What did you do in KSP1 today?

[CatastrophicFailure]

Today, I discovered my Stratolauncher can do Mach 1.5 before things start exploding. 

 

Then I discovered it can do Mach 1.65 after things start exploding! 

Hey, cool, I scared Jeb!

 

Then I discovered it's not much good for anything after that, except falling gracelessly into the sea.

 

(Don't worry, Jeb's fine, this is sort of his thing...)

I should probably get around to flying the actual mission about now...

 

[qzgy]

32 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Then I discovered it can do Mach 1.65 after things start exploding! 

I believe the airframe can handle more, just the engines aren't up to it. Maybe some scaled up whiplashes could help.........

32 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

I should probably get around to flying the actual mission about now...

Wait you have a mission for this thing?

[CatastrophicFailure]

21 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Wait you have a mission for this thing?

Oh yeah, I’ve got a cute little Mün lander with a rover and everything, this is just a single afternoon’s distraction after all,  but then the rocket needs endless tweaking, and I have to watch and analyze the separation sequence over and over and over again, and the Kraken needs walksies and... 

 

24 minutes ago, qzgy said:

believe the airframe can handle more, just the engines aren't up to it. Maybe some scaled up whiplashes could help.........

Stop giving me ideas! ಠ_ಠ

You see, Ivan, when put whole launch system in space, is halfway to anywhere!

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

I launched an extension for my Mun base.

I also sent a fuel/snacks transportation module and a fresh crew (in their own return ship.)

It took a few attempts to land it since my light lifter module ended up not having enough thrust to slow it down from orbital speeds before impacting the Mun's surface, but once I brought my heavy lifter back from Minmus things went a lot more smoothly.

It's got a central command hub, a greenhouse for Snack-production, a rover parking space and two extra ports for further expansion.

I sent another one with essentially the same design to Minmus.

Both extensions are working well and have already sent their first shipments of Snacks to their respective stations.

I also sent my Moho probe on its way.

My SENTINEL probe reached its periapsis, allowing me to execute the final manoeuvre to put it into its intended orbit around the Sun and start gathering data.

Finally, I received a contract to test the LV-1, giving me early access to NERV engines and allowing me to put my Shover Robot tug design from my last save back into service.

The biggest change from the last version is that I replaced the external command seat with the Porthole module from the Station Parts mod. In addition to containing enough Snacks to sustain a Kerbal on the way back from Minmus, this will also allow me to execute aerobraking manoeuvres with a Kerbal aboard, something that wasn't possible with the old design.

Its shown here carrying a modified 6-person crew return vehicle and science rover, but that ended up not working so well as I was unable to decouple the two craft after reaching Minmus Station, possibly because I attached the return craft's docking port to the rover radially. I ended up transferring the crew to the station and then de-orbiting the ship and rover, allowing them to destroy themselves by smashing into Minmus's surface. This leaves my current Minmus crew without a way to return home, but with the new base they have an effectively endless supply of Snacks which will give me plenty of time to send a replacement ship.

[ARS]

Just testing an aircraft

[Triop]

Edited August 28, 2018 by Triop

[Kernel Kraken]

15 hours ago, qzgy said:

I believe the airframe can handle more, just the engines aren't up to it. Maybe some scaled up whiplashes could help.........

 

Knowing you and seeing the quoted post I knew exactly what you would say before I read it :p

11 hours ago, ARS said:

Just testing an aircraft

Where's that cockpit from? It looks awesome!

[ARS]

37 minutes ago, Kernel Kraken said:

Where's that cockpit from? It looks awesome!

SXT (Stock extension) mod

https://spacedock.info/mod/1030/SXTContinued

[Castille7]

3 hours ago, Triop said:

Don't forget to make that left in Albuquerque!

[RoboRay]

Not much.  I just started putting together a GSO comsat constellation...

...in 1960. 

The launch vehicle is basically a Titan, but using a pair of H-1 engines instead of the LR87.  The LR91 second stage is topped by a restartable AJ10-104 inside the fairing to handle the transfer injection, plane change (I launched from KSC) and circularization at GSO.  I was a little tight on Δv and with an abysmal surface-level TWR, so I added four Castors. 

Edited August 28, 2018 by RoboRay

[Triop]

5 minutes ago, Castille7 said:

Don't forget to make that left in Albuquerque!

[AngrybobH]

6 hours ago, ARS said:

SXT (Stock extension) mod

Nooooo!!! I didn't need more mods.......now I have have more.

[LushChicken]

I couldn’t play ksp today because my computer wasn’t working 

[RoboRay]

6 hours ago, AngrybobH said:

Nooooo!!! I didn't need more mods.......now I have have more.

The nice thing about SXT is that reuses stock textures rather than including its own.  So, at least your RAM doesn't hate you. 

[Laie]

13 hours ago, Kernel Kraken said:

Where's that cockpit from? It looks awesome!

Depending on scale... oh, it's been answered already.

Then just let me add that, when it comes to cockpits, there's a lot of overlap between Airplane plus and SXT. However, Airplane plus is much better maintained these days, so if you want hatches that actually work (some SXT models will catapult your Kerbal to high heaven when you leave the plane), it's the go-to mod. Then again, SXT has a few wonderfully large wing pieces... you just can't do stuff like this with procwings:

There's also some distinction in scale: the glass nose cockpit of Airplane Plus is a 2.5m part holding four people while on SXT it's a 1.25m two-seater. Same for some of the other vintage warbird cockpits.

[eberkain]

 

Apollo style mission in Kerbalism - GPP

[kurgut]

Completed first floor of the Munok Base Camp! Featuring now living room, airlock, power room, life support room, rover garage, habitation module, and panel indicators to avoid our Kerbals get lost inside! Our engineers are still thinking about How we'll send that on Munar surface..

Edited August 29, 2018 by kurgut

[kurgut]

Just added the roof, and landing legs, an then Jebediah tested the interiors functionality, looks promising!

Now, let's work on the second floor!

[Tyko]

3 hours ago, kurgut said:

Just added the roof, and landing legs, an then Jebediah tested the interiors functionality, looks promising!

Now, let's work on the second floor!

Wow, cool work...looks like a Kerbalized Vault-Tec vault. The timeline would be about right for it to be one of their projects too.

[djr5899]

On 8/24/2018 at 1:29 AM, FinalFan said:

Your first miner had 16,000 battery power?  Wow, it must have been a heck of a prototype!  My first mining vessel was just a Mun lander with refueling capability, but even my first "real" mining craft only had about 6,000 units.  I figure, either it's got a solid power source and it doesn't need that much, or it doesn't and it's going to run out regardless.  I guess more batteries would help you refine in orbit on the dark side as well as the sun-side without running dry... and I did slap at least 20K of battery on my first asteroid miner because I didn't want to use fuel cells. 

Yeah, I guess I should have worded that better.  It was a miner/refiner.  If it was going to the Mun, it likely would have been much smaller, but since my first attempt was Duna, I figured I needed to make it a bit bigger.  I had read on the boards that mining/refining used a ton of electricity, and that seemed to be very true.  Been a few weeks so I can't even recall what happened with it.  I think I tested it out on the Mun, and landed in a dark crater (no sunlight), and burned through 16,000 battery power in like 2 minutes mining and refining, with no way to recharge.  I think when I sent it to Duna, I had 5 craft all going there in a relative short time, and while controlling some of the other craft, the miner/refiner craft got pulled out of Duna orbit and back into a Kerbol orbit.

Haven't had as much time to play lately, so when I finally got back into the game this weekend I decided to.....delete all my saves and start over.  I have a habit of doing that, but, I figured, I have made much more progress in the game in the past 4-6 months than I had in 2 years owning the console version.  I've learned how to dock craft consistently, learned to be at least a little more efficient with the craft that I am building, I was able to build a successful mining craft, and I was able to finally get several craft in orbit of a planet/moon other than Kerbin, Minmus, or Mun.  I felt that was a good time to restart, so I created a new accelerated Career (increased Science gains) and a new Sandbox mode.  Hoping these are the last restarts for quite some time.

In the span of a few days now in my Career save, I now have all the 90 Science Tech Tree bought, and about half the 160 Tech Tree purchased.  My latest few missions were unmanned probes, one sent to Mun and one sent to Minmus, to gather science data.  They worked out much better than expected, as I was able to land on each moon, and do another two hops on the moons to new locations.  Transmitted a ton of Science data back to KSP, and could have done more if I put more science equipment on the craft.

I am now aiming to put a mobile lab in orbit of Kerbin, start building my satellite network around Kerbin, and getting a manned mission to the Mun complete with a rover.  First, though, I need to get Jeb, Bob, and Bill up to Level 3 experience to make all these missions a lot easier.

[Laie]

@djr5899 : running a mining/refining rig on batteries is, well, I won't say impossible. But.

A single large drill requires 7.5ec/s -- so your 4000ec battery will last you a whole of 530seconds, or a little under 9 minutes. A Duna night lasts, how long, 9 hours? That's 60 large batteries just for a single drill. Add 50% for every star your engineer has; that's 150 batteries for a fully skilled 5-star one. And that's only the drill, you haven't refined anything yet.

The go-to solution is to use fuel cells. This consumes a fraction to the fuel you're creating, but unless the deposit is especially poor, it'll work just fine.

Oh, and once you're at timewarp >1000, it doesn't even matter if your power source is adequate. The biggest refinery will work through day and night on a single small fuel cell, or a single RTG for that matter.

[djr5899]

51 minutes ago, Laie said:

@djr5899 : running a mining/refining rig on batteries is, well, I won't say impossible. But.

A single large drill requires 7.5ec/s -- so your 4000ec battery will last you a whole of 530seconds, or a little under 9 minutes. A Duna night lasts, how long, 9 hours? That's 60 large batteries just for a single drill. Add 50% for every star your engineer has; that's 150 batteries for a fully skilled 5-star one. And that's only the drill, you haven't refined anything yet.

The go-to solution is to use fuel cells. This consumes a fraction to the fuel you're creating, but unless the deposit is especially poor, it'll work just fine.

Oh, and once you're at timewarp >1000, it doesn't even matter if your power source is adequate. The biggest refinery will work through day and night on a single small fuel cell, or a single RTG for that matter.

Thanks for the tip.  I'll definitely need to check out fuel cells more, as I have never really used them on any of my craft.  Same with the RTG.  Tried once but was still rather new so didn't seem to be working the way I thought it would.

[Triop]

Spoiler

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by Triop

[kurgut]

Rp-1 first Phobos/Deimos Flyby, orbit, and landing (unmaned of course)! Launch vehicle is Titan II (Aj-9 configuration) with some solid boosters (castors) added to the first stage. Launched from cap canaveral

Launch

Kind of lite Centaur upper stage finishing orbit:

Also used to do the transfer burn, then Aj-10 stage will finish it:

After 140 days travelling around the Sun, doing a correction to fine tune Mars periapsis and inclination (relative to Deimos, our first targeted moon)

Plotting capture burn to encounter Deimos orbit at our Apoapsis:

And finally there! After capture, I had to wait 30 days to have a "natural" encounter (with corrections) with Deimos to not waste precious deltaV. After 600 Dv capture burn, orbital speed at 30 km orbit is.. ~5 m/s, good time to use rcs!

Landing:

Landed!

Now, let's takeoff from this orbiting pebble and target Phobos:

We have encounter without waiting, great

Phobos capture (maybe one of my best screenshots)

And landing

Then, I taked off again to put this probe in mars orbit as a relay, since Phobos surface gravity is not enough good to maintain the probe stable.

 

Edited August 29, 2018 by kurgut

[Cavscout74]

Mostly I passed time today.  The next round of Jool ships headed out from Kerbin, including an improved crew cycler design that might actually be able to power the greenhouse and waste recycler in Jool orbit.  Might.  We'll have to see. 

My big accomplishment of the day was my DSEV-02 Levian Bay arrived around Laythe with the second group of Laythe explorers.  I ran out of time to do more than bring my inclination down to near zero & close it in to a circular 400km orbit.  Due to a messed up transfer burn & very large correction, Levian Bay ended up beating DSEV-01 Arcterra to Jool by a close to a year.  This crew was originally the third group of Jool explorers,  I guess they were in  a hurry.

There is a crew ferry that will be meeting Levian Bay to bring the crew to Laythe Station in preparation to land.  I decided on using a small ferry rather than trying to dock directly to the station because, well, the dead kraken would probably come back to life and do mean & nasty things if I brought the DSEV into physics range of the station.  The station already has the PCC-02 Brigand crew cycler docked, as well as a large fuel tanker, plus the Pumera spaceplane will have to bring Jeb & company back up as well.