What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Crocket]

After Bob's month-long stay flying to and from Minmus, he was... not enthused, to say the least. In fact, he was so out of it that the KSC put a temporary ban on veteran kerbonauts going into space. Unfortunately, the voyage of the Spearmint 2 was just on the horizon, and KSC had to scramble to find an adequate pilot-scientist. Wehrdan was not that Kerbal.

This one is pretty long, so I've put it in two spoilers.

Part 1: The Trip

Spoiler

It's pretty funny how many drafts of the Spearmint 2 I went through before I realized that the first one I made just needed another FL-T800 per booster.

It was obvious that once Wehrdan began his turn, he was not the right pilot for this mission. Mission Control radioed and informed him of his ineptitude.

Mission Control continually jeered at Wehrdan right up until he made orbit.

I didn't take many caps up until this point because that section of rocketry involved quite a bit of concentration.

The image that taunted Bob for so long is now within reach. Today...

...Today!

For all the guff Mission Control gave Wehrdan, he was certainly a dedicated scientist. Performing experiments while whizzing towards the surface of a planet takes guts.

Wehrdan was very excited to have landed on Minmus and begun doing science, even though it wasn't in the most conventional way. He remarked to Mission Control that the ice cream they could make from Minmal soil could pay the bills for a month.

Part 2: The Return

Spoiler

It was said that Wehrdan scraping along the ground for multiple minutes to take off could be heard from Kerbin, not to mention the parts exploding. Mission Control was impressed.

Wehrdan, having proven himself as an adequate pilot, decided to spice things up a little.

Mission Control didn't notice that Wehrdan had gotten a Mun encounter until it was too late.

After a large amount of arguing (and definitely not the game spiting me), Wehrdan agreed to drop the Mun encounter. He got another one right away, though.

As Wehrdan zipped past the Mun with Mission Control debating rescue missions over the comms, he began to wonder whether he had done the right thing.

Of course he did! He got a butt-ton of science!

Finally, after his short Munar vacation, Wehrdan began to descend back to Kerbin.

Wehrdan remained steady, even though reentry heating threatened to get him and his pretty little experiment can, too.

Mission Control breathed sighs of relief and slight annoyance as Wehrdan's parachute deployed.

Wehrdan will probably gain a reputation for this sort of stunt.

Wehrdan thinks he's so much better than Bob. Like, seriously, the little pansy spends a month in space and runs home crying to his mommy? Try 74 days for an average of 2 more science per day with only three suit-soilings!

This was such a fun experience! I did have to re-learn how to launch a horizontal rocket and do a few orbital things, but that's all part of the fun. Now how am I going to spend all these science points?...

Edited September 4, 2018 by Crocket

[Triop]

Pole2Pole, day 4

It's going better than I thought.

[Zeiss Ikon]

On 9/3/2018 at 2:03 PM, RoboRay said:

I'm launching early weather satellites for cash to upgrade the Tracking Station and Mission Control so I can try for a lunar flyby in my restarted RP1 campaign (now that I've figured out RP1, _mostly...)

My second-generation satellite launch vehicle uses a single LR-79 booster engine on a 2 meter wide tank for the first stage.  Second stage is 1 meter diameter, powered by an AJ10-42.  Third stage is an Aerobee in the AJ10-27 configuration.  The launcher isn't much, but it's enough to put dinky 100 kg satellites into the 600'ish km, 45 degree orbit needed, and it's fairly cheap as well as quick to build.

 

600 km circular obit achieved, with 2 liters of propellant to spare!  I jettisoned the third stage and deployed the omni antennas I slipped into the satellite design to turn all the contracted weather sats into a low-LEO communications cloud. Don't laugh!  It's 1958 and nobody has invented the dish antenna yet.

By NASA standards, the fact you were able to save that mission with RCS means your third stage and both second and third stage RCS were seriously over-provisioned.  What do you think this is, Kerbal Space Program?! 

Glad to see someone else playing RO/RP-1.  I think before my next career restart (Take Six, running now, is suffering due to a couple expensive failures in a row), I'll pull all the vehicles into my sandbox and characterize things like how much dV it takes to reach certain sounding rocket altitudes (which will vary some, depending on TWR, of course), how much payload the orbital launchers can put into what orbit, etc.  I've had several instances when a rocket I was pretty sure could handle a sounding mission fell a few km short (literally -- 2790 km when the mission altitude was 2810, that kind of thing).  I also need to get a better handle on MechJeb's ascent guidance and explore some of its other functions, since MechJeb is clearly pivotal to flying with minimal launch dV (when it works correctly -- and when it doesn't, I'm pretty sure it's because I told it the wrong thing).

[kurgut]

[RSS/RO/Sandbox] After have discovered the Neil Amstrong memorial on the moon (anomaly), I decided to found the others present in RSS! So started a new sandbox game; and now designing kind of harrier aircraft (2 crew capacity VTOL) to inspect those anomalies.

For now just a non-VTOL version, to test aerodynamics things, looks good!

Just a small arborne above Cape Canaveral city, and getting back!

Great, now "just" have to add the VTOL engine to this

 

Edited September 4, 2018 by kurgut

[Triop]

11 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

I went off and spent a year playing Minecraft, too, at one time.

My kid held me hostage for months with that game (multiplayer). . .

[AngrybobH]

3 hours ago, Man in the Mun said:

It only had one leg and not four !

Welcome to the club.

Today I built a nuclear fission powered electric helicopter. It has an unlimited range(well, a 5y core life). Helicopters are hard. I was always told it was like balancing the whole thing on the head of a pin. KSP simulates this surprisingly well, if not fully realistic(no counter rotation).

Here's Val testing it out. It started with another tail fin facing down but the top of the VAB got in the way while learning to fly. The passenger (some rando white suit) fell out decided not to continue on this journey after the encounter with the VAB.

I totally stuck the landing after the obligatory "ohgodohgod we're all gonna DIE!". There were only around ten or so bounces and no (more) missing parts. So, I'm going to pack this up in a ground construction box and build one on eve. 

[djr5899]

Well, it looks like I may have a stock career repair mission ahead of me, but, I'm a bit puzzled as to why.  I am not an expert in Comms Range and Signal strength by any means, but I thought I had sufficient signal for my Duna drone tanker.   Tanker has a Communotron 88-88 antenna on it (and it is extended and enabled), and has just left Kerbin influence.  My Tracking Station is fully upgraded, so DSN 3 signal strength......but, my drone has lost contact and can no longer to be controlled.  In addition to my craft and the tracking station, I have one RA-100 satellite sitting at 40Mkm, just inside the orbit of Minmus, and I also have one RA-15 satellite at 2.864Mkm, the start of my geosync satellites.  Using the CommNet Signal Strength worksheet, even without the extra satellites, I should have more than enough signal to control the drone, especially since the drone is relatively still close to Kerbin.....in terms of a clock with 60 second hand, my drone is less than 5 seconds away from Kerbin system.

Anywho, if I don't figure it out relatively soon, I am going to attempt to send another drone with a crap ton of antennas to try and catch up to it, and have a small, detachable section that can dock with the drone tanker and contains hopefully enough antennas to allow for continued control.  That's how I'll likely be spending my evening tonight.  I have a save I can revert to, but I've gained about 2000 science points since that save to send the tanker out of Kerbin SOI, so, not really wanting to revert.

[Geonovast]

@djr5899 Do you have power?

[DoctorDavinci]

I did this

 

[Triop]

WHOOOOOO HOOOO ! ! !

 

[Crocket]

After the resounding success of the Spearmint 2, the KSC immediately began planning an excursion to the Mun.  Wiloly Kerman was the obvious candidate for a Munar excursion. She had started her training the day the KSC was established, and had just graduated as a five-star pilot. Wehrdan Kerman just happened to be hanging around the administration building bragging.

Spoiler

The Artemis 1 is a bit of an oddity: the bleeding edge of untested rocket technology built on the shell of the Spearmint 2. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Due to the weight of the lander, the Artemis 1 took off at a slug's pace, even with Wiloly pushing it to the floor.

Getting the thing to space was a bit of a struggle: in their haste, the engineering department neglected to add fins.

Wiloly was so excited to be in space after all of her training that she leapt out of the command pod without activating the airlock and nearly took Wehrdan with her.

I think this is a pretty nice shot of the burn for the Mun encounter.

Little did the intrepid crew realize they'd be in the dark for the majority of the flight, and Wiloly forgot which switch turned on the lights.

Ever vigilant in his scientific efforts, Wehrdan continued to run tests in the dark.

Mission Control registered that the majority of the materials in the material bay had floated out before the landing.

Wiloly was grateful to be in the light for her Mun landing, but not so grateful to be screaming towards the Munar surface at about 500 m/s because somebody messed with the throttle.

There's no funny comment here. Wehrdan chucked all over the pod.

Back in the dark, our crew once again had no idea what was happening or what switch Wehrdan just ripped off the console.

Not much eventful happened between Munar orbit and reentry, but Wiloly had to lock the hatches to keep both of the pod's occupants from jumping out screaming.

I didn't manage to capture what Wiloly wrote. Sorry.

650 science over 8 days?! That's a new science/day record! Wehrdan will be taking all the credit, of course.

I'm really not sure where to go from here besides Duna, but I don't really have the tech for what I have planned yet. Maybe a base somewhere?...

[djr5899]

46 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

@djr5899 Do you have power?

Yes....I mean...crap.... no!     Son of a.....always the simplest things overlooked.

So, it appears that I have no power.  I see what happened now.  My craft has about 1850 units of power, and it has solar panels deployed.  The problem is, my quad 1x6 deployable solar panels are in exact alignment of my quad boosters.....the solar panels have technically extended, but they are clipped through the boosters, so, they aren't recharging my batteries.  

Looks like my rescue craft with be a power station with new, non-clipping extendable solar panels, instead of a giant antenna station..  Thanks @Geonovast.   Sometimes it just takes another brain to see the obvious problem.  

[Geonovast]

Oh god... the clipping... it hurts...

[kurgut]

[RSS/RO/Sandbox]  Also, to explore the Earth anomalies, I just built a heavy transportation spacecraft, because I saw, they were anomalies located in montains, water, etc. The Kraponov airplane! So will be able to deliver rovers, ships, plane, kerbals, etc.

Flys very well!

Stuff to discover:

 

[djr5899]

5 minutes ago, djr5899 said:

Yes....I mean...crap.... no!     Son of a.....always the simplest things overlooked.

So, it appears that I have no power.  I see what happened now.  My craft has about 1850 units of power, and it has solar panels deployed.  The problem is, my quad 1x6 deployable solar panels are in exact alignment of my quad boosters.....the solar panels have technically extended, but they are clipped through the boosters, so, they aren't recharging my batteries.  

Looks like my rescue craft with be a power station with new, non-clipping extendable solar panels, instead of a giant antenna station..  Thanks @Geonovast.   Sometimes it just takes another brain to see the obvious problem.  

Problem is much, much worse than I though.  The solar panels are clipped through the boosters, it appears, upon loading the craft in the VAB, that the 750 unit monopropellant tank, the actual drone control, and multiple other pieces are clipped inside the fuel tank.  Not sure how that happened.  Must have been on a final save right before launch.  I'm thinking that's 195,000I'm not going to get back or worth recovering.  

[Triop]

3 minutes ago, kurgut said:

Stuff to discover:

Interesting map, are there artifacts there or something ?

[kurgut]

1 minute ago, Triop said:

Interesting map, are there artifacts there or something ?

Of course, they're anomalies, the "?" in the map, as the Moon Neil Amstrong memorial I discovered in my RP-1 career game, I posted few hours ago. So yes some nice stuff, excited to see what it will be!

[Triop]

2 minutes ago, kurgut said:

Of course, they're anomalies, the "?" in the map, as the Moon Neil Amstrong memorial I discovered in my RP-1 career game, I posted few hours ago. So yes some nice stuff, excited to see what it will be!

Cool, happy hunting !

[ProtoJeb21]

Last year, I used to think Moho was pretty easy to get to after it became the first planet I visited in my new Science mode save. I didn't understand the problems other people had.

Now I do.

According to Kerbal Engineer, Moho was just in position for a Hohmann transfer, and I really needed to send a successful unmanned Moho-and-back mission. Thus I developed Hermes III, an efficient nuclear-powered probe with some asparagus staging implemented and over 4 km/s total of dV. Mounted on top was a nuclear powered unmanned lander with all the science experiments and also a lot of dV -- about 3 km/s to be exact. The goal was the same as Hermes II: get this giant craft to Moho, let the lander go down and collect some science! from at least two different biomes, put all the science in that data storage unit, fly back to Kerbin, get into a stable orbit, and launch a crewed mission to retrieve the mission's boatload of sweet science points. Last time, I massively underestimated how much dV I needed (Hermes II had less than 2.5 km/s) so for its successor I had to develop the most efficient craft I have ever made. It also needed to have an enormous lifter, as this was my largest unmanned craft yet.

I had to try launching four times before this thing was able to get into orbit. I decided to do my Kerbin escape over two burns: the first to use up the remaining 700 m/s of dV in the central lifter stage, and the second using the kick from travelling fast at periapsis (I forgot the name of it...) with the ship's five nuclear engines. Both burns went quite well, but problems quickly began to show. First, my new orbit wasn't the best for a Moho encounter, as my closest approach was going to be above the plane of Moho's orbit. This proved rather expensive (just under 600 m/s of dV) to fix. Secondly, I realized it would take at least 3.6 km/s to just barely get captured by Moho, which means I will need to use some of the lander's fuel to get into orbit. It looks like I won't have enough for a Kerbin return...AGAIN.

Now that Hermes III will likely end up trapped at Moho like Hermes II, it was time for yet another successor. However, instead of making an entire new vessel from scratch, I decided to make a copy of Hermes III but give it an even larger booster stage. At that, development of Hermes IV began. Creation of the booster stage was pretty quick, and soon enough it was time to launch....

Spoiler

...and fail.

The first flight ended up in the craft flipping around when trying to do a gravity turn, so I tried launching the rocket slightly tilted to make sure it ends up in a turn automatically.

Okay, maybe that was too much tilt. How about a little less?

Less?

Hey, there we go--

OH COME ON

It looks like Hermes IV is trying to attract the Kraken. I must proceed with caution.

This isn't going to wo--

Oh great, the Kraken's back. Let's try one more time being tilted.

Hey, this is the best one yet!

*sigh*

This is a sign that tilting the craft from the start is a bad idea. Time to do the gravity turn the old fashioned way with care and precision. Hopefully nothing will go wrong.

Okay, pretty good so far, just a lit---

............

I give up

So Hermes IV was deemed an absolute failure. At least I was able to get my Dres lander/outpost onto the dwarf planet's surface without anything going wrong.

Not only is this meant to be a Dres science lander, but it will also be a relay outpost to help spacecraft out by Jool and Eeloo to stay connected to Kerbin. It won't be 100% reliable -- there will be times where Dres is on the opposite side of the Sun -- but it should help.

[Kronus_Aerospace]

Today I decided to do some experimentation with big engine designs, ended up arriving at this idea.

I'm really liking this design, might try to incorporate it into an actual craft.

[Cavscout74]

Despite some remarkable successes today, I regret to report my first casualties in this career.  During takeoff of a routine crew rotation on Laythe, the Pumera spaceplane hit a bump just as it was rotating, rolled right, clipped a wing on the ground, flipped violently to the right and exploded.  RIP Ludous, Magely, Roy & Hadke Kerman.

Last view of Hadke Kerman before boarding the ill-fated Pumera-Laythe.

The previous success before the crew loss did include my very first landing at a certain anomaly on Vall.

Spoiler

Descending to land

This may be the most impressive anomaly I've found so far, even from this distance.  After the flag planting, the pilot & engineer bravely reboarded the lander to prepare for a rapid escape if needed, leaving the scientist to approach alone.

Approaching the structure on foot

View from the top

 

I already had a second Pumera in LKO ready for a Jool transfer to act as a backup to the one at Laythe - just in case of exactly what happened today.  With the loss of the original, I decided to launch a third Pumera so in 2 1/2 years I will have a prime & backup interface vehicle around Laythe.  I did another piggy back escape pod for the pilot & this one came down closer to KSC, but in the mountains.  Nesey was recovered safely, but the view while hanging from the chute was daunting.  I was concerned I might have a fifth casualty in the same day

 

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by Cavscout74
Spelling correction

[Geonovast]

Remember kids... don't DockRotate and timewarp.

Just don't.

Especially not with 600 tons.

Peacefully moving stuff around. 

Engage timewarp while rotating (This was an attempt to make it stop, not go faster)

Uh..

Sat like that, frozen for a good two seconds.  Then..

[Geonovast]

I'm going to bed.

 

[Triop]

44 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I'm going to bed.

Good night.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Triop

[Zosma Procyon]

I landed the creatively named "Duna Science Rover" (I know, i'm a creative genius) near my "Arrakis Base" on Duna, to go get more science for the depleted labs. Science is a finite resource and it is getting harder to find.

MechJeb nailed this landing.

Here is it plugged into the base, delivering the science it was able to gather on the way to Duna. An extra scientist crewman that didn't have lab space then transfered to the rover and started a long road trip.

On the road again...

I think this is about 100 km.

Just thought this was a good shot.