What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Pthigrivi]

No prob, @RB101

Anyhoo figured Id make myself busy overhauling my KSOI infrastructure while waiting for the Jool window to open up. New moon base! Hab, science, and service wings with a pretty robust rover for long excursions, all plonked down with a reusable skycrane.



Here's some assembly images:

Spoiler

Some assembly required:




Top things off at the Munar orbital station:


This descent was dicier than I'd hoped. Maybe next time I'll go for a higher local TWR than 1.2.


Meanwhile:


Skycrane back to Munar orbit.


To pick up the rover... Should be good to drop any future expansion modules.


Really like this roll-in-roll-out system. 


And there we go! The rovers a bit overscaled but it doubles as a surface construction vehicle moving modules in and out of place as the base expands. 

 

Edited November 25, 2018 by Pthigrivi

[Hoff]

Today I...

Made a stupid attempt at getting to hyper speed. By using hyper edit.

conclusion! : Crashed the game.

Also I emptied  my inter-planetary science storage unit, (it’s in solar orbit) to get all of the juicy science points! (Probably wasn’t worth it!)

[Guest]

That base is a work of art, @Pthigrivi

[Pthigrivi]

Thanks, @Brikoleur  
 

1 hour ago, Geonovast said:

 

Yeah I don't recall that wuss Chuck Yeager pushing mach 5 at ASL. 

[Delay]

I don't know why I did what I did, but I decided to leave Kerbol via ridiculous, infinite-fuel-based rocket.

Where did I go wrong?

[Zosma Procyon]

After over a month (real time) of waiting, my sea plane base landed on Laythe. And although it doesn't seem to work as well in 1.5.1 as it did in 1.4.5, it can takeoff from the seas of Laythe. I did film the atmospheric entry, but not being very experienced with flying planes I made a total mess of it. It didn't crash, but I stalled several times and zoomed in awkwardly on others.

Just after the engines ignited.

Just before the first landing in the open ocean. I took off immediately to look at a nearby island.

This island with the lakes just north of the equator.

And here I am banking around to land in this lake.

Asis my custom, I awarded it a proper name upon landing. It is now "Hyperboria Base".

Edited November 27, 2018 by Zosma Procyon

[Fraston]

2 minutes ago, Zosma Procyon said:

And here I am banking around to land in this lake.

That isn't a paper airplane, thats a flying paper mountain! what's the wingspan?

[Xurkitree]

https://imgur.com/gallery/prlQcgO

I made an Ion Plane in Duna

[kapteenipirk]

Wasn't done today.

Here's a little something i wanted to show but didn't think was worth a proper post.

 

 

The aircraft started it's life as a long-range heavy-bomber. I had built most of it when i taught that why not turn it into an airliner instead.

I reused the idea of using the V-22 Osprey engines as propellers for a custom engine. I also this time succeeded in creating a pretty good looking custom-cockpit out of A+ cockpit's.

The windows and doors also turned out surprisingly good.

The aircraft is a bit slow and sluggish, but it does have a really long range.

 

Here's a few more shots of the aircraft

Spoiler

A closer look at the custom engine, and some of the other detailing.

 

The side-view reminds me very much of the DC-4/DC-6, while the overall design is perhaps a little more like the XB-19.

 

Fully capable of landing and taking off from the island-runway without the need for a turn-around.

The Osprey engines tilt 90 degrees down when you put the brakes down, hence why you cant see them in this pick.

 

And that's pretty much it, another one of my "let's build something by basically just slapping some bit's together and seeing where it goes" type of crafts.

[RizzoTheRat]

I'm sure this is old hat for many of you, but having built a new PC (I've gone from a Phenom X4 with a very old graphics card, to a i5 8500k with a GTX1080) I've installed a host of graphics mods, and launched Jeb on is first flight of a new career.  Safe to say he looked impressed at the views, and I'm pretty happy with the 60 science he brought back (including contracts)!

 

 

 

 

 

I'm looking forward to exploring the solar system in all it's high resolution glory.

 

A massive thanks to all the mod developers who make this possible!

Edited November 25, 2018 by RizzoTheRat

[RealKerbal3x]

Tried installing the most basic graphics mod, Para-Sci Atmosphere Pack. Despite it not even having volumetric clouds, my computer still slowed down considerably. I guess I'll have to stick to the stock visuals for now.

[Hotel26]

Some time back, I made a Krew Bus, based on the idea of a mobile airport lounge.  (I rode on one back in the '80s at Dulles International Airport.)

The concept is not particularly glamorous and the Kerbal execution of it (above) is particularly ugly but why bother building large-capacity passenger jets if you can't efficiently transfer passengers?  Krew Bus is setup to dock with Mk1, Mk2 and Mk3 equipment, just the facility you'd expect at a major hub airport.

Tonight, I was flying my meTro, which is a commuter airplane, 8 pax in Mk1 cabins, which are notoriously inconvenient for passenger access.  So I thought that regional airports could stand a smaller vehicle for passenger transfer.  Before I even built it, I knew there was a better idea available, but I built it anyway, because I thought it might be fun and worth showing.  It is!  Behold, AirStairs:

 

But here's the better idea.  I've upgraded my strangely-named Boom Vang terrestrial base to itself act as an airport terminal as well as control tower as well as base personnel (32 Kerbal) accommodation:

 

Now there's no need for any kind of bus at a regional airport.  The meTro just pulls up to the control tower, docks at the "terminal", unloads pax to the ground Mk3 cabin ("Arrivals") and loads pax from the upper Mk3 ("departures"), undocks and then uses its reverser to pull back from the terminal.  Very swift.

 

Edited November 25, 2018 by Hotel26

[Raptor42]

Today I forgot to add antenna to my Minmus Space Station... so I have to wait 10 more days for my money

*edit* Actually my ion-powered scanner has one antenna (that is conviniently attached to station) which should cut it

Edited November 26, 2018 by Raptor42

[Zosma Procyon]

19 hours ago, Fraston said:

That isn't a paper airplane, thats a flying paper mountain! what's the wingspan?

About 40 meters I think. I wanted to make absolutely sure it could liftoff on Laythe.

[qzgy]

I.... "buffed" ion engines (and some other parts) to an outright dumb degree.

[CatastrophicFailure]

2 hours ago, qzgy said:

I.... "

I want to see the kaboom. ಠ_ಠ

[Cavscout74]

I've continued on my 1.5.1 career despite some issues (disappearing fuel for one).  Ended today with a second Minmus landing & launching the first satellite bound for Duna.

Val doing some exploration - thanks to a convenient "Test Panther at the launch site" contract

Her landing wasn't quite as good as her flying.  In her defense, Val actually had a controlled landing.  The explosions started after hitting a dip in the terrain.

First launch failure in this career, a tourist rocket shortly after launch suffered a main engine failure.  The entire upper stage decouples & the engine fires in abort mode until fuel is exhausted.  Once clear, the passenger module decouples from the upper stage & deploys drogues, then main chutes.

Apparently after I had set up the abort action group on the tourist rocket, I changed main engines so when I hit abort, the non-failed one continued boosting the first stage up to 224km rather than shut down like it was supposed to.

Space walk in LKO while waiting to rendezvous for a rescue mission. 

[Mars-Bound Hokie]

I sent a rover to the Mun and rescued two tourists trapped in a mobile base wreckage. I just need to send a lander down to pick them up and they're home-free, but that's easy.

[Cydonian Monk]

Yesterday I finally found some time to sit down and play a bit of KSP v1.5.1. It's still... buggy?... or something, but at least it works provided I don't use most of the mods I typically use. Or attempt to use anything that has wheels or landing legs. Or try to exit the game, which always causes it to crash (the end result is the same as what I'm after, so....).

I started a quick career game with science rewards cranked up to 250% and money basically free-flowing (because I like some of the contracts but don't like grinding for funds). During the course of that career I launched a handful of Sputnik clones into stationary orbit to use as communications relays, followed by a series of Voskhod clones, the last of which went up to a small space station.

I'm not sure how much more time I'll put into v1.5.1. From the sounds of it 1.6.x is on the horizon, and will almost certainly be out and probably up to its 3rd or 4th patch before I'm able to put any real time in this game again.

Cheers,

Edited November 26, 2018 by Cydonian Monk

[Servo]

I finalized my A-10, then took it to the desert for screenshots and final testing.

Strange wing problems aside, this is my favorite screenshot of the 'Hog. 

Did I say testing? I meant Testing the GAU-8. Because I had to make one that worked, of course. One bonus of building with communatrons is that your gun doubles as a chaff dispenser.

I released it here: https://kerbalx.com/servo/A-10-Warthog 

 

[Schwarz]

Bigger isn't always better.
At least when I decided to find out how hard the twin bridge challenge is.

[Hotel26]

1 hour ago, Schwarz said:

Bigger isn't always better.

Banked might work -- on the diagonal?

With a little counter rudder...

Edited November 26, 2018 by Hotel26

[DJWyre]

Decided to try a Klaw mission for the first time in my 500+ hours of KSP. I'm not sure what to expect for my first one, maybe a Flea? A capsule?

No.

Spoiler

What? I.... What?

Eventually manage to grab it, but with limited fuel and no RCS (totally forgot to bring) it's off-balance and it takes about 5 mins at max 5% thrust to get it away from Mun to a 60km Kerbin periapsis.

Then begins what is probably dozens of aerobrakes, bleeding off 5-10% of it's apoapsis each time. The last few I even burn what little fuel that's left to keep the periapsis above 50km.
Eventually it's time for the final decent.

Spoiler

By the skin of my teeth I wrestle it through re-entry, now there was a new issue: how to land it.

Spoiler

Easy......

Dammit!

I check the impact tolerance for the Kickback: 7m/s.

I cheat and reload the landing several times, opening the solar panels and ditching the heat shield. I can get it down to 7.0 or 7.1m/s but it keeps blowing up.
Eventually I try swinging it back and forth on the reaction wheels, but it needs perfect timing for it to hit the ground at 6.9m/s. But after a few goes....

Spoiler

Huzzah!

I don't know if I will be doing any more of these in the future, at least not until I have the 10m shield unlocked.

[Laie]

10 hours ago, Schwarz said:

At least when I decided to find out how hard the twin bridge challenge is.

Hand, meet glove.

[Tyko]

On 11/22/2018 at 10:58 PM, Brikoleur said:

By the way, these dad-blasted fairings. The aero is definitely bugged. I couldn't take hacking with fairings anymore (I would have had to run the full suite of deployment tests again)  and just brute-forced my way to orbit (it worked because the aero is bugged with the fairings themselves, not the contents, so my craft was symmetrically inefficient) but it's something to keep in mind for the future.

Back to back fairings don't work as you'd expect. The aero model sees the flat face of the backward-pointing fairing. I.e. the forward-facing fairing does nothing. There were massive drag spikes as well as a quite a bit of heating on the way up which should not have happened.

So a solution for backward-pointing cargo nodes compatible with kerbal physics would only have to use forward-facing fairings. That could be done by connecting the attachment point to the floor on which the cargo sits and clipping it through the fairing at front. 

That still leaves the flat back. Since backward-pointing fairings can't solve that problem, it would have to be attempted with some other aerodynamic parts -- although who knows, they might be similarly bugged.

Shame FAR isn't compatible beyond 1.3.1.