightly larger than our eventual target and makes a really good testing ground.

[Stewcumber]

I finished off the initial phase of my fuelling station this morning. Last week I sent up an orange fuel tank on one Negotiator launcher and a space station core thing on another Negotiator launcher. Now I have to dock them... I forgot how precise and tense docking can be! It didn't help that I was doing it in the dark until I decided to warp until morning at the cost of having to get set up again as I had drifted 60m away.

For some reason I did not take a screenshot of them when they docked (I was probably too busy hammering F5) Anyway, job done, let's get Negotiator 1 home.

Nice! Let's get Negotiator 2 home.

Not sure how I managed to destroy two engines but manage to balance on just the two with no RCS or SAS! Ah well, everyone is home let's check out my Space station.

Wait, what? It isn't showing up in the Space Centre, it is just the old Negotiator rocket? Why is that?

DAMMIT! Well I think forgetting to actually put anyone in your space station is sort of a rite of passage..

[dangerhamster]

The Globetrotter Mun arrived back at base after its wanderings.

Although their track is not complete as somebody forgot to turn the widget on they have managed to cover an appreciable proportion of the surface.

Along the way they have visited every biome and all 8 detected anomalies.

They faced untold dangers including an unexpected reality failure.

Although in this case turning it off and back on solved the problem. Val also developed a taste for ridge jumping in a heavy expedition rover to snag some "in space above" science.

Whilst the crew take some down time and attempt to swap music collections with the base crew mission control are suffering a heavy dose of "Nowwhat". Having spent so much time overseeing this trip they appear to have forgotten how to do anything else....

[kerbinorbiter]

i installed it.

(on my new PC)

 

[Zeiss Ikon]

46 minutes ago, kerbinorbiter said:

i installed it.

(on my new PC)

 

Something better than a potato, one hopes... 

Seemingly, that's a hardish thing to do with this game.  My "new" laptop goes as high as 3.4 GHz, and still gets bogged down with a 50 part launcher.

[NISSKEPCSIM]

For the first time in 4 months, I've done something astonishing -- I've actually turned around and decided to play KSP! What a crazy thought!

Brave test pilot Janly Kerman ventured out and boarded a new rocket -- a test platform utilising stock parts for the main rocket -- with one exception. Powering the rocket is a BK-RE1-LM booster engine -- the engine I've created to be used as the main engine for the 1st stage core and boosters for the NotantaresLV Angara rocket family.

The engine has a 2.5m base, 4° of gimbal, a maximum of 950 kiloNewtons of thrust, and about the same ISP as the stock Vector SSME engine.

The rocket takes off and quickly achieves a speed of approximately 450 m/s.

It is at this point -- 13 kilometres up, with only half my tank left -- that I have a lightbulb moment.

"Why not test out my engine by using it to make a powered landing in the sea!"

So I start to align my rocket along the Retrograde vector...

~ N I C E   A S S ~

...and begin my Retrograde burn.

And then I start falling.

I reach a speed of around 300 m/s when I realise I won't have any time to slow down if I don't start now...

And so I start to throttle up, slowly at first...

... But throttling up more as I get lower and lower...

At this moment, I realised I had forgotten to activate the Comfortable Landing mod's "Pre-landing Mode," and I do so.

I hover for a bit at around 2 to 3 m/s, then SAS suddenly causes my rocket to veer left...

I smack into the water at about 25 m/s, and my engine and fuel tank disappear underwater in a huge splash.

Thanks to Comfortable Landing's auto-deploying landing buoys integrated into some of the stock pods, Janly Kerman was saved from an abrupt and painless death.

Me: "Having a good day, are we Janly?"

Janly: *Smiles a bitter smile*

[Tw1]

Bad news everyone! I've just proved kerbin is flat. 

I launched this Velociteze  and forgot about it. Found it flying perfectly level after leaving the runway. 

Decided to do an experiment. Left the plane completely unattended. 40 minutes later, the plane had safely crashed on another continent, without intervention.

The only way this could have happened is if it was flying over a flat surface. I did nothing to keep the plane's nose down, there's definitely no simple, obvious explanation, or inconvenient data I'm ignoring. 

We've all been fooled by Big Globe! 

All those pictures of Kerbin from space? Computer generated!

plz accept this as parody that last line is the punchline the experiment was real though

Edited December 2, 2017 by Tw1

[Delay]

10/10 for that flat-earther logic in your post. You seriously nailed that perfectly.

[Cheif Operations Director]

I build a Supersonic Jet that can travel half of Kerbin with fuel to spare in under 1 real hour

17 minutes ago, Tw1 said:

Bad news everyone! I've just proved kerbin is flat. 

I launched this Velociteze  and forgot about it. Found it flying perfectly level after leaving the runway. 

Decided to do an experiment. Left the plane completely unattended. 40 minutes later, the plane had safely crashed on another continent, without intervention.

The only way this could have happened is if it was flying over a flat surface. I did nothing to keep the plane's nose down, there's definitely no simple, obvious explanation, or inconvenient data I'm ignoring. 

We've all been fooled by Big Globe! 

All those pictures of Kerbin from space? Computer generated!

plz accept this as parody that last line is the punchline the experiment was real though

Ahahahaha lol good one

[Cheif Operations Director]

I made a plan that can travel 1/4 of Kerbin in about 45 minutes at supersonic speeds KSP Equivilant of New York to Rome in less than a Hour