Jump to content

What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

Recommended Posts

I spent yesterday trying to figure out how to build a plane. I'm reasonably proficient at rockets, and I've flown the stock planes, but even after reading/watching as many tutorials as I could find, I can't seem to build a decent plane. I can't even figure out how to get the parts to attach in expected ways. My first day at planes really didn't go well... But I'll try again I guess

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Tekaoh said:

I spent yesterday trying to figure out how to build a plane. I'm reasonably proficient at rockets, and I've flown the stock planes, but even after reading/watching as many tutorials as I could find, I can't seem to build a decent plane. I can't even figure out how to get the parts to attach in expected ways. My first day at planes really didn't go well... But I'll try again I guess

Use fast jet engines and big wings. Try to make a plane that looks like a plane in real life like my F-15 replica.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

That looks... familiar... <_<

It might do. I didn't build it but I have no clue who did. Found it while looking through my old files.

 

I've not been able to get them working since 0.23.5 and every K Drive I've found for download also doesn't work, get by some miracle this one not only functions but is the best I've ever seen.

 

Copious amounts of study will be going into it to learn the theories behind it. Then hopefully beyond that I can fit it in an even smaller housing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

I'm not.   I figure so long as I post within 24 hours, it's still the same day somewhere.   (6 hours for Kerbin, but...)   Since I usually post from work :blush: I'm nearly always talking about the previous evening...

In my case, it is usually, "What did you do in KSP this last weekend?"  

I often wait a couple of days before getting to a point that I feel like sharing would be worth it.  When I show pictures of a mission, they are usually just after I finished it, but had it ongoing for a while.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With Tylo done, the next step is Vall, and the first step for that is to get my customary scanning/relay satellite into orbit. Fortunately my tug no longer has to spend all its time carting ore from Pol to Tylo so it was a fairly simple matter to transport one of my remaining satellites there.

6uCT5kq.jpg

The actual landing will have to wait a little bit longer since I can't take my mini-station out of Tylo's orbit until all of the science from the landing has been loaded into its MPL, but I'm a bit closer to having flags on every one of Jool's moons.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Frozen_Heart said:

Copious amounts of study will be going into it to learn the theories behind it. Then hopefully beyond that I can fit it in an even smaller housing.

Do you want to open a gateway into the fiery bowels of Hell? Because that’s how you open a gateway into the fiery bowels of Hell. I’ve seen Event Horizon.  ;.;

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, XB-70A said:

Damn! If only I could put MORE likes! I mean, Quiet Riot and Bananarama, totally the opposite of each others, but perfect with such a crazy theme!

Thanks! It’s not like CCR fits with the other two either, but it worked in the video. I spent quite a while poring over my music library looking for fitting tunes. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Tekaoh said:

I spent yesterday trying to figure out how to build a plane. I'm reasonably proficient at rockets, and I've flown the stock planes, but even after reading/watching as many tutorials as I could find, I can't seem to build a decent plane. I can't even figure out how to get the parts to attach in expected ways. My first day at planes really didn't go well... But I'll try again I guess

Planes take a while. They make you angry. Then they make you obsessed. Then, before you know it, you've got no fewer than two dozen mods installed all intended to make yourself capable of plane-ing...

You've probably done it already, but start with @keptin's Basic Aircraft Design - Explained Simply, With Pictures. It's where a lot of us spaceplane jockeys started, myself included. One of the few "old posts" that's still quite applicable even in today's KSP world.

Edited by capi3101
clarifying number of mods a bit.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Do you want to open a gateway into the fiery bowels of Hell? Because that’s how you open a gateway into the fiery bowels of Hell. I’ve seen Event Horizon.  ;.;

I made the Kraken my poodle last time, and i'll do it again. True many kerbals were lost developing the technology, but that sums up KSP!

 

On my old account had an entire thread about studying them: 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Today was more R&D. 

I want to upgrade Jool Station to a genuine interplanetary ship. Once I'm finished with the Jolian system, I want to send it to explore Dres and Eeloo. 

This means it needs its own ISRU and tanker, instead of having to depend on fuel deliveries from Laythe.

My first idea was to deliver it by skycrane, where the skycrane also serves as the tanker. This idea is possible -- I tried it on the Mun -- but it takes such hotshot flying that it would get tedious after the first couple of rounds. There is also the risk of getting dry tanks and just not being able to hop onto it to refuel, which would spell disaster. So I'm going with a traditional rover pair.

I'm also upgrading Jool Station's lander. It will be fully autonomous and have remote-control capability with a pilot on board, and in addition to the usual science pack, it will have a surface scanner. I'm not going to carry an orbital scanner; the lander ought to be able to biome-hop sufficiently to find a suitable drilling spot.

I'm still trying to decide if I want to throw a recoverable survey rover into the mix, and if so, how I would do that with a minimum of added mass. At the very least, in the next transfer window, the Pelican 2 + tanker will be accompanied by a space train carrying the ISRU, its tanker, and the upgraded lander. 

I have also decided what to do with the original Pelican. I considered flying it into Jool, terminating it with extreme prejudice, or performing other fireworks with it, but ultimately I decided that this would not be a worthy fate for such a historic vessel.

I am going to bring Pelican home.

Leia Kerman -- founder of the Kosmodrome -- will fly it back, and it will stay parked in front of the Space Centre administration building as a monument to the Kosmodrome for future generations, or at least until I get fed up with the resulting framerate hit.

At the same time, Valentina will fly the old Jool Station lander back. I have a contract that requires me to recover a lander that's been on one of the Jolian moons, I forget which, but that one certainly has. So Valentina will be coming home too.

After that, Moho awaits. I have surveyed it, and intend to construct a temporary refueling station there in order to properly explore it.

And by then, Making History ought to be out, and with that, a new career.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Tekaoh said:

I spent yesterday trying to figure out how to build a plane. I'm reasonably proficient at rockets, and I've flown the stock planes, but even after reading/watching as many tutorials as I could find, I can't seem to build a decent plane. I can't even figure out how to get the parts to attach in expected ways. My first day at planes really didn't go well... But I'll try again I guess

It takes a while to get the hang of it, even taxiing down the runway in a straight line isn't obvious, let alone taking off, controlled flight, and landing. Start small and work your way up from that. You'll make orbit... eventually.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Despite our pilots having made innumerable appearances on breakfast TV, the edict came down from above that the next kerbal into space had to be trained to actually learn something from the experience.

This did not please anyone (except the trained kerbal in question) but after much grumbling, a vessel was put together that could be handled remotely from the ground - and assigned a flight profile that would keep it in communications with home at all times. All our boffin has to do is hang onto her seat and try not to barf.

Sn6aFaS.jpg

HLjRb6S.jpg

RmSI6jU.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

It takes a while to get the hang of it, even taxiing down the runway in a straight line isn't obvious, let alone taking off, controlled flight, and landing. Start small and work your way up from that. You'll make orbit... eventually.

That's probably good advice. I focused on rockets until I got a mission that came back with like 2000 science, so I unlocked a bunch of aviation nodes all at once. I probably should have just unlocked the first one and worked with that a while before overloading myself with too many parts lol. Back to the drawing board

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

It takes a while to get the hang of it, even taxiing down the runway in a straight line isn't obvious, let alone taking off, controlled flight, and landing. Start small and work your way up from that. You'll make orbit... eventually.

 

48 minutes ago, Tekaoh said:

That's probably good advice. I focused on rockets until I got a mission that came back with like 2000 science, so I unlocked a bunch of aviation nodes all at once. I probably should have just unlocked the first one and worked with that a while before overloading myself with too many parts lol. Back to the drawing board

I might mention that 95% of the problems I have these days with any new plane design have to do with the landing gear than anything else (especially ones that steer). Getting the damn things on straight is always a headache (even with a mod for that), and then I tend to have no luck with landing gear that steer at all. A setup I used on the Auk XIII that worked well was Spring 1, Damper 1, Friction 0.5, steering on, no brakes on the forward gear; Spring 1.25, Damper 1, Friction 1, no steering, 200 brakes on the main gear - the XIII is a single passenger SSTO with docking capabilities. Another one I've seen is 200 brakes for all wheels, 5.0 friction for non-steering wheels and 2.5 friction for steering wheels, otherwise the same - I've got that on on the Auk VIII, a heavy SSTO tanker (an obligatory 'orange tank to orbit' craft). I guess the takeaway here is that you always want to override the friction controls on landing gear and set them a higher for heavier craft.

Don't use the little bush plane gear for anything you want to get airborne. Just don't. Best use I've had for them was to get markers out to use on either end of the Runway to setup a rudimentary (but quite functional) visual ILS.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, this is actually from a couple days ago, but I've been working on a script that performs a RTLS recovery of the first stage of my "Failcan 1" rocket.

2018-02-11%2014-34-33.png

2018-02-11%2018-36-13.png

2018-02-11%2018-36-49.png

2018-02-11%2019-54-40.png

Currently it can return the first stage to the KSC peninsula from an equatorial launch with a certain payload mass, but I want to make it able to land on the launchpad (or more likely right next to it, since the launch structure is still on the launchpad) from an arbitrary inclination and with any launchable payload mass.

Let me tell you something: Spherical trigonometry + inverse orbital mechanics* = nuts. I haven't even gotten to the control loops yet.

It probably doesn't help that I'm avoiding making use of the Atmospheric Trajectories add-on in order to make it possible to run on more than one core at once.

*I'm having to run a few equations backwards from normal (such as finding true anomaly as a function of radius), in manners such that there is no way to solve them for the variable I'm trying to find. Thus, I have to use warmer-cooler algorithms to find an approximate solution.

 

 

 

Edited by EpicSpaceTroll139
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

will stay parked in front of the Space Centre administration building as a monument to the Kosmodrome for future generations,

Bravo!  (You are more Kerbane than some of us!!)

No doubt, Pelican deserves the Admin center spot.  There're a few good, big fields West of KSC, too.  For lesser craft, parking them out there means that at least you fly over them on approach (where the momentary rate hit will just be interpreted as turbulence/wind shear.)

(As usual, though, I like your idea better.  :) )

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Next few days are likely to be a tad repetitive for me. Each of these Voyager probes takes about 1.3 years to build on either of my KSC production lines, and for maximum redundancy, I'm building 4 of them... which means tying up all of my KSC production for almost 3 years. I have a couple other active facilities, Vandenburg and Palmachim, but due to not having safe eastwards azimuths, they're relegated to routine commsat (Vandenburg) and sounding rocket (Palmachim) launches to farm cash.

I suppose maybe I could light up another site like Baikonur or Korou, but I just dropped 3 million funds on getting the R&D building upgraded, so I'm not exactly flush with cash right now to give it any production rate or launchpad upgrades... and that's after a bit of save-file editing to undo the mistake of starting the R&D upgrade from Palmachim with its slow rate instead of KSC. Plus, the next item on my agenda is dropping a half-million to unlock the F1 engines.

 

The only semi-exciting moment from the past two days of launching commsats, sounding rockets, and a couple more Gimel mass demonstrator missions was another E1 engine failure.

O1krcqa.png

As you can probably tell, having an engine fail while launch clamps are still attached is not exactly terrifying. Literally just press X, recover vessel, and roll out the backup rocket. I lose about 180 days worth of Vandenburg production and that's it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I took advantage of the roomy 'Isis' crew transfer vehicle (seats a pilot plus four) to fulfill a nice contract:  give four tourists an 18-day stay aboard the 'Nedjkhert' space station.    It's due to be deorbited soon, to be replaced by the 'Hotep' (Mir-analogue) orbital complex, so may as well get some funds out of it... besides, there were still some excess supplies aboard, so why not?

Also landed on the Greater Flats on Minmus-- the last biome that hasn't been thoroughly scienced-- picking up a rescuee along the way.   The bank account has been replenished back up above four million again, which eases things up for some future projects...

Edited by MaxwellsDemon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, here's my first complete report of my carrer save. I was too lazy, an that's why i took too long to upload this.

qvsS2gD.pngThis is an litte probe that i made to collect science from the Runway and the KSC biome.

uBFseHZ.pngThis is the Aquatic Data Collector, made to collect science from the ocean next to the KSC.

ELMRpPD.pngAnd here's the probe, landed in the ocean, with his mission accomplished

84yubVi.pngAnd in last, but not less important, the Suborbital Data Collector, my first suborbital rocket.

ijMlOCg.pngThe launch...

 

9lez0Aq.png...The first stage separated...

TcSATIi.png...It's getting hot here!

kLRSzoa.pngAnd the craft reachs...

Mq9lsTc.png...The space, in all your glory and majesty!

1HTcbCJ.pngThe reentry is dangerous...

7RWfLrG.png...But nothing happened with the probe.

NOGDJb8.pngAnd the probe land sucessfully.

Sadly, this can be my last report, because the HD of my computer stopped working, and if the repair is not successful, i will lost everything. ;.;

 

Edited by Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

You keep up with all these pretty pictures and I’ma start poking you to create an entire (in-game) shuttle refurbishment system. :D

I've been trying to figure out how I could pick the things up, re-attach them to a tank and boosters, and re-launch them...

Loading new payloads might be interesting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...