What did you do in KSP1 today?

[KerikBalm]

Well, today In career mode, 3x Kerbin (1.5x terrain height, 1.25x atmo height, sqrt(3) x rotation period) I used my new recoverable BFR to launch a 51.5 ton payload into orbit. All stock parts, landed the first stage just 3.4 km from kerbin. This payload came out to 4,400 funds per ton to orbit.

And more pics of how the mission proceeded, including the first stage recovery with no recovery mods

Spoiler

The gravity turn is very important... to shallow and the booster won't be able to fly back, too steep and the 2nd stage won't make orbit. At about 120 m/s, SAS is switched to prograde mode:

And it just goes full throttle for a while... tests were done with fully enclosed ore tanks, but this payload seemed to long and thin to warrant a full fairing:

When ~1300 m/s remains in the first stage, it needs to be shut down (it will gain roughly 1,000 m/s when it's decoupled from the upper stage) and separated, this shutdown was a little late (1289 m/s remaining in the first stage)

The next stage needs to start burning right away, to get some separation between the two (particularly separation in time to apoapsis).

When the 1st stage time to apoapsis reaches 45 seconds, its time to switch and have it rotate (I'm wondering if I could do better by quickly switching to it and ordering it to follow retrograde right after the first staging event)

and rotating... a note of the surface velocity should be taken at this point, one wants to reverse surface velocity, and add ~20 m/s or so to compensate for burns not being instant

In addition to the 20 m/s, I also angle up 5 degrees to help get back...

Return burn completed:

It was 2 degrees off center, but it turns out that I got the distance right on the money.

burn to orbit, or at least an AP far enough ahead to have time to land the first stage and come back:

The first stage is still 100 km high.... it wont despawn yet... I get the 2nd stage and payload into orbit straight away (but leave circularizing it for later)

Back to the 1st stage:

targeting looks good, would have been excellent if I had burned towards 270 and not 272

G forces get pretty high... the airbrakes and fins are doing their work

Nearly able to deploy drogue chutes...

Drogues away:

Drogues opened:

main chutes out:

Main chutes opened:

Down safely

Upper stage circularized, payload panels out:

payload decoupled:

reentry begins

It gets pretty hot:

But arrives above KSC intact:

Lines up for a landing

lands:

and comes to a stop on the runway after passing by the first stage (still targeted from earlier, when I did it to see its time to apoapsis and height)

Recovery amounts:

1st stage, by far the largest and most expensive part of the mission:

The orbiter:

The first stage won't recover for better than 97.9% without very lucky piloting, or a special script, the 2nd stage recovers at 100%, but its about 1/10th the cost, so.... whoopedy do (its mainly winged because getting >95% recovery with non-winged craft from orbit takes a lot of practice/quick loading).

The net cost of launch was 226,802. I looked again at my super heavy airbreathing SSTO... cost of launch with a full fuel load (assuming all expended) and an 8,500 fund fairing was 73,117 funds... I forget exactly how much payload it can take with that fuel load (many flights I used payload fuel as well), but I seem to recall it was at least 120, and maybe 150-160 tons (depending on payload shape, and piloting).

So my BFR chucks payload into orbit for around 4,000-4,500 funds per ton, up to about 55 tons

I have a smaller "Falcon-H" for up to 25 ton payloads with a similar payload fraction and cost

Then I have my heavy SSTO, getting payloads to orbit at around 525-610 funds... 

100% recovery (no maintenance fees), and powerful airbreathers really skew things towards SSTOs, even in 3x KSP.

I've tried using winged flyback boosters, so far nothing competitive under these conditions

[Raptor42]

Today I designed small SSTO refueling plane as preparation for my upcoming colonization ship to Niebos (planet from GPO) and tested it on Kerbin, problem with this plane is that when full it can't take off just on rapiers so i have to use rocket engines for the initial boost. After testing I concluded that it flies pretty well, however it has fairly wide body, so landing is not that easy. Will probably redesign it at some point, because launch window for colony ship opens in around 1,5 years.

 

Also launched my Space shuttle ripoff inspired vessel named Attila to complete 5 recovery contracts from LKO, should get me around 1mil funds. After first rendezvous with target vessel it started being little boring... but still its 1mil funds. Hope it doesn't burn up on reentry.

Checked interplanetary transfer windows and one in only 3 days, so after I finish my space shuttle mission I'll look at it.

I probably should start designing parts of colony ship and boosters that will get it to LKO, which I want to make fully reusable.  At least I have some designs from my past games.

[RealKerbal3x]

@KerikBalm BTW the BFR will make a vertical propulsive landing, rather than landing horizontally like a shuttle.

(That pic shows it landing on Mars, though it will do the same on Earth. The delta wings are for keeping the ship stable during re-entry)

I like your ship though, very cool

Edited July 21, 2018 by RealKerbal3x

[Mignear]

Finalising the '32'

And starting work on its sister, the '36'. It has potential.

[KerikBalm]

@RealKerbal3x

Yea, and the falcons do too, not chutes. But in ksp, without automated  control, it doesn't work so well. Also the relative masses and such don't favor it in ksp. The bfr should out perform a skylon (payload fraction, cost) no? Well in ksp, even at 3x, the ssto spaceplane still massively outclasses the staged design.

Likewise, enough wings for a horizontal landing are low enough mass that they are more efficient than propulsive landing

Edited July 22, 2018 by KerikBalm

[AngrybobH]

Instead of working (because I work outside mostly and its 109F/42C, so eff that) I built some planes. Some are more exciting than others.

The little one is my favorite. It can top mach 4.5 and make a 3g turn at 21km altitude. Unfortunately for the pilot, the cockpit reaches near melting temperature around that speed.

[Triop]

We got a new survey contract nearby Dessert Airfield.

Ready to roll

Edited July 21, 2018 by Triop

[Triop]

I  hate  this  game  ...

[Triop]

Need a ride ?

[Triop]

Never mind . . .

[Triop]

 

[Triop]

Never again.

[Cupcake...]

Just saving the planet.

Enjoy!

 

Cupcake...

[Norcalplanner]

Played around with reusable Duna Skycrane designs for my upcoming DOMA challenge entry.  It's still a bit too large and overpowered - it was able to drop off a 12-ton 3.75m surface module, return to Duna orbit, go land on Ike, come back to LDO orbit again, and still have 400 m/s left over.

[MisterKerman]

1 hour ago, Cupcake... said:

Enjoy!

At a loss for words. You the man apparently.

[The Flying Kerbal]

A frustrating day for me...

Now before I say why, I'm going to be upfront and honest: I don't like KSP 1.4!  I SHOULD like it, the whole idea of the Making History etc. was something I had been looking forward to for months before it was released, and there are things about 1.4 which I think are really cool.  However there are little bugs and changes which really spoil the game for me, which fortunately my 1.2 doesn't have.

Anyway, back to today; having just read that last paragraph, you won't be surprised to learn that I seldom bother loading 1.4, but today I decided I'd give it a go to see if things had improved since I last fired it up.  The first thing I noticed was when I entered LKO and started to plot my flight to the Mun.  The readings behind a celestial body now fades, something that gets even worse when you click on a marker to keep the reading on display.  This I find very hard to read, however at least I DO understand what was being attempted by this and the problem reading it could be as much because of my rather poor eyesight as the fault with the effect, so I would be willing to put up with this.

One that I most certainly do NOT understand, is why when using the tab button to cycle through all vessels, moons and planets on display in the map screen, Squad seems to have removed the ability to instantly select the vessel you're focused on by hitting the ` key (the one just above the tab on my keyboard).  I always found this incredibly useful and a great little time saver instead of having to go through everything, but unless it's been changed to another key I'm unaware of, this feature seems to have been removed.

Another "novel little feature" is landers now sitting on two legs!  I tried landing three landers in total, two on the Mun and one on Minmus, and all did this.  The first I thought was just a little quirk in the program and ignored it, but when I landed on Minmus and got the same effect I started to think this was a bit odd.  So I went back to the Mun, this time with a two stage lander.  While the extra stage didn't stop it entirely, this two legged stance was nowhere near as noticeable as happened with single stage landers.  However as soon as I lifted off, leaving the descent stage on the surface, this happened:

 As I said at the beginning of this rant, there are loads of things I like about 1.4, but it's stuff like this which I find annoying to the point I don't feel like playing it.  I know I'm in the minority here and must of you are playing and enjoying 1.4 immensely, but for the foreseeable future I think it's going to be 1.2 for me!

I suppose this post might be in the wrong thread, but this is "what I did in KSP today."

[Hotel26]

4 hours ago, The Flying Kerbal said:

A frustrating day for me...

Don't feel like you are alone.  I'll be on 1.3.1 a while longer yet.  I did buy MH (to support Squad in gratitude for thousands of mind-saving hours of stimulation) but not to run it and have not run it.

 

Edited July 22, 2018 by Hotel26

[The_rocket_fan]

On 4/30/2018 at 9:56 PM, jack gamer said:

For some reason, the rover is holding Valentina lmao

It actually looks like it’s hugging her 

[jack gamer]

Just now, The_rocket_fan said:

It actually looks like it’s hugging her 

I just noticed that lmao

[jack gamer]

On 7/17/2018 at 12:40 PM, HansonKerman said:

Launched a tiny ion probe to Mun.

[Hotel26]

8 hours ago, Cupcake... said:

There's cargo planes and then there is this...

Hubba hubba.  Get a load of the cargo bays on that transport plane... 

I've been doing housework, cleaning out my LKO lanes of cruft that has been building up during this illustrious career.  (In preparation for a new launch progression strategy based on HKO (high Kerbin orbit).  The "Munar Park" experiment, on the edge of the Mun's SOI, is not working out so well, although it is no yet dead...)

Thank the Kraken for KAC!!  I've been so busy with it all that I use it:

1. not only to schedule subsequent maneuvers; but also to:
2. put 1-minute timers on everything I touch that needs (non-urgent) cleaning up later
3. consulting future alarms to find >= 1-hour gaps to schedule new tasks for launch

The timers in 2 are intended to never leave any task without a timer tracking it.  These timers expire in 60 seconds and I close/ignore them, knowing they go onto the greyed-out list of expired timers, which can still be consulted and acted upon.

Standard procedure, I'm sure...

Edited July 22, 2018 by Hotel26

[jack gamer]

I launched a Skylab to mercury 

[Norcalplanner]

7 minutes ago, jack gamer said:

I launched a Skylab to mercury 

High tech engines, multiple gravity assists, or a truly massive rocket?  Or some combination thereof?

[jack gamer]

3 minutes ago, Norcalplanner said:

High tech engines, multiple gravity assists, or a truly massive rocket?  Or some combination thereof?

I use real solar system so it pretty much took me a bunch of retries getting to mercury

Edited July 22, 2018 by jack gamer

[Norcalplanner]

4 minutes ago, jack gamer said:

I use real solar system so it pretty much took me a bunch of retries getting to mercury

It's been awhile since I've played RSS, but I remember that Mercury was a bear.  So is this a flyby?  Or did you abuse Earth and/or Venus with gravity-assist-fu?