What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Corona688]

On the right is Val in the Rover Can.  After driving through two biomes and over 30 kilometers she "pulled a Jeb" on the last leg of her trip to the sea:  A boneheaded manuever sent her tumbling off a cliff.  Hitting the retrorockets somehow made it worse.  But when the rover hit the ground at 58m/s, it was spinning so fast in just the right way that it bounced, four times, in horrifying slow motion, then slid to a halt sideways -- completely unharmed.  Val still seems to be my good luck charm.

Bob, on left, has the somewhat simpler job of biome-hopping via rocket to take as many materials bay samples as he can.  During one trip outside to reset, he managed a flawless backflip by accident.

[Fulgora]

Not-quite-business-as-usual in the shuttle program. Enjoy! 

 

[capi3101]

MSV Fat Man over Kerbol, with the ship's Alcubierre Drive running flat out...

Spent a good chunk of the early part of my day yesterday in an attempt to get MSV Fat Man over Duna and back to Kerbin before one of my Heartbreak Hotel 7 outpost modules had an encounter with Ike (thereby disrupting the sequence of Explore Ike contracts). My efforts ultimately were successful; the orbit around Duna was ugly, but it was an orbit nonetheless.

Next Objective (center) turning to burn out of MSV Fat Man's (left) physics range, with Yokohama II (right) having done the same.

Pilot Helming Kerman and engineer Suus Kerman aboard Fat Man traded spots with tourists Label and Roly Kerman aboard Next Objective, the contracts of the two tourists having been fulfilled at that point. Yokohama II and Next Objective were tanked off by Fat Man and the two ships were cut loose, burning to get clear of Fat Man's physics range so that they wouldn't be taken along by the ship's Alcubierre Drive. Once clear, Fat Man warped back to Kerbin and achieved a 555x506 kilometer orbit over Kerbin. I had five minutes to spare before the Heartbreak Hotel reached Ike's SOI.

Which was when I realized that the contract meant return a craft to Kerbin's surface.

A triple facepalm moment later, the Heartbreak Hotel module initiated its Ike flyby:

People say that Dres is untrustworthy. My own self, I find Ike to be more so.

Half an hour later, the craft departed Ike's SOI and ultimately burned to a 250x60 orbit over Duna. 

Nothing else was coming or going for another twelve days, so I spent the rest of the day yesterday on a situation report. Fat Man needed a refueling operation, but she was the only craft, base or station that needed anything. I made note of the fact that at some point my program had crossed the two year mark, and made a KAC alarm to notify me so I could properly celebrate the new year next time around...

Had an overnight shift this morning, so I spent the period working on Fat Man's refueling run. An Auk Ia 2-passenger spaceplane was dispatched to the Kerbinport space station unmanned. Upon docking, the craft was refueled and sent up to Fat Man, where Lable and Roly embarked. The plane returned the two tourists to KSC, where they got credit as the first kerbals to return from the orbit of Duna. Next up was a flight of the Auk X xenon hauling spaceplane (xenon being one of the three fuel components of the Alcubierre Drive, and the only one that's non-renewable). After three attempts to get the craft to Kerbinport with the plane running out of gas each time, I simply added a xenon tank to an Auk III tanker spaceplane, calling my creation the Auk IIIa. It too ran out of gas before it could affect successful docking with Fat Man; on the second attempt, the plane was sent to Kerbinport to tank up before heading out to Fat Man and arrived with fuel to spare. The docking did finish draining off the Exxon Valdez 7a fuel module docked at Kerbinport, so it was undocked at deorbited. The Auk IIIa completed the rendezvous with Fat Man, topped off the warp ship and then returned to KSC 27, blowing the landing and overshooting the Runway by a klick. Not entirely an auspicious way to end the first flight of a somewhat new plane design, but at least it got the job done. I'll need to review what happened with the Auk X and maybe make some changes later.

With the Heartbreak Hotel 7 in orbit of Duna, I finally had a relay antenna in the area and could perform a resource scan, looking for a site for the Enchova Central refinery when it finally arrives at Duna. Based on the survey, the Hellhound 7a rover B-misson was landed, with the rover dubbed Malaise upon reaching the surface:

Malaise catching air on Duna. Not even close to the fastest I've ever had a Hellhound 7 rover going over Duna.

 After a 45 kilometer rove to the north-northeast, a suitable site was located. I had hoped it would've been closer to the equator, but it'll have to do. 
 

Last thing that got done this morning was putting the asteroid tracking probe Ray Charles 7 into its final position over Kerbol after a 233 day flight to its periapsis position.

I found some humor in the notion of naming a space-going telescope after a blind man, one of my all time favorite musicians.

Ray Charles hasn't found me any asteroids just yet, but I imagine it'll happen relatively soon. I look forward to clearing out that particular contract.

[LordFerret]

16 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

I found some humor in the notion of naming a space-going telescope after a blind man, one of my all time favorite musicians.

 

Ray Charles hasn't found me any asteroids just yet, ...

I just about fell off my chair laughing when I read that.

 

+2 points

[Angelo Kerman]

While I'm continuing my goal to make DSEV feature complete this month, I'm also doing some Pathfinder stuff. Here you can see that I gave the Hogan (formerly Ranch House) a konkrete texture to reflect how it is 3D printed on site with local materials:

I took some inspiration from the LavaHive project:

Spoiler

You can assemble it with KIS- it comes in a packing box and needs a lot of resources- or you can expand it in the VAB/SPH as part of a prefabricated base that you build using Extraplanetary Launchpads. Next Pathfinder update will let you configure it as a Community Center, Dormitory, or Study Hall. The Community Center does what the existing part does now, but some of that functionality will be moved around as other parts get made. The Dormitory gives you life support options, but thanks to some new contracts I made over the past couple of days, it also attracts tourists to your base that could potentially become colonists:

I also made a new tourist contract that asks you to send kerbals to a specific vessel, have them stay for a few days, and bring them home:

And as its name implies, the Study Hall is a place to train your kerbals- just like the stock Mobile Processing Lab. It will also be the place where you can turn Tourists into Pilots, Engineers, or Scientists. Combined with the new tourism/potential colonist contract, you'll have an alternate way to add new astronauts to your roster without having to pay ever increasing fees or rescuing a stranded kerbal.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Angel-125

[kerbinorbiter]

created some eye candy...

[Delay]

2 minutes ago, kerbinorbiter said:

created some eye candy...

Except for the floating text on the top right? Yes, absolutely!

[Jett_Quasar]

Today I uploaded the AT-AT craft file to Kerbal-X AND uploaded another Star Wars video (although it has been posted before I had to "fix" it so my friends in Europe and Asia could view it)

 

You can download all craft files from my Star Wars hangar on Kerbal-X

 - Jett

[NSEP]

Why build sounding rockets when you can steal build an A-4 rocket? The 'easy fix' in RP0

If nobody made a mod that adds in the A4 rocket i would have vaporized my monitor and keyboard.

[roboslacker]

I messed around with stock fighters

[BadOaks]

Turns out, landing a space plane on Niven isn't easy! Fortunately I'd designed the K-35 to be able to do vacuum VTOL-style landings as well, via 2 aerospike engines mounted in cargo bays. Landing in Niven's low atmosphere ended up being a matter of gliding in close to the ground, then pulling up hard into a stall. As it started falling out of the air, I used RCS to maintain orientation and fired up the VTOL engines to bring her in for a soft landing. It worked about 40% of the time!

Made a total of 3 landings before transferring the crew back to the mothership for the trip home.

Spoiler

 

Edited December 9, 2017 by BadOaks

[Kermagerd]

Well, seeing your posts guys i feel like i'm playing a different game because MY SHIPS AND STUFF LOOK SO BLAND. But i'm very proud of my modest and highly inefficient first Mun surface outpost that i've been busy with yesterday and today. The rover design is one i saw a long while ago in this forums, the science lab i kind of copied it from a youtube tutorial, but none of them are a step by step copy, they are just... let's say heavily inspired.

It still lacks a lander to get kerbals to or from Mun's orbital station, and some little ship able to jump to different parts of the Mun in order to fulfill contracts, but the launches for the two surface stations had cost me a total of 274.624 funds, even when i did end a couple of contracts with these launches they didn't sum up more than 100.000 funds total. Not efficient at all, i lost almost 200.000 funds, so the expansion of the outpost can wait and for now i'll focus on accomplishing more contracts.

Fixed the link, thank you for the heads up @Agustin

Edited December 9, 2017 by Kermagerd

[Agustin]

7 minutes ago, Kermagerd said:

 

 

7 minutes ago, Kermagerd said:

Your link doesn't work

[Colonel Cbplayer]

we are kicking

 

[Geonovast]

This was a few days ago, but I landed a fish on Kerbin with no chutes or landing gear.  Just cause, I guess.

Edited December 9, 2017 by Geonovast
It... posted without the pictures without me saying to...

[Corona688]

4 hours ago, Colonel Cbplayer said:

we are kicking

Now try it again with gravity on XD

[qromodynmc]

I might have nuked some eastern kerbals.

[LordFerret]

5 hours ago, Colonel Cbplayer said:

we are kicking

Gravity or not, pretty amazing job.

 

Over in my world:
I've nixed the idea of setting up runway lights at Old KSC. The lighting options just aren't powerful enough, can't see squat until you're right on top of it. I've left the runway marker flags up however, as they can be clearly seen in the dark from 100km away. The Albatross2 jet I built makes the trip in about 15 minutes, and carries fuel enough for a round-trip. Cruising at 1400m/s is an issue though, as heating burned the wings off... and I discovered flameout was at a little over 26km.

Less than 30 days to go before all my KAC alarms kick in; Duna, Jool, Eeloo.

[Jett_Quasar]

Today I finished testing my Snow Speeder and posted it to Kerbal-X

Download from my Star Wars Hangar on Kerbal-X now

 - Jett

[Corona688]

1 hour ago, LordFerret said:

Gravity or not, pretty amazing job.

Oh yes, it's amazing I just want to see it come apart.

Proto Station received yet another prototype:

On left is the new docking adapter with battery bank and huge reaction wheel.

Also it now looks like some sort of robot goat throwing a small spaceship at you.  We needed a mascot for the tourists anyway.

Edited December 9, 2017 by Corona688

[Kermagerd]

1 hour ago, LordFerret said:

The Albatross2 jet I built makes the trip in about 15 minutes, and carries fuel enough for a round-trip.

Can i see a screenshot of that one, please? I like big planes!

[L0ck0n]

B-29 Superfortress

[CatastrophicFailure]

7 hours ago, Colonel Cbplayer said:

we are kicking

 

That is awesome. Adding Kerbal Joint Reinforcement might cut down on some of the wobbling there.  

[eddiew]

Built a 1-engine, 5-seater spaceplane to bring the crew of the jovian expedition back to ground.

Did the engineering team need to do this? No. There are already multiple spaceplanes available in the hanger that would have performed this mission. However, someone rightly pointed out that we had never made a single engine spaceplane, which immediately sent every engineer in KSC into the design shed for three days, refusing to communicate with the outside except to phone out for takeaway.

To give them their due, the little Skylance is a very efficient ship. Weighing 17.9t, she sets a new record for tonnage per rapier, and is by far the lightest useful SSTO in our fleet. Packing enough fuel for 600m/s of orbital manoeuvres, there's just enough monoprop aboard to perform 1-2 dockings under the care of a frugal pilot. Everything else however is stripped to the bare bones minimum. The reaction wheel is a 0.625m model, there's just a single solar panel, zero science instruments, no room for cargo, and even the standard-fit cupholders have been removed from the passenger cabin. It's also necessary to use the pilot seat for an actual pilot, since there's no probe core or comms antenna.

Despite the minimalism, the flight profile is simple as they come; unstick speed is around 90m/s, after which the pilot retracts the landing gear, aims 5 degrees above the horizon and leaves it alone until 1450m/s before kicking to closed cycle mode in what is as close to a dead-stick ascent as you're likely to find anywhere. Re-entry can be a little squirrelly, needing some stick wiggling to avoid the nosecone or pilot's cabin taking all the heating, but the aerodynamics are clean and she won't spin or tumble. Once below 30km the twin airbrakes are quite enough to slow the dry weight of this little plane and she'll soon drop. Final approach is controlled and steady, with a returning glide speed of 65m/s resulting in an easy touchdown.

 

Also, added some features to my homebrew oversized resource converter.

5m radius and nearly 20 tons, it's a beast and you certainly wouldn't want it as part of your mining vessel - however I've now given it conversions for Xenon and Argon (Near Future) from ore, so it will be worth the effort of lugging the thing out to the jovian and saturnian systems and leaving it as an all-in-one fuel depot.

This is of course not realistic - but then, the assumption that you can get LFO from ore without losing mass is also impossible. Technically true if you're electrolysing pure ice, but otherwise there will always be waste products that aren't fuel. It makes for good gameplay however, since players are free to choose between ground and orbital refineries, and there's no penalty for either. Also I don't want to do 10 identical mining runs to generate a significant amount of fuel  

 

Also also, simulation runs on a new Alpha Rover.

This version is carrying a 1.25m convert-o-tron, with can by default make lithium fuel in Near Future, but I may investigate either giving it bigger ore tanks and making use of the orbital refinery, or just having a separate mining vessel altogether. I'm reasonably sure that without the heavy mining gear, this rover could go from Europa orbit to Io, Ganymede or Callisto, land and return for refuel with good margin for error.

Edited December 9, 2017 by eddiew

[Angelo Kerman]

I finished DSEV's Nautilus Bridge. Both stock and ASET flight controls are supported. Here is the ASET version:

And the overlay mode:

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, it even has a small greenhouse. NASA's NAUTILUS-X is coming to KSP!