What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

Mixed success last night. Made my first attempt to land something on Eve, in this case a Storax Sedan mission to land a pair of Hellhounds on its surface. Learned that 50 m/s is fast enough on Eve to rip off your chutes. I wound up with two bifurcated 'hounds. Next time I'll be firing the rockets around 500 even if they don't look like they're going to do much good at all.

Got the Constipation XI crew on a course for home. I handled it the way I would've handled a Protractor flight - from the polar orbit, I waited for Kerbin to get into phase, then burned just enough to get out of Duna's SOI (got an Ike encounter on the way out). Once out of Duna's SOI, I set up a maneuver node that got me the encounter. I'm planning to do further corrections halfway to Kerbin just to see if I can get a lower periapsis; at the moment it's about 53 million klicks out and I couldn't get that down further without losing the encounter. Mission's still got about 1400 m/d of delta-V so I should be in good shape for a return in any case.

Constipation XIII, a mission to put a science probe in heliosynchronous orbit, failed. Insufficient delta-V available for the final part of the bi-elliptic; came up 400,000 kilometers short of the target apoapsis. Might try a Hohmann if I do it again.

Launched another Sandstone probe heading towards Ike.

[Mmmmyum]

Just got four communication satellites into a 2000m circular orbit to support my geostationary launches, they don't provide continuous coverage of Kerbin, but they do cover half the planet when one has a link with KSC. Pictures:

And after letting the capsule return and launching and circularizing two probes:

Edited December 7, 2013 by Mmmmyum

[Liowen]

Mixed success last night. Made my first attempt to land something on Eve, in this case a Storax Sedan mission to land a pair of Hellhounds on its surface. Learned that 50 m/s is fast enough on Eve to rip off your chutes. I wound up with two bifurcated 'hounds. Next time I'll be firing the rockets around 500 even if they don't look like they're going to do much good at all.

Sounds like you are not deploying your chutes early enough, or maybe you need a few more chutes. I know when I landed my rover on Eve I had a bit too many chutes, well honestly you can never have too many, and ended up slowing down to nearly 4m/s when they fully deployed. I used drogue chute just after reentry effects ended to slow down to 100m/s, and then use the square radials to slow down even more before the drogues opened fully. Since I am not a fan of powered landing, except on moons, I do it this way so I have as much fuel as possible to escape....though I have yet to get to Eve and back as I have not tried yet.

Edited December 7, 2013 by Liowen

[Spatzimaus]

Sounds like you are not deploying your chutes early enough, or maybe you need a few more chutes

Basically this. This is what drogue chutes are made for; if you're only relying on regular chutes then they'll rip off from the shock of deceleration. A design with both types of parachute will go through four decelerations (drogue initial deploy, regular initial deploy, drogue full deploy, regular full deploy), none of which will be severe enough to overtax the connections. On Kerbin you can often get away with not using drogues as long as you're coming down from orbit; a drop straight in from the outer edge of the SOI might not work so well. But Eve's got a thick enough atmosphere that this sort of thing is necessary.

What we really need is a small radial drogue, analogous to the radial standard parachute. I'm sure there are mods for this, though.

[capi3101]

Sounds like you are not deploying your chutes early enough, or maybe you need a few more chutes. I know when I landed my rover on Eve I had a bit too many chutes, well honestly you can never have too many, and ended up slowing down to nearly 4m/s when they fully deployed. I used drogue chute just after reentry effects ended to slow down to 100m/s, and then use the square radials to slow down even more before the drogues opened fully. Since I am not a fan of powered landing, except on moons, I do it this way so I have as much fuel as possible to escape....though I have yet to get to Eve and back as I have not tried yet.

Basically this. This is what drogue chutes are made for; if you're only relying on regular chutes then they'll rip off from the shock of deceleration. A design with both types of parachute will go through four decelerations (drogue initial deploy, regular initial deploy, drogue full deploy, regular full deploy), none of which will be severe enough to overtax the connections. On Kerbin you can often get away with not using drogues as long as you're coming down from orbit; a drop straight in from the outer edge of the SOI might not work so well. But Eve's got a thick enough atmosphere that this sort of thing is necessary.

What we really need is a small radial drogue, analogous to the radial standard parachute. I'm sure there are mods for this, though.

For the record, the mission utilized 16 radial chutes which I deployed at 15k, and the whole craft was around 15 tonnes. So I'll try the drogues and let y'all know how that works out.

[Spatzimaus]

For the record, the mission utilized 16 radial chutes which I deployed at 15k, and the whole craft was around 15 tonnes.

Only 15 tons? Then you definitely shouldn't be having problems, even though those radial chutes don't have much braking power.

Here's a picture of my old 132-ton Eve lander:

It's a 55-ton Grand Tour vessel temporarily attached to a lower stage used to lift from Eve. You can clearly see the regular chutes (in blue) and the drogues (in orange). It had absolutely no problems with tearing, and would have landed at about 8m/s if I hadn't done a little deceleration in the last few seconds. Here's the same vessel with the drogues deploying:

On a more important note: you say "which I deployed at 15k". You shouldn't need to control it like that; activate chutes outside the atmosphere, and they'll automatically deploy at the right time themselves. Given the two-stage nature of all chutes, this might be part of your problem; 15km is probably too low for the initial deployment, which means you're not getting the full braking effect. (It's definitely too low if you're using drogues.)

[Liowen]

For the record, the mission utilized 16 radial chutes which I deployed at 15k, and the whole craft was around 15 tonnes. So I'll try the drogues and let y'all know how that works out.

My Duna Lander craft, helped indesign by 700NitroXpress from the forums, has 12 radials and 4 drogue chutes, and it weighs nearly 28t. So for yours you have enough radials I would add on those drogue chutes, 4 will be more than enough, and you should be good on radials to get you safely down at a reasonable speed. You might not even need the engines either.

Here is my lander after all chutes have been used...thought I had one of the speeds though. I will look and edit as needed.

[Nabiscovinco]

Today, I actually made it to Duna! Which is pretty sad, considering I've played this game for a very, VERY, long time, and this is my first interplanetary voyage.

I also learned I need to practice my intercepts, because sidescrapping Duna, then having to go from ~2600 m/s down to nothing, then back up to 83 m/s is rather.. stupid. But considering I have a probe around Duna, I'm happy.

Now I have to do the whole "get back to Kerbin" thing...

[EtherDragon]

Today, I recorded footage for Episode 15 of my KSP career mode let's play. Episode 15 sends the original three back to Eve and Gilly to collect more science with as many new instruments as we can manage to bring.

[Spatzimaus]

I launched the very last of my small (1.5 tons) ion-propelled mapping probes, in this case to Bop. I've now got at least one probe around every planet and moon, plus one in low orbit around the Sun. Each of these probes carries a full set of ScanSat sensors, a Kethane scanner, and an atmospheric sensor so I can dive one into places like Jool or Eve for data. I cut it REALLY close; out of the 2800 xenon the probe launched with, it had 37 units left upon reaching a stable 50km polar orbit over Bop. Normally I carry the probes to each planet's SOI using an LV-N transfer stage, and only use the ions for minor adjustments. But this time, I wanted to try flying straight there from an 80km Kerbin orbit, and almost didn't make it.

The fun part was that I launched that 1.5-ton probe with my new 11,846-ton "Brick-41" SSTO booster, as shown here:

That tiny dot in the middle is the probe. I didn't want to risk anything manned on a new booster design, and that probe was just what I had handy to test it with. The goal is to use this booster to get a copy of my 870-ton space station most of the way out of Kerbin's SOI, so that I can send it to Laythe with its onboard engines. My previous 10,000-ton booster was just a little too weak for that; if this one turns out to be insufficient as well, I can easily up it to just under 16,500 tons by adding sixteen more stacks to the sides, but that just might be overkill. Plus, this current 41-stack booster has 741 parts, so it's already taking 4 seconds of real time for each second of in-game time.

[sumghai]

Besides authoring new parts for stupid_chris's RealChute plugin and pushing a patch for SDHI, I actually found some time to play the game - I used said interval to redesign my workhorse lifter such that the side boosters were identical to the first stage core core boosters, much like the Delta IV Heavy, and inaverdently improved on its performance by a wide margin (raising the service ceiling from 350 km polar to >800 km polar).

[Xacktar]

I tried to make snow for Jeb.

Using this contraption, the wingflinger.

XD

[Aragosnat]

Yestarday. I had built a glider that if I felt like it. It could have glided around Kerbin forever as I was gaining altitude at 16 m up with a speed of 43 m/s from sea level up to 96 m with a speed of 73 m/s. Then did a nose dive into the ocean as I did not want to fly forever with the probe. Here is teh picture of what it looks like:

Today I got my returnable rover Mk2 onto Mün and had a nice surprise:

A Kerbin eclipse. Had to waity for a bit till the sun came out. Now I can biosphere hunt again.

[capi3101]

Today I finally finished up my entry for the Constellation Program challenge. Only took four attempts to put a probe in to a heliosynchronous orbit - and required a few minor tweaks to the probe design. Still took RCS to get it there, but I finally got it done.

Also redesigned the Storax Sedan design to include four drogues. The re-launch did not go so well (had to cannibalize fuel from the payload) but it is in orbit at this point and awaiting the next Eve transfer window.

Put a Sandstone probe in orbit of Ike.

Next up: the Vall Exploration Challenge...

[annallia]

Sent an expidition to Laythe. Was intending to leave them orbiting Jool for a while when I noticed this come up.

Forced me to change my orbit early.

[Zippy]

Hey all, new to the forums but been playing a while and never seemed to get the hang of it, but this weekend, after a few Mun attempts, I partially got the hang of it!!

Here we go AGAIN Mun, coming ready or not!!

Getting closer!!

Slight surface skim, but Bill, and even some of his ship touched down!

Heres a bit!

Here's some more!

After a quick escape attempt, there was no way near enough Delta V in those 3 little engines on the capsule, decided to re-land and save Bill

I say save...he's now stranded, but thats my 1st official, if not fully perfect landing done

All I need to do is work on the engines on the way down, kept pushing myself back up and yo-yo'ing, which then meant drifting side to side...

[Woopert]

Sent a satellite to Minmus to scan for Kethane and Ore. Mods used: Kethane, Extraplanetary Launchpads, Procedural Fairings, KSPX, RLA Stockalike.

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[Liowen]

Messed around with a few rovers from the BSC rover thing, crashing everyone of them since sky-cranes are not my thing. I wish I would have done more now but alas I did not, as I thought The Walking Dead was on tonight.

Maybe murdering some Kerbals in the name of "science" will cheer me up LOL.

[MGCJerry]

Totally screwed up in KSP today... Crashed into Mun 3 times (one I ran out of fuel, 2nd one i just totally screwed up and on the 3rd attempt, I didn't lock the stage, and ditched my lander... Oops) Reverted twice because I didn't have a quicksave...

We need a Kerbal headdesk, or facepalm smiley.

[FlamedSteak]

Had about 10 attempts at getting a lander on Laythe near my dead lander. Problem is my dead lander is on a thin ridge about 20 meters wide and my new lander is over weight for regular legs, so the girder legs I patched together are great at gripping and then tipping the space craft. So I landed it about 4 klicks away on a flatter surface and am going to have to walk my 3 kerbs over one by one....which is going to be really boring.

[Liowen]

Had about 10 attempts at getting a lander on Laythe near my dead lander. Problem is my dead lander is on a thin ridge about 20 meters wide and my new lander is over weight for regular legs, so the girder legs I patched together are great at gripping and then tipping the space craft. So I landed it about 4 klicks away on a flatter surface and am going to have to walk my 3 kerbs over one by one....which is going to be really boring.

This is the reason I put all manned missions to other planets on hold for now, I am sending rovers out before I send any Kerbals. Those long walks are just murder on the brain after awhile. Even at 8m/s a second it will take a few minutes, but that is faster than walking I guess.

[FlamedSteak]

I just wish you could somehow walk them over in a group. Assign a leader and the rest follow, or something like that.

EVA's are so boring right now, they could really be spiced up with some sound effects (wind, crunching of heels/wheels on the dirt, crackle of earth moving under the heat of the sun, waves crashing against the shore (Laythe and Kerbin)) it would make them so much more interesting.

[Alephzorg]

I just wish you could somehow walk them over in a group. Assign a leader and the rest follow, or something like that.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/36425-20-2-EVA-Followers-0-12-%28Open-to-a-Good-Home%29?highlight=follow+leader

It might just be what you're looking for.

[FlamedSteak]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/36425-20-2-EVA-Followers-0-12-%28Open-to-a-Good-Home%29?highlight=follow+leader

It might just be what you're looking for.

You've saved Christmas!

[SixthFall]

i spent most of the afternoon building a satellite relay network for an upcoming un manned duna mission