What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Cavscout74]

I finally got around to landing a crew on Ike in this career.  I kinda blew off Ike for a while - like 9 years - despite having kerbals on Duna, Moho, & most of the way to Jool.  This Duna expedition has been the busiest in a while - first took a new spaceplane down to investigate an anomaly, then flew a few hundred km cross country to the old Duna-Lancer base to perform some surface surveys nearby and refuel the spaceplane.  Then head back to orbit and transfer back to the Dauntless for a trip to Ike.

Matching velocity with the Ike Lander.  The Ike landing went smoothly, but I totally forgot any screenshots of it.  Afterwards, transferred the crew & science back to Dauntless, headed back to dock with Duna station to transfer to the Duna quad lander.

The crew took the quad lander down to commence operations at Pegasus-Duna base.  Landing was within 250m

Pegasus-Duna base after commencing operations.  I'm kinda kicking myself for not sending a second crew rover for use at this base - I guess I'll send one at the next window.

[Audiobotguy03]

So today, I made this supersonic bomber jet. This plane can take off using the turbojets or the "immediate takeoff" rocket boosters. This bomber carries a nuke and has two 50 Cal machine guns on the tail. This plane can slow down using airbrakes, parachutes, wheel brakes, or all. The plane's design is based off the XF-108.

Mods Used:

RetroFuture

Mark IV Spaceplane Systems

Procedural Wings

TweakScale

BDarmory

Edited October 29, 2018 by Audiobotguy03
Some sentence fixes

[Noname117]

Now in way further than my little experimental plane yesterday. This one can do 150 m/s at sea level, and is insanely powerful (19 clipped SAS). Building/flying this thing is basically what I've been doing today.

[Space Kadet]

got some more science on my eveness :p 
 

 

[Kebab Kerman]

On 10/27/2018 at 2:08 PM, SwissSpace93 said:

Today Laythe has rejected the Present from the KSC (3 MapSat's)

 

I had not enough fuel for get into Orbit, and tried to make a aerobrake, now all of the rocket is gone .

The Antenna survived the reentry but it crashed

 

No MapSat's but a nice Picture of Jool

Jool has RINGS!? What kind of forbidden science* is this?

 

*Forbidden science is where you actually do science instead of murdering kerbals.

[capi3101]

Haven't done much with the game since last Thursday. I did spend a lot of time over weekend fiddling with the Pathfinder mod, though, and on Saturday I was comfortable enough with what I was doing to go ahead and try to make an operational Pathfinder base craft. Given Pathfinder's old west theme for component names and my own morbid sense of humor, coming up with an appropriate name for the craft wasn't particularly difficult.

I did go ahead with a full trial launch of the Boot Hill 7, including a Mun landing and bouncy-house deployment in my litterbox: 

Had a bit of an issue the during first sol (solar day...kerbolar day...kerb? bol? WTC are we calling this?) when Kerbin transited across Kerbol, but for the most part I was able to get the base up and running with no issues. I do need to spread the Sombreros out a bit; they block one another with the current setup if Kerbol's low to the horizon, but that's not that big of an issue. Efficacy of the mining unit is still very much in question, though. Nevertheless, the test was successful enough that I'm preparing to launch an operational craft in my main career game later today. I'll let y'all how that goes. Really like the print shop module that lets you build things in-situ, like additional modules or solar panels...

[Azimech]

Look who's back ;-)

Recognize this shape? This is no stock turboprop. It's a stock jet with the looks of that (in)famous fighter of WW2. I'll upload it to KerbalX without paintjob.

I can't paint the probe core (the head of the pilot) but maybe @DoctorDavincican do something about that? I'm using 1.4.5 for this one.

Anyway, this plane is 3 times larger than the original and 20 times heavier. It still performs okay, its top speed is around 650 km/h at sea level. The original achieves that speed at 6300m.

It's powered by 14 Wheesley's (!) giving it a 800 km range just like the original. But no, this plane doesn't really have a TWR >1. I've deliberately kept the amount of air intakes to a minimum. This means no UFO behaviour.

WIP: the detachable canopy works fine ...

... the flameout works fine ...

... but the pilot falls apart during bailing out.

Anyway ... another CPU killer (530 parts) and not useful at all. But maybe fun. Throw some balls at it or something.

 

Edited October 29, 2018 by Azimech

[NHunter]

Today, I've finally put a BIGGER space hotel into orbit around Gael. It weights just shy of 80 tons and its ring is about 20 meters in diameter. It's "crew" capacity is only slightly larger than that of the previous on at 78 Kerbals Gaelans (versus 68 on the first space hotel), but the accommodations are much more luxurious.

I actually forgot to take screenshots during launch and ascent, so... Here's me finishing the inclination adjustment burn to put this monstrosity into equatorial 500km orbit. And given the size of it's booster stage, I needed something more powerful than those tiny separatrons. Meet separatron 2.0 (aka hammer SRBs).

Yup, world's largest separatrons...

Solar panels deployed, communication systems online. Space Hotel is ready to receive it's first guests.

[SwissSpace93]

9 hours ago, Kebab Kerman said:

Jool has RINGS!? What kind of forbidden science* is this?

 

 

It is from a mod 

but i dont know from which mod it is.

possibly Outer Planets Mod or Environmental Visual E... the Mod that makes clouds on Laythe, Eve and Kerbin

[Cavscout74]

After building a successful double orbital rescue craft, i decided to try for a triple orbital rescue craft.  So starting with a Mk 1-3 pod and a trio of Wild Blue mini-grabber units, this was born:

Triple recovery klaw coasting to circularization burn

First rescue:

Second rescue (after transferring crew & jettisoning the 2nd claw)

Final rescue, & claw jettison prior to reentry.  All three crew were recovered safely & provide one more of each profession.

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

3 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

After building a successful double orbital rescue craft, i decided to try for a triple orbital rescue craft.  So starting with a Mk 1-3 pod and a trio of Wild Blue mini-grabber units, this was born:

Y use a different claw for each, tho? Actually, why not just EVA over the rescued guy? I think I’m missing something.  

[Cavscout74]

2 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Y use a different claw for each, tho? Actually, why not just EVA over the rescued guy? I think I’m missing something.  

Just something different to do.  I typically use the eva rescue method early in career and individual claws when I have to recover the debris as well.  I'll probably never use it again, i was just entertaining myself waiting for an asteroid that's threatening all life on Kerbin

[Hotel26]

I'm working on a 6 Kerbal VTOL craft called Honeybee.  The test flight just conducted was KSC direct to the summit of Mt Keverest.  I've flown a few meters over the top of Keverest at quite high speed before, but never set foot there...

These shots start with next day with better light:  [click the first and use right arrow for a slide show]

(Apologies for the darkness of these: one of my monitors shows them light enough that I was able to touchdown vertically, safely but my other monitor hardly distinguishes any features at all.)

Conventional take-off from KSC R9 with 1,480 kallons onboard.  Landed at Keverest with 3.8% remaining; Bingo fuel!
Not shown but KER reports a TWR of 1.31[*] at the summit with VERT thrusters selected which was ample to land, especially not counting the Vernor assistance available.
TWR at sea level (KSC) is 1.82 due to the 4 Wheelseys performing VERT duty.

What a great trip!

I have a little further tuning to do but I am really happy with the way this machine has turned out. 

* on empty fuel; obviously would be worse with a heavier load

 

UPDATE: final form:

Edited October 30, 2018 by Hotel26

[Cupcake...]

Just a little undersea adventure.  

Enjoy!

 

Cupcake..

[Hydrothermalventclam]

I started working on my duna colonization plans.  First, I launched a mothership from my minimus base.  It is heavily inspired by something I saw on reddit a while ago, but I don't remember where.

Then I landed my first kerbals on Duna, then realized that the ISRU plant on their plane would overheat, so I had to land my cargo shuttle on duna as well, because it has the KIS items that I need to fix the radiators.  Once the drills started working, I realized that they landed in a place with almost no ore, and would not be able to refuel in time for the mothership to arrive.  The cargo shuttle is needed to bring down the base components from orbit.

Sunrises on Duna look amazing though.

Because the duna shuttles won't be able to refuel in time, I decided to launch a separate lander with a bunch of drills to speed up the mining process.  Because this lander will take a much shorter, but more expensive, trajectory to duna than the mothership, I gave it a nuclear powered magnetoplasmadynamic transfer stage (because it sounds cool).  This stage will take the lander to duna, then return to Kerbin to pick up other payloads.

[KerikBalm]

On 10/28/2018 at 5:10 PM, djr5899 said:

As I'm still relatively new to mining.....damn this conversion stuff is slow.  Thinking of sending a 2nd ore conversion craft to the mining  site, an unmanned version, to help speed things along.  Possibly a 2nd rover and fuel tanker as well.  Now, I need to get at least the first part of my orbital refueling station up to Minmus, and swap out some of the crew at the mining site.  Jeb really wants to go home, after being on Minmus some 100 plus days.

So I looked as your photos, and have a few tips.

First to address the slowness: Do you have an engineer onboard? Any engineer at all will increase production by 5x (imagine 20 drills vs 4). A lvl 1 engineer will increase production by 9x. A lvl 3 one (obtainable without going interplanetary) will increase production by 17x. An unmanned miner is a slow miner, don't send unmanned miners to speed up production, unless they can join with a manned craft (with an engineer) on the surface. Un-manned miners are fine for interplanetary missions that you may have months/years to prepare fuel for a return voyage/prepare for an arrival launched during the next transfer window (ie around a year away)

Second, why is your miner so big, but it only has 4 drills? Also with its fuel capacity, you might use it as an all-in-one miner and tanker.

example all in one miner, 8 drills:

Spoiler

and a similar one, in orbit, refueling a craft:

If your miner isn't going to move, it can be much much smaller. But you want to bother with a fuel truck and a dedicated tanker to orbit...

Here's one of my miners that has 50% more drills than yours, and was functioning similarly with a dedicated tanker:

Spoiler

in the background is a smaller "all-in-one" that was there to bootstrap the base construction, and I then sent it elsewhere once the base was up and running.

Here's the base up and running, and attached to a dedicated fuel tanker for lifting large amounts of fuel to orbit (note: i was also running with lift support mods and such, but everything was stock except for life support parts)

Also, you made mention of Xenon... you can't produce Xenon by ISRU in stock KSP.

So tips: Engineers, smaller miner with more drills.

[Kebab Kerman]

I made an MD-11 that automatically has low fuel usage on the ground because there aren't enough intakes and it has flameouts until it gets rolling. Also, who else wants to exploit the flameout effects?

[capi3101]

Yesterday was a pretty harrowing day, as it turned out. Aside from the safe return of a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe from Mun hauling a Mk3 Cockpit for contract, my day was spent working with the first operational Boot Hill 7 Pathfinder outpost craft. The mission has been plagued with problems pretty much from the beginning. Pilots Lisbin and Jesgun Kerman along with scientist Ludson Kerman and engineer Naford Kerman were selected for the inaugural mission of the craft to establish a five-Kerbal outpost on Mun. Despite having thoroughly tested the craft in the litterbox, the launch had its share of problems, first wanting to pull the left for some unknown reason, and then deploying its solar panels within its shroud (which then promptly all broke off). On the second revert, the craft made a successful ascent which turned disastrous when I decoupled the final booster stage and had it swing around to do its self-cleaning deorbit; the booster whacked the transfer stage and destroyed the transfer stage's engine. Luckily this was a Pathfinder base with a Casa module set as a Blacksmith 3D printer - or else the mission might've been scrubbed right then and there. The Casa was deployed and a set of six Twitch engines and one Spark were printed up along with a KAS Screwdriver, which Naford used to attach the nascent engine array to the back of the transfer stage. With the repairs affected and everything stowed away, the mission continued. The injection burn took longer than originally planned, but the craft did make it to Mun.

Had to haul the Spark to the aft end of the craft in one of the Buckboard containers, which required stowing one of the Sombrero arrays temporarily...which didn't get put back on the correct way but gave me an idea for later.

The Boot Hill 7 landed safely just south of the equator in the Munar midlands. I rapidly discovered that the Equipment resources used to print the spare engines was enough that I was unable to deploy one of the Hacienda modules...unfortunately, the one that wouldn't deploy was the one with the ore drills. I also had forgotten to add a docking port to the design; the 3D printer rectified that at least and at this point the outpost contract has been successfully completed. I will need to send up a resupply mission to the outpost so that it can finish deploying. In the meantime, I've also been able to print up a pair of Doc science labs and Ludson is hard at work trying to get some lab time in to send a temperature study back to Kerbin for contract.

TL, DR: If you don't use Pathfinder, you probably didn't get much of this post. Stuff happened, most of it bad, but I worked through it.

[roboslacker]

Today, I messed with spaceplanes. None of them made it into space, or off the ground.

[Servo]

I built a T-38 to train some astronauts:

https://kerbalx.com/servo/T-38

I tried reentry again with my STS (which is almost ready for release, I just need to make a video about it). First try, I got really close, but fell about 5km short. It has an absolutely terrible glideslope, so I wasn't able to extend the range at all.

Work continues on my Crusader as well. All that remains is ironing out the problems with the wing not docking in the up position. If anyone has any ideas as to how to fix this (I've checked alignment and distances, but it refuses to dock even once), I'd like to hear them.

[Kebab Kerman]

14 minutes ago, roboslacker said:

Today, I messed with spaceplanes. None of them made it into space, or off the ground.

Did they at least make it into the ocean?

[roboslacker]

Just now, Kebab Kerman said:

Did they at least make it into the ocean?

No, most ended up scattered around the runway. A few made it past the spaceplane hanger. It was all very kerbal.

[Zosma Procyon]

On 10/28/2018 at 3:07 PM, GearsNSuch said:

he mission was successful overall, and the crew visited all biomes and anomalies.

What are the coordinate of the memorial?

On 10/28/2018 at 3:07 PM, GearsNSuch said:

So, it wasn't exactly today, but as it's the conclusion of a month long mission, I thought it'd be appropriate to post here.

 

So. In order to squeeze the last drops of creamy science out of the Mün for some much-needed parts for an upcoming Duna mission, I created a manned rover-base and landed it.

 

The mission was successful overall, and the crew visited all biomes and anomalies.

 

One small problem, though.

 

See that little beige dot above the rover? That's the cockpit. 1 kilometer away.

So, I had to drive the rear of the base over towards it, close enough for the engineer to screw it back on. And this happened not once but twice.

On loading, WorldStabilizer would sometimes get a bit enthusiastic, and... Well, you see.

 

Fortunately, nobody died. Always a good thing. Here are some pictures of them heading home.

(Disregard the KFC flag)

Nice packing job. The next step in your training is to use the 2.5 m cargo bay as a transport for up to 16 Kerbals. HINT: You'll need external command seats.

[CatastrophicFailure]

11 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

I'm working on a 6 Kerbal VTOL craft called Honeybee. 

May not be setting the best precedent with that name... 

Spoiler

Brain of a pocket calculator + eyesight of a mole...

...just sayin’... 

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, Zosma Procyon said:

What are the coordinate of the memorial?

Answered this very question not too long ago...from a post I did in early 2014. The coordinates haven't changed in all that time. 

Edited October 30, 2018 by capi3101