What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Guest]

Awesome work @Ace in Space!

That tense bit when you're putting into place the critical operations that will let you get everything in order later are the best, unless it's the feeling of relief when you have the critical operations in place, or the feeling of accomplishment when you've got everything set up. It sounds like you've got things well in hand -- once you have fuel production going, everything else is recoverable as long as it's in orbit around Duna and not in danger of getting ejected by/colliding into Ike.

Question -- why so high orbits? I'd have thought it's easier to drop into orbit inside Ike, what with Oberth effect and the possibility of aerocapture and all.

[Ace in Space]

Thanks!

1 minute ago, Brikoleur said:

everything else is recoverable as long as it's in orbit around Duna and not in danger of getting ejected by/colliding into Ike.

Question -- why so high orbits?

I considered trying to capture directly into Ike orbit, but then I looked at the massive train of incoming crafts and decided I'd have enough on my plate without trying to figure out where the moon would be in relation to its planet for each of them on top of it all. So I decided to park everything around Duna and then go from there.

For the innermost orbits, you answered your own question. I wasn't sure exactly how close was dangerously close, so I decided to play it safe (better the orbit is obnoxiously high than low enough to accidentally eject). Of course, I was trying to eyeball it getting all those crafts into roughly the same place, without being able to see any of the other crafts when setting up an intercept, so there was a bit more variation in the initial periapsis than I intended. Most of them I probably could have pulled the orbit in tighter than the initial flyby height, but I decided not to bother spending more of my precious fuel than necessary until I had nailed down the next steps, because sitting in really high orbit doesn't do any immediate harm.

Also, a  couple of them I simply overshot on the initial intercept - particularly the first couple crafts in the wagon train. That relay on the ridiculously large orbit was the first one in, and got hit the worst. Then there were a couple that couldn't really pull the orbit in much tighter because of fuel constraints, so I said "eh, it's an orbit, right? That's good enough until I can clean this up."

 

TL;DR: It looks like a poorly-planned mess because it is a poorly-planned mess.

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

I put a rover down on Minmus.

With my interplanetary missions slowing down I was considering de-crewing my Minmus base instead of doing my next crew rotation, and I needed a way to continue to get science data from the surface.

I landed it near my base so that I could easily refuel the lifter to send it back to orbit, but I didn't want to leave the rover there as I knew from experience that having two craft close together like that would make it very difficult to select targets while landing. Instead, I took it north to the location of my original Minmus mine, where it will stay for the time being, using its headlight to illuminate the flag marking the mine's former location (the mine itself was destroyed via ballistic launch after the new mine was landed.)

[joacobanfield]

I left BetterTimeWarp on by accident before going for lunch. Now it's year 2400 and all of my solar relays have been kicked out of the system.

[Hotel26]

I didn't want to go to bed last night without one more fling, so I took a Foxbat for a leisurely cruise, hoping to find the Midland Sea biome [I did].

I flicked the SAS switch off and got her trimmed to fly, unattended, at a lazy 186 m/s on just two clicks of throttle.  Her turn radius seems tightest at about 135 m/s but I haven't charted it yet.

I have a confession to make:

• I made a plane.
• Her name was Foxbat.
• I fell in love with her shape.

That last is definitely a sin!!

So, in repentance, I focused back on my objective: to make a reconnaissance plane for Duna with good endurance.  And I got back to my roots, which are Ugliness and Iniquity... 

So here is Foxbat R2.   And I think I am going to love both these planes, equally; which is why the R2 is not a supercessor to Foxbat but a companion.

The R2 solves the problem of slowing down to land in a way any Kerbal pilot is going to relish -- come roaring toward the target and throw a chute.  It takes about 20 seconds to slow to a crawl.  Cut the chute.  Descend on the Verts like an elevator.

"Bing!  Ground floor!"

Edited February 26, 2018 by Hotel26

[papuchalk]

LANDED AND ORBITED EVE

So finally i have a ship capable of landing and going back to orbit of Eve. Some notes for others who plan this mission these days.

1) use two heat shileds, the upper serving as umbrella is very important. it dramatically increases drag

2) dont use landing struts as they explode even at small landing speeds. Instead I used structure from I beams. They are perfect, I landed at speed 6m per second and it survived easily

3) Land in highlands, as starting from 2000 meters above sea, rather than from sealevel, gives you important advantage when going up..

4) i have even 40 seconds of fuel left, when i made it to orbit.

 

See screens, they are from my notebook, as i am on journey and do only testing on this slow PC. So very bad quality

https://imgur.com/a/bPYG9

 

Edited February 26, 2018 by papuchalk

[Guest]

That's a cool plane @Hotel26. I'm kind of regretting not putting chutes on the Zephyr as stopping is indeed a bit tricky.

Have you considered using a couple of Sparks or Twitches instead of Thuds for the vertical jets? I think those would fit inside Mk 1utility bays. It would improve the aerodynamics which ought to improve endurance. That plane doesn't looks so heavy it needs all the thrust you get from Thuds. With the fuselage and nacelles it ought to be easy to find spots for multiple smaller rockets. 

[Hotel26]

16 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

couple of Sparks or Twitches instead of Thuds for the vertical jets

Yep.  I started with 2 Twitches on Foxbat and then went to 3 Sparks.  With R2, I went from the 5 T400 tanks on the Foxbat to 5 T800, so I had to go 5 Sparks on the underbelly.  (It started to look like a sow at feeding time when it was on the ground, wheels up and wing down...)  Then I came across the Thuds in the engine catalog and my eyes bulged out on stalks somewhere across the row at about the Thrust (Vac) column. 

I had briefly thought about engines in bays...  hmm, it's still possible because I don't have the NP-complete CoM balancing problem any more, due to the infinitely-adjustible wing tanks and wing tips.

One thing I am not too worried about on Duna is drag!

Last note is that the Thuds are close to double the power required.  However, that's a good safety margin for VTOL, particularly when you can also pitch up and use them as very beefy horizontal arresters if say, a big hill suddenly looms out of the Martian dust storm!  If I could get one in a Mk1 bay, I'd have one of them right at the CoM, but it's a big sucker, all 900 Kg of it.

Thanks for the suggestions, though, which I'll think on, coz I haven't finished learning by a long shot!!

Edited February 26, 2018 by Hotel26

[papuchalk]

13 hours ago, Starman4308 said:

I did less than usual in KSP this weekend, on account of going to a concer

 

 

which visual mods are you using?

very cool pics you have

[Starman4308]

13 minutes ago, papuchalk said:

which visual mods are you using?

very cool pics you have

It's bone stock RSS with 8k textures. My RP-0 install is unstable enough even without visual mods... and I'm not sure what's recommended for RSS in 1.2.2.

[Hotel26]

Pretty excited.  The 1.2/1.3 upgrades knocked me for six.  Everything now squared away with refurbished equipment, especially mining...

And so I have finally rebooted my mainline Orbit world.  Yay.

Formation flying??

No.  This is Operation Beach Head on the way to the Mun.  Two Aquila(*) joined by a double orange tank/monoprop "barrel" taken from a Minotaur Supertanker...

If this works on the Mun, then Duna and Laythe are next in line.  Yay.

* warm thanks to @swjr-swis for rebuilding Aquila!!  Yay.

Edited February 26, 2018 by Hotel26

[Guest]

I made an emergency escape system. 

I'm going to use it on the Wangari Maathai and other heavy lifters from now on, as things can go dramatically wrong on launches. Won't have to quickload if things go south on the return leg.

I'm also planning to start a semi-hardcore* career somewhere down the line, and this is a must for that. 

*Two games in parallel: R&D department in a sandbox with full quickload/revert, which delivers finished craft to the Space Program, with no quickload/revert. I.e. I can still go wild trying out stupid things like I want, but the actual missions will be actually tense.

[qzgy]

@Brikoleur - looks like a pretty neat escape system. Wonder if it would also make a good emergency escape from orbit, given the heat shields, parachutes, and retro motors.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Wonder if it would also make a good emergency escape from orbit, given the heat shields, parachutes, and retro motors.

Not without modifications. The engines aren't controllable so you'd end up anywhere except doing  a safe re-entry.

[papuchalk]

yea i am planning hard mode too. Very good idea for launches with no possibility of quickload or revert. True Must have

What kind of engines are used in the service bays? Are they in later tech tree discoveries?

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, papuchalk said:

yea i am planning hard mode too. Very good idea for launches with no possibility of quickload or revert. True Must have

What kind of engines are used in the service bays? Are they in later tech tree discoveries?

I'm betting sepratrons, two in each bay, since he said they weren't controllable and his staging bar shows 4 engines burning solid fuel.

[qzgy]

29 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Not without modifications. The engines aren't controllable so you'd end up anywhere except doing  a safe re-entry.

Heh? You really can't guestimate? And even with insane heat tolerances from the service bays? That should really be able to get you safely home. I'm gonna try a thing similar and see how reentry proof it is....

 

1 minute ago, Geonovast said:

I'm betting sepratrons, two in each bay, since he said they weren't controllable and his staging bar shows 4 engines burning solid fuel.

Looked also like sepatrons when burning as well

Edited February 26, 2018 by qzgy

[papuchalk]

BTW can you advice a challenging game mode ? i did career mode twice, fully opened tech tree twicce. Starting for the third time is not really funny. Especialy the early stages are a bit boring.

What you guys did instead ? 

[qzgy]

1 minute ago, papuchalk said:

BTW can you advice a challenging game mode ? i did career mode twice, fully opened tech tree twicce. Starting for the third time is not really funny. Especialy the early stages are a bit boring.

What you guys did instead ? 

Not do it. Never got the hang for career mode. If you'd like, try a caveman style playthrough. No facility upgrades.

Edited February 26, 2018 by qzgy

[Geonovast]

3 minutes ago, papuchalk said:

BTW can you advice a challenging game mode ? i did career mode twice, fully opened tech tree twicce. Starting for the third time is not really funny. Especialy the early stages are a bit boring.

What you guys did instead ? 

I have precisely 0 interest in career mode.  Don't mind Science, though.  Honestly, contracts are super annoying at the beginning.

There's always this:

 

 

Edited February 26, 2018 by Geonovast

[McFarnsworth]

I reverted my Eeloo launch, because I had an idea. Those always end well.

Also, I sent Snuffles (that's his name apparently) back to the surface to keep the framerate at a sane level refuel.

 

Afterwards Valentina docked with the station. My first docking in almost a year. Still got it  ... still hate it.

 

Since I'm skipping a Jool launch window I'm taking some of the crew home with the SSTO so the poor stand-up guys lucky souls can go to Eeloo instead. And so I can make some minor modifications to the SSTO (which is also supposed to go to Jool)

 

841 parts, I can manually count the fps, it's at least 4!

[papuchalk]

Why not career mode? it still gives the most logic progress in the game. Take contracts, gain science by doing them, gain money by doing them, get more money and more advanced equipment to be able to go for harder and harder mission.. 

Right now i have Minimus Ultimate 6 mission, with one ship land on Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Bop, Gilli. Pretty nice mission

I kind of need that challenge from the game. i cannot make it up by myself 

Edited February 26, 2018 by papuchalk

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, papuchalk said:

BTW can you advice a challenging game mode ? i did career mode twice, fully opened tech tree twicce. Starting for the third time is not really funny. Especialy the early stages are a bit boring.

What you guys did instead ? 

Restrict yourself and set yourself a goal or goals. 

My current career restrictions/goals are --

• No science production in mobile processing labs (transmit or return science only), and science rewards at 60%. Makes me work to open up those sweet, sweet nodes.
• Everything I can make so must be reusable, recoverable, or (potentially) permanent.
• If it has an atmosphere, my craft will be a plane. 

There are lots of official career challenges here too (Caveman, no contracts, etc.) if that's your can of beef.

31 minutes ago, papuchalk said:

What kind of engines are used in the service bays? Are they in later tech tree discoveries?

Sepratrons. It would be possible to do this with small LF engines too I'm sure.

29 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Heh? You really can't guestimate? And even with insane heat tolerances from the service bays? That should really be able to get you safely home. I'm gonna try a thing similar and see how reentry proof it is....

It's a rescue system, not yet another madcap way to take insane risks and survive against the odds. 

(If you want to try it anyway, the craft file is here: https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/SafeT-Cockpit )

[qzgy]

1 minute ago, Brikoleur said:

It's a rescue system, not yet another madcap way to take insane risks and survive against the odds. 

There's a difference? O_O

And technically, if it can survive reentry, it could be used as a rescue system.....

[Guest]

I just had one of those awesome KSP moments.

I'd gone up from Kosmodrome Aelita to fetch another module. I was a bit sloppy with the slide rule and ended up with very tight fuel for the return trip. I'm also new to Duna re-entry and didn't judge my return entirely perfectly and was coming short, which meant I burned as much of the little fuel I had as I could to get in closer. That meant that I had no margin for precision manoeuvring at the end, and was pretty pleased when I managed a nice soft landing about 1.5 klicks from the base... with 11 m/s left on the fuel gauge. 

"Not too bad," I thought. "I'll just have to drive the fuel tanker here to refuel her."

Then I thought, "Wait a minute. What's that on my cargo bed?"

It's a tractor.

What do tractors do?

They pull.

This also solved my one significant niggle with the Cyclone: it lacks steerable landing gear. This was hard to avoid since I wanted to make it pretty robust for the bumpy Dunatian terrain. Consequently, I burned precious fuel on take-off to get myself pointed the right way. Now I can just tow it into position with the Massive-Kerguson. And I didn't even plan it that way!