What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Chel]

On EE, I tested a new space shuttle. It has two cargo bays, side by side, and I've used adapters to put in a mk3 cockpit (using the move tool around the adapters to 'fill in' the area between the bays and the cockpit). It's really stable, and can achieve a 120km orbit in under 8 minutes. I used it to dock with Glorious Kerbal's Worker's Space Station (GKWSS) to transfer kosmonauts and cargo. It has VTOL capabilities, and I landed on the launchpad. 

[comchris]

Last weekend Kerbals broke my computer -

Playing career mode on 1.4.4 for the first time, I handed Jeb a jet - powered by two Panthers. Nothing exploded at first. Jeb took of for a spin around the island and I set up the authority limiters.
On our way back to KSC, Jeb reminded me about the new "actiongroup 5" those flimsy engineers had installed earlier...
One second into the wet "afterburner" mode my screen froze - and the sound stuck on a very loud loop... 

reset: no video - and  no luck - the GPU is gone for good... RIP (tested in other machines)

Is this a known feature in the new version when combining Jebediah with multiple wet Panthers on a hot summer day ?  

Album https://i.imgur.com/JKQAu03.jpg will appear when post is submitted

[Zeiss Ikon]

44 minutes ago, Steeeeve said:

Am still trying to get a probe into orbit in my RO save (Mid 1955 ATM)

On July 2nd, 1955, Intrepid IV became the first spacecraft to enter Earth Orbit

Nice.  I'm playing a career (called "Take Four" -- one guess why) in RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia, and I've actually managed to put two satellites into orbit (so far) with only ethanol fueled main engines and sounding rocket engines in the upper stage(s) -- RD-103 core and two RD-103 side boosters, RD-103 second stage, and two AJ10-27 upper stages.  If they all ignite and don't fail in some other way, they'll just about put the final empty tank and motor, some RCS thrusters and a couple tiny peroxide tanks, a probe core and battery, and a Geiger-Muller counter into orbit.  The second one got an upper stage upgrade (to a single AJ10-37 with a larger tank, a little bit of over-burn) and managed a polar orbit.  Now I'm trying to get into a sun-synchronous with 246 tiny solar cells (which still don't come close to meeting the spacecraft's power requirements and cost a mint; I should probably cut the number down to ten or so, make the flight a demo -- and save myself ten-plus kilos where it matters most).

It took me until 1958 to do it with 1955 technology, though.  Even in "normal" difficulty, research time is killing me.  The whole KCT is killing me, really.  Put your upgrades into VAB, research will have you into the 1960s before you can fly a real space capsule; put 'em into R&D, and you'll be in 1959 and still building sounding rockets because you can only launch three a year.  Or, you can spend hours and hours and still more hours grinding sounding rocket contracts to earn the funds to buy upgrade points to be able to launch to orbit in 1955, never build anything in the SPH, and have pulled all your hair out before you can actually launch anything interesting (I'm watching Nathan Kell's RP-1 video series on YouTube on my breaks at present).

If you managed to launch to orbit in 1955 with standard RO settings, my hat's off to you.

[qzgy]

18 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Despite some... er... rather pronounced stability issues after switching mode on the ridiculously oversized engines, it manages to claw its way into space, kicking and screaming the whole way.

Or maybe that was just Kelvin.
Kelvin Kerman back again, this time bringing Val for good luck. Might be working.

Feel as if adding a boom with some fins on the end would help. Shift some passive aero stabilty back. Those saucers also probably dont help.

[Cavscout74]

Mostly I launched a bunch of probes to Jool in my career, followed by a single Voyager to Eeloo.  Then I transferred my final crew off the Kerbin MOLE station with the last batch of experiments before de-orbiting the station.

Final departure:

Last view of the station, shortly before reentry.

[anoldtincan]

Today I'm still working early career stuff.

Two sounding rocket launches - only one was planned but the first lost the science payload on touchdown, so I had to repeat the mission.

Pretty sure I caught Eve and Moho transiting too.

Next was the orbital shot with the RO-1S Spadefoot science satellite atop a Hornbill rocket, which was fairly successful.

(Sorry for the bad screenshot.)

And finally two Mongoose flights for survey contracts. Jeb lost a tail fin (Kerbal Launch Failures) and had to RTB but Val managed to get to the island airfield and back after repairs and a thorough pre-flight inspection.

 

Next up is designing and building a relay network and upgrading the KSC facilities.

 

 

[Athen]

I don't know if this counts since it's 2:00 A.M and I technically did it yesterday, but i built a space station around LKO. Here are some pictures:

https://imgur.com/gallery/TU0lpKQ

https://imgur.com/gallery/UsLstuf

Edited July 25, 2018 by Athen

[Hotel26]

This is Crab.

Crab scuttles around the orbit lanes, seizing clutter (old space stations, fuel dumps, dead boosters etc), bleeding out fuel and then pushing the refuse into de-orbit trajectories.  It brings the fuel back to one master fuel dump for consolidation.

It carries enough fuel to also rescue craft stranded by fuel-starvation.  Capacity for 4 hitch-hiking Kerbals + one jump seat for thrill-seekers.  It's also an efficient tug for relocating heavy equipment.  Fully fueled, it's easily able to ascend from the surface of the Mun into orbit, perhaps to act as a fuel tender.  With a Klaw attachment, it could usefully serve in the reassignment of an asteroid's orbit, after capture.

I have a second Crab on the way to the Mun.  (Don't foresee ever using more than 2 in the fleet.)

Trials will take a couple of weeks as I clear out the junk from LKO...

Edited July 25, 2018 by Hotel26

[qromodynmc]

I did a quick replication of stealth planes thanks to a new mod i found.

[Randox]

Overbuilding and Worldview - Docking Just Became Routine? - WARNING: May Contain Humble Brag!

My first ever career mode is coming along nicely. Last up on the list was putting a flag on the surface of Mun. Given the almost random assortment of engines and fuel tanks the early part of the tech tree has given me, this promissed to be a bit less routine than usual.

I failed to take a proper shot of the craft in space, so I'll stick a shot in here is a shot from the VAB with the fairing and engine shroud removed, and the TWR displayed. Ignore stage 0 though; that's the dV it would have if the Munar lander were to push the command pod around. Actual Munar Lander dV is 2,000 dV, which given how effeciently I tend to land, is a comfortable 500 dV safety factor. Also note what a lovely job I did with the TWR ratios, and how breathtakingly close this rocket is to not flying 

I started to have doubts about the TWR when my rocket just kind of floated above the launchpad as the clamps released. Anyone confused by the engine counts in stage 4 should know that the central stack includes a pair of radial engines to boost the TWR of stages 4 and 3.

Anyway, the rocket flew, slowly, to orbit. True to form, though you can't see it, the boosters are topped with SAS units to prevent the craft from wandering off course along the way. I've had plenty of that nonsense already. But how it flies, or even the mission, isn't what made me stop and go 'huh'. No, there is something very fundamental about this style of design that signals a fundamental shift in how I play the game that I hadn't really noticed until now.

It's the lander. More specifically, that I didn't think twice about having one.

Now, I have made this style of craft once before to land on Mun, shortly after docking ports were introduced to the game. Docking in orbit has been something I've been able to do, and have been doing, since some point during the patch prior to docking ports being added to the game. But I've always been apprehensive about it; it's always been a (big) deal. An event of note. But when I designed this particular rocket, I knew pretty much as soon as I started that I wanted to use that Wolfhound engine (because it's amazing), and that as a result, I was also going to use a separate lander.

This design was in fact so successful that after Jeb had gone and planed his flag on Mun, that I was able to refuel the lander and send Valentina down as well. I'll not bother with more pics, because we've seen it a thousand times before and that's not what this post is about. It was only after everyone was safely home, with all the science recovered, that I actually stopped and realized just how unlike me this mission had been. I mean, I've clearly gotten a lot more comfortable with docking in orbit over time when I look at how my missions have changed...but this was the first time that the fact my mission would include orbital docking was as noteworthy as the fact my mission would include getting to orbit, and I thought that was kind of cool.

It's like the time I realized that I no longer thought about shifting gears with a manual transmission. Docking is now something I have done enough that I can simply...do it.

The last remaining general skill for which that isn't true for me is interplanetary encounters, though I'm not nearly as nervous about those as I used to be for docking. My general knowledge on how to set up encounters has developed enough that, like rendezvous, I've all of a sudden become comfortable with radial in/out maneouvers, which makes things much easier.

[Kronus_Aerospace]

Today in KSP I worked more on my-

This plane man... just... this plane.

[Stunkfish]

Managed to get my first ever 3-Satellite relay network around the mun up, with this beauty:


Really, happy....took me about 2,5 hours of fiddling nodes phewww
And combined with my other relay antennas around, from previous career contracts...my Kerbal System seems quite covered...

I did not take too much time to make them a perfect 120 degrees setup. I think with a lot of extra-distance from mun, to make sure 'they can see each other', as long as their orbits match well enough...this does just fine.
And there is actually another one from a previous contract almost 90 degrees declined from the three new ones, making it almost a diamond shape (well....at times...).

Happy with myself for this day

Edited July 27, 2018 by Stunkfish

[RealKerbal3x]

I've always thought Jebediah Kerman was a legend, but today it became clear that he is a total legend. There are no pictures as I was wearing my concentration face at the time, sorry.

So I installed @Snark's Missing History mod, and launched Jeb and Bill into orbit using some of its parts. Once in LKO, Jeb decided to make a practice rendezvous with a random piece of debris. But I didn't pay attention to its orbit while I was busy setting up a close approach. This will be important later.

So a while later, after we had completed the necessary burns and had parked roughly 50 metres from the target, Jeb went out on EVA to inspect the debris. Nothing much, just the trunk of a Dragon spacecraft that I'd flown a while back. Just about when I reached the target, the space music cut off. I didn't think much of this, as the new music system in 1.4 (y'know, where it stops if you pause the game) occasionally bugs out a bit.

On the way back to the spacecraft, something weird began to happen. Even though I wasn't thrusting away from the craft, it kept moving away from Jeb. This was extremely puzzling, until I noticed my mistake. I had rendezvoused with some debris with a periapsis of 66 kilometres, or in other words inside the atmosphere. And Jeb, my spacecraft, and the debris entered the upper atmosphere just as I happened to be on EVA. What great timing.

So what was hindering Jeb's progress back to the craft? Atmospheric drag! And that drag fought him all the way back to the craft, along with a small amount of heating from the atmosphere. While I wasn't worried about reentering, as 66 km is too high of a periapsis to reenter, I was worried about being separated from the craft by atmospheric forces.

Eventually, Jeb, the total legend that he is, managed to get close enough to the hatch of the Mk2 capsule that he could grab it. After that it was fine. He boarded the spacecraft and Jeb and Bill circularised back up to 130 km before deorbiting and landing safely in the desert.

It was a pretty awesome feat because by the time Jeb reached his craft, the debris was almost 2km away. That could have happened to him, but he survived

Edited July 25, 2018 by RealKerbal3x

[CatastrophicFailure]

Hey @Stunkfish, to get Imgur links to work here, you have to use the full link with file extension (.png). Easiest way is usually to just right click + copy image link from your Imgur page, then just paste here and the pic should come right up. Looking forward to seeing what you’ve done. 

[Servo]

The flight line was a little crowded this morning.

[Trann]

Brought my first Grand Tour ship (left) home and docked with the newer, bigger Grand Tour II (right) to offload her remaining fuel.  Hoping this new ship (and her upgraded lander, not seen here) will allow me to touchdown on and ascend from Tylo and Laythe.

 

And the first generation lander and its 250+ bits of science the crew brought home were quite the haul.

 

[Triop]

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

Edited July 27, 2018 by Triop

[Draconiator]

Made a shipyard inspired by the ones in Freelancer, but I have no clue if I got the Freelancer look down.  the bottom docking ports definately buuuuuut......

[Cyrious]

I went on a launching spree for Station Science hardware both to the Mun and to Minmus stations.

Minmus got 4 cyclotrons, a Zoo lab, and a science pod. The Mun got 4 Cyclotrons, 2 Thinker Labs and 2 Zoo labs, plus its own science pod.

Total launch expenditure was something along the lines of 3 million in cash, but when the science pods launched after them are complete, I'm looking at something like 4 million in profit along with well over a thousand science points to burn. Since both stations also have their own normal labs on top of this, I can process the data again in those for even more juicy juicy science.

 

Eh, its only about 400 tons of hardware and fuel in flight to the stations.

[Cavscout74]

15 hours ago, Draconiator said:

Made a shipyard inspired by the ones in Freelancer, but I have no clue if I got the Freelancer look down

Makes me want to blow the dust off an old CD & load it up to compare.  Haven't played that in ages. 

[kurgut]

On 7/23/2018 at 6:03 PM, SINO4894 said:

Well,

I just tried the RSS today.It's really exciting to see the real solar system!

Anymore, I've made my first launch in the real solar system, by using the RSB's Atlas V 532 rocket.It's wonderful

cool! yeah, first time RSS/RO is really exciting, and you'll see, when you'll (finally ) achieve orbit it will be as exciting as let's say a laythe mission in stock KSP, that's also why RSS/RO are great

[JadeOfMaar]

I messed with Better Looking Oceans to make Eve's ocean actually purple, and did some joyriding with this OP little spaceplane.

Since the replacement texture is very blue, it fights against the purple tint.

[Randox]

Adventures Without SAS - Just Banging My Head Against My Desk

I'm afraid that this post will be light on pictures (as in, there are none). I was, as the title implies, far too busy banging my head against various objects to take good pictures, so I'll keep this brief.

 

Playing in career mode has been an eye opening experience in regards to all the things I take for granted. Case in point:

Despite apparently still lacking most of what I need to make this work, I decided to start building a base on Mun (I am using MKS and USI Life Support). Launch pad weight restrictions meant I launched with my first 3 stages having a TWR of 1.1.

Successfully taunted gravity (which was good, because there was no plan B if it didn't make it to orbit over Kerbin). Made it to Mun with almost no fuel left, so I launched the previous missions Mun Lander as a fuel tanker. Got enough fuel to land with 50 dV to spare. Decided to try and move to flatter ground a few metres away and ran out of fuel right before touch down. Bounced, did a cartwheel, stuck the landing. You know, the usual . Then I used the Munar Lander to send down an engineer and pick up the pilot I used to land the proto base.

Yeah, about that. Engineers can't use SAS .

I guess I should have known that from sandbox...but it's been a while since I did anything like this (by which I mean land something that didn't have a crew of 3+). That lander has 2000 dV. I burned at least 1200 dV landing it. Well, landing implies a level of control. I spent at least 1200 dV  spinning my way out of orbit and crashing at non fatal velocities in the rough vicinity of the target area. I was only 5 km off target 

Bonus points to the fact that, as it stands right now, I have no way of getting Bill and Bob home. There is one ship in the fleet rated to land on the Mun and make it back to orbit, and it carries one Kerbal. But I should have the technology ready to retrieve them by the time I need it. Side note, I have an idea to retrofit that lander for Kerbin re-entry that I need to test. Should be amusing.

One thing is for sure, career mode has really put the "Kerbal Spirit" back into my space program. The gulf between what I assume I can do, and what I can actually do (with my current resources), has turned my space program into the most slap dash, fly by night kind of operation it's been since I first played the game, and I'm loving it.

Edited July 27, 2018 by Randox

[Laie]

10 minutes ago, Randox said:

Yeah, about that. Engineers can't use SAS .

Workaround: roll out a 2.5m Capsule or Lander Can, with two pilots inside and a relay antenna on top. A few launch clamps should suffice for a power supply. This will provide "remote pilot assistance" to the poor engineer. Single hop only, don't try to land on the far side of the Mun.

[Triop]

I did nothing today because of this guy:

38.9 Celsius is too much for me...

Greetings from Holland.