What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Lisias]

8 hours ago, Schwarz said:

I messed up my first try diving too little, and now i have to get the plane back up there again for a second try

I feel you pain, bro.  My life would be a lot easier if I manage to remember to use the QuickSave!

[Hotel26]

16 minutes ago, Lisias said:

My life would be a lot easier if I manage to remember to use the QuickSave!

Before take-off/launch; before landing; before approaching dock to a space station; and before brushing teeth...

[capi3101]

(1.4.5) Yesterday saw a continuation of my efforts to expand the Boot Hill outpost on Mun and the Deepwater Horizon refinery outpost on Minmus. I had an epiphany yesterday - while I knew neither base could manufacture Equipment in-situ with Pathfinder's Ironworks module, I could use alternative power sources to keep them up and running six hours per bol. Boot Hill is now partially running on a geothermal tap that happened to exist at the site, and partially running on fusion pellets... 

Boot Hill on Mun at sunset . It's only fitting that Kerbals who have mastered FTL travel should have access to nuclear fusion. I'm debating as to whether or not I really need those solar panels now...

I can get a nuclear fission plant up and running at Deepwater Horizon, at which point I think I can safely recycle much of the original outpost. Might need to happen regardless; the DH base is so large at this point that the game is ultra-laggy in its vicinity. 

The experimental base I created using the Coydog 7 base-seeding rover I established near the KSC obelisk also has become fairly mature at this point, and I'm debating whether or not I want to keep it or go ahead and recover it. Engineer Hudbree Kerman has done an outstanding piece of work out there despite her lack of experience (I'm still wondering how I managed to wind up with a zero-star kerbal on my roster that I didn't hire...).

In other news, Necessary Evil returned to Kerbin from her recent trip out to Minmus, docking safely at space station Kerbinport. An Auk XII 6-passenger spaceplane was sent up to the station to retreive tourists Samory, Samcal, Jafrid and Ludbur Kerman along with engineer Merrick Kerman, who had been rescued from low Minmus orbit. The plane docked safely, the passengers were transferred and then the plane landed safely at KSC 09, fulfilling four contracts in the process and giving me access to another engineer. Merrick will likely head out to the Coydog base later today to take over for Hudbree; Hudbree has earned herself a trip to Kerbin's moons to gain some much needed experience.

Got six RL days until I'm scheduled to switch over to version 1.5, pending the readiness of my standard set of mods. Most of them are go-for-launch at this point. I want to at least get to the point where I can launch an Alcubierre drive before then. Still haven't decided if I'll begin a new career save when I finally switchover or not; probably will...

Edited November 9, 2018 by capi3101

[SpaceTrashCan]

 

So this happened today  

[Raptor42]

On 11/8/2018 at 2:09 AM, Kronus_Aerospace said:

Today I decided to finally try out the Camera Tools mod, It was pretty neat. This Duna spacecraft had just arrived in my main career save, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to test the waters in KSP video-making.
I'm definitely gonna have to buy Bandicam at this point, I'm getting tired of that watermark.

I use OBS, it doesn't have watermark and it is free

[Jett_Quasar]

I've been on a rover kick lately...

 - Jett

[XLjedi]

On ‎11‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 8:09 PM, Kronus_Aerospace said:

I'm definitely gonna have to buy Bandicam at this point, I'm getting tired of that watermark.

Bandicam?  Why?   …think I just press Win-G for freebie game recording.

[Hotel26]

On 11/8/2018 at 9:09 AM, Kronus_Aerospace said:

I'm definitely gonna have to buy Bandicam at this point, I'm getting tired of that watermark.

I've sued Bandicam in the past.  [That typo is too good to correct!!]

I strongly recommend OBS for recording and OpenShot for editing.  S'wot I do , anyway.

UPDATE: yeah, what Raptor42 said above seconded...

Edited November 10, 2018 by Hotel26

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

Today, I tortured my computer.

We'll see how this goes. No, it hasn't finished loading yet.

EDIT: actually, it's been a while but IIRC Realism Overhaul can be much worse than this.

Edited November 10, 2018 by ThatGuyWithALongUsername

[Cavscout74]

What time I had today was mostly passing time, but I stopped time warp for a while to test a new heavy SSTO that potentially can refuel, restock & ferry crews for my fleet of interplanetary crew cyclers.  It's build with a Mk 3 fuselage plus a pair of side mounted 2.5m tanks, and powered by a pair of Wildblue Scimitar 2.5m multi-mode engines and a FTMn-280 NERV.  First flight went entirely too smooth for an SSTO first flight.  It was a nose heavy - needed the drop off at the end of the runway to actually lift off, then needed a lot of attention to keep the nose above the horizon, at least until it got over ~450 m/s.  But it made orbit easily, with plenty of dV to spare - although a lot of that fuel is intended to be offloaded to refuel the crew cyclers, and the 2.5m tanks were all dumped to simulate that.  Then reentry went pretty well, although it was again hard to keep the nose up until I transferred the remaining fuel as far back as possible.  Right up until ~50-60m above the runway, when I was a little too fast & I thought "oh, I'll pop the 'chutes a little early to help slow down."  The only problem was, due to the size of this plane, I had decided to use a pair of main parachutes as drag chutes instead of just drogue chutes like I usually do.  Slowed me all the way down to ~40 m/s, then slammed tail first into the runway.  Amazingly, the fuselage survived & pilot walked away - so that qualifies as a good landing.  The wings, side tanks, engines & the runway didn't fair as well.

Ready for take off.

Climb out - once it got above 450 m/s, it REALLY started accelerating fast.  I had to keep it around 15-20 degrees over the horizon or I probably would've started overheating some parts.

In orbit

After "landing."   I probably should have tested this in sandbox instead of career - lost most of the nearly 300k spaceplane plus the runway repairs.  At least the cockpit & 4-star pilot survived.

[Xurkitree]

A progress report:

Me months ago: Couldn't rendezvous or dock, and installed MechJeb for that reason only

Me now: Docks vessels with an Ion tug with no RCS by docking them to the tug, then using the tug to throw them at the respective docking ports, undock, and get clear. 

[aagun123]

[Broken pictures removed by moderator]

Edited January 28, 2019 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[MR L A]

On 11/9/2018 at 12:55 PM, Hotel26 said:

Before take-off/launch; before landing; before approaching dock to a space station; and before brushing teeth...

I play with quicksaves off because I'm a madman

13 hours ago, Jett_Quasar said:

I've been on a rover kick lately...

 - Jett

Rovers are the one thing I've never really been able to build well...

I try to balance practicality, part count, and aesthetics with everything I design... but rovers have consistently defeated me 

6 hours ago, Xurkitree said:

A progress report:

Me months ago: Couldn't rendezvous or dock, and installed MechJeb for that reason only

Me now: Docks vessels with an Ion tug with no RCS by docking them to the tug, then using the tug to throw them at the respective docking ports, undock, and get clear. 

That sounds a lot like you've mastered a very difficult solution to an average-difficulty task 

[FezCool]

7 hours ago, Xurkitree said:

A progress report:

Me months ago: Couldn't rendezvous or dock, and installed MechJeb for that reason only

Me now: Docks vessels with an Ion tug with no RCS by docking them to the tug, then using the tug to throw them at the respective docking ports, undock, and get clear. 

Same man.

[Tyko]

Well, restarted again...Since 1.4.x I've been experiencing graphics glitches with ReScale 2.5x - oddly the 3.2x version is fine. 2.5x was also still a little easier than I wanted. I really wanted to challenge my craft building using Stock and stockalike parts. So, I restarted the game in 3.2x GPP and with Science set at 20%. It's been great and given me the chance to rethink a lot of my favorite designs with an eye towards weight reduction and optimization at every stage. 

I finally launched my first small station and have been fine tuning my new orbital 2-crew craft - Kind of Gemini/MOL inspired with a Kerbal twist. With USI-LS the station can support a crew for 100 days max, but I'm aiming for a 30 day rotation cycle.

 

[AdamFra]

I know this is an old topic, but today I made a science parachute capsule in KSP.

[Puggonaut]

Meanwhile in KSP 151 Bill touches that button....................

 

[Jett_Quasar]

9 minutes ago, Puggonaut said:

Meanwhile in KSP 151 Bill touches that button....................

I'm sure there's an easier way to get your space station to Mars!

That's an awesome graphics mod, what's your build?

Edited November 10, 2018 by Jett_Quasar

[Puggonaut]

6 minutes ago, Jett_Quasar said:

I'm sure there's an easier way to get your space station to Mars!

That's an awesome graphics mod, what's your build?

KSP 1.5.1

If ya mean my PC

i7 8086k ( Unclocked ) 32gb ram GTX 1070

Oh and about 7 visual mods ( 2 of which are no longer available ) & a few config tweaks .

Edited November 10, 2018 by Puggonaut 2

[capi3101]

(1.4.5) Spent most of my day yesterday at the Deepwater Horizon refinery outpost on Minmus. I had a contract to establish a new outpost on Minmus with a fairly minimal set of requirements and had spent some time on Thursday machining up the parts I would need for the new outpost. Engineer Halbur Kerman began by loading those parts aboard the rover Fwot parked just beside the original refinery array.

 

Fwot, the original refinery, and the Texas Cyclone^TM under construction.

 

Halbur along with scientist Phorie Kerman drove the loaded Fwot five kilometers to the south of the existing base and set up a minimal set of structures, more than enough for a five-Kerbal requirement, and one of those structures included a set of drills for ore mining, fulfilling a requirement for 1000 ore. Halbur and Phorie stuck around long enough to machine up an extra solar panel array, an antenna and a docking port, which fulfilled all the requirements of the contract.

 

Deepwater Horizon, South Annex - 100% made on Minmus.

 

Only catch there is that the requirement was for a new outpost on Minmus, and I'd forgotten that the game wouldn't count if if the parts came from a pre-existing craft. Ran into this same thing a couple of versions back with the Faux News 7 orbital satellite construction craft. I certainly am counting the contract as done...probably will go ahead and alt-F12 that puppy later today.

 

After Phorie and Halbur returned to the main base, engineer Julfry continued to expand the base with two new Pathfinder Hogan structures, a landing pad (a launch pad, actually, but I lack the necessary mod to use it as a construction site for new craft - as I guess I've already said), and a nuclear fusion generation system. The inclusion of atomic power meant that much of the original refinery structure designed for power production had become redundant, and since there were enough parts present to drag the frame rate in the vicinity below 10 FPS, I had Julfry begin dismantling those parts.

 

The crappy part is that I know I didn't get anything back for most of this stuff, despite what it may look like in the screenie...

 

By the end of the day, the refinery was down about a hundred parts and the game was playing much more smoothly in its vicinity. The business end of the structure is still present at this point - all the drills, winches, connector ports, lander legs, fuel tanks and ISRU are all still there. I'm pretty much done with making changes to DH at this point, barring the need to produce any additional power or increase drilling capabilities.

 

The finished Deepwater Horizon refinery base.

 

Not much else happened yesterday. I did some expansions to the Boot Hill outpost on Mun, and Jeb returned to Kerbin alone aboard his craft Strange Cargo. Strange Cargo survived aerobraking and is currently on course to dock at space station Kerbinport, which I hope to do sometime later today.

 

Edited November 10, 2018 by capi3101
posted too early.

[Fraston]

nothing, EVERYTHING ON STEAM  SAYS "Quit unexpectedly" APON STARTUP!!!  I UPDATED MY MAC TO TRY TO FIX IT, BUT IT DOESNT WORK! HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[GDJ]

[anoldtincan]

Having spent all the money on the initial Minmus Base Camp infrastructure, the last few days have been about bringing the program back from the brink of bankruptcy.

A slower than expected colony plan for Minmus has led to the Recall of the crew of the KS-1 Valentina from Mun to Kerbin orbit. only problem is, they only had enough fuel to bring their orbit down about halfway from the Mun to LKO, even with the efficiency boost of using the Springbok lander's nuclear engines. Here they are departing:

To bring them to a manageable LKO slot, the first RC-1 Pachyderm orbital tug was launched to their aid. Designed to haul base components from LKO to Minmus, the shakedown run is necessary to keep the crew of the Val within reasonable distance of the KSC.

Launch took place on a reliable workhorse C-4 Kittewake rocket.

And the orbital tug unveiled. Features include two ports, lots of dV and a decent relay dish for when it is idling in orbit around a moon. I tried to maximize the altitude from the booster so as to save fuel, and the result was a cool reentry screenshot from a booster coming in hotter than normal.

Back in space, the RC-1 insterted itself right between the Springbok lander and the Val. I am considering using an RC-1 to replace the current obsolete drive section of the Val, which has now been at work for more than a year and a half.

Back at Minmus, the KW-4 Stallion science rover, first of the Minmus Base Camp architecture, arrives at Minmus, and immediately encounters issues

The monoprop skycrane, on the left, was to detach from the end node and dock with the top docking port, however, the skycrane itself had no reaction wheels, only RCS. Even that short distance to reorient was too much - the RCS/SAS combo went crazy and I was blasting away from the rover before able to dock. Concerned about fuel, I did my best to bring down the skycrane alone, to mark the eventual Base Camp location; it did, but not without losing a landing leg in the process. When the first colonists arrive they already have chores.

The rover itself remains in orbit. Without the probe core on the crane it cannot take commands until it is manned. A pilot will have to descend in the rover and use the transfer stage to land - thankfully this is Minmus, and not a higher gravity body.

Next to launch was the first base camp structures - a hab module and a science lab, and another skycrane built for the larger modules. without a tranfer stage, it is currently in orbit waiting for the RC-1 to be topped off and push it out to Minmus.

This was the first recovery that overshot the LZ - still go most of the cash back though.

Next I launched Samman Kerman on the 5th Pipistrelle flight for a tourist. It was relatively uneventful, which was welcome following this craft's rocky start to operations.

Only overshot the runway a bit and had to taxi back.

While waiting for the Valentina's resupply craft to be built; i flew two missions - I put a Swellshark probe in a high parking orbit to await the Duna transfer window, and flew a survey mission with a KA-9 Tayra, rapidly becoming my favorite little plane to fly at 20,000 m.

Final launch was a Bendiri supply ship - version 1.2 includes greater fuel capacity and configurable tanks on the same recoverable bus, although i ditched the landing legs in favor of targeted water landings. Beefed up, the launcher was upgraded from a C-2 Tern to a C-4 Kittiwake. The expense per launch has gone way up (From about 65k funds to almost 200k) but the entire system is recoverable.

Here is the supply ship approaching the Val/RC-1 on the dark side of Kerbin. I previously moved the Springbok lander autonomously to join the KS-2 Kujira, freeing up the aft docking port.

Still working on getting funds, but with a few tourism contracts in the works, I should be getting Minmus Base Camp up and running by next weekend.

 

[Space Kadet]

Feckin Kraken

[Mignear]

Slight tweak to the wing design, and more attempts to fix its tendencies to flip out