What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Cavscout74]

I suffered my first casualty in my current career today.  While test flying a new single-seat prop aircraft, pilot Hilsy Kerman was fatally injured following a controlled flight into terrain near the KSC.  The really bad part, the basic design wasn't bad & Albo Kerman made the initial test flight ok, but while buzzing the VAB got a little too close & lost a wing.  Since he was in the process of pulling up, I had time to bail & deploy his chute.  He actually made the first successful parachute landing I've made on the VAB.  Poor Hilsy, flying the improved version, was attempting to buzz the R&D center & a moment of distraction allowed the nose to drop while flying at high speed about a meter or two off the ground with disastrous results.

Albo flying the CFP-01 on it's maiden flight

Albo on top of the VAB after bailing out

Hilsy in the improved version shortly before her accident

On a related note, Minmus Station has been renamed Hilsy Kerman Memorial Station. 

On the plus side, the fusion drive version of my interplanetary crew cycler is in HKO, awaiting a high-dV transfer to Jool in about 230 days.  And in 1 year, 227 days it will enter Jool orbit at roughly the same altitude as Laythe.  I didn't try to set exact intercepts yet, just got a rough idea what it was going to take for time & dV.  It will still have over 75 km/s dV remaining without using flybys of any Joolian moons.  The nuclear crew cycler, PCC-02 Babylon currently carrying Jeb & company to Jool isn't set to arrive in Jool's SoI for another 2 years & 40 days, and it's already been in space for 290 days.

Finally, I performed a successful test jump of FTL drive.  Test vessel over Eve, raising it's orbit for a safer return jump.  I'm more sure than ever - especially with the development of the fusion drive ships - that I'm just going to drop the FTL drive mod.  It's a neat idea & worked well, just doesn't feel right to me.

[Triop]

Looking through my old files I found my dusty hydrofoil.

I took it for a drive/flight/sail ?

https://kerbalx.com/Triop/Hydrofoil-racer-X

 

Edited January 26, 2019 by Triop

[NorthernDevo]

Holy...

Gasp...pant...

Well; this was certainly the most terrifying return I've ever been a part of - a total and complete nailbiter and I'm not just having fun with the language here. How on Earth I managed to pull it off, I really have no idea.

My science mission to Minmus was a success but there were so many points along the way where it nearly ended in disaster.

Following a textbook landing on the Mint Frosted Moon's Lesser Flats, Engineer Algee and Scientist Sanmore suffered their first glitch while conducting ground experiments. One of the devices proved hard to reach and Sanmore tried to retrieve its data by climbing out of the Rover Max's top hatch. She stumbled and fell, breaking the port solar panel. Now - that's not a major worry; the vehicle simply charges a bit more slowly and RM has redundant fuel cells built in for security. It was, however, a clue to how things were going to go.

The Rover Max behaved superbly on its circumnavigation of Minmus, carrying its crew on their journey with solid reliability. They quickly racked up full experiments from every equatorial biome, visited both the Black and Green Monoliths (the latter being conveniently spawned right on the Greater Flats), and carried out several surveys called up by Gene. 

Things went bad though when the Human Controller (ahem...waves) made a dumb mistake and accidentally hit the space bar while reaching for his coffee. Bang! There goes all the externally-stored mono-propellant; 4 Cylindrified Monoprop Tanks flying to the sides like depth charges from a K-gun volley.

Following a string of vocal comments that sounded like some of the more colourful moments in Breaking Bad, the Human Controller continued the mission, with approximately 30% more fuel than required to reach the return ship in orbit. So long as nothing else dumb happened, we'd be OK.

Yup - you guessed it. 

The journey to the Pole went perfectly; Algee electing to make a diversion to chase down a seismic anomaly into the nearby Highlands for Gene. Rather than waste fuel running the fuel cell, it was easy enough to simply turn and race towards Kerbol until the remaining solar panel began charging the batteries.

All in all, a terribly fun mission. We covered the entirety of the Green Timbit's biomes and the last hour saw Rover Max racing south at 50kph to intercept the return vehicle's orbital track.

(Rover Max races South to pick up the orbital track)

Then...disaster.

I was relaxing; it was going well. Just one more survey string to run for Gene; this one almost on the line of the orbital track.I forgot to zoom out to look ahead - at 50kph on Minmus the Rover takes a long time to slow down - it's off the ground half the time.

Rover Max launched itself off the hills just north of Great Flats and sailed into a high, fatal arc. No help for it - I activated the jump jets, killed the Rover AP, flipped orientation to 'up' and conducted a decent belly-down landing; exactly how the Rover Max had been designed to do. 

Buuuuuut.... according to the Subway Map, it takes 180 Dv to reach orbit. 

I had 181 left.

Problem!!!!

Now - if this was 'normal' difficulty no probs - just F5-F9 until I get it. But not on Hard mode, no revert. I needed a way to shave those numbers.

I found it.

First, I closed the solar panel and drove around hard for a while, draining the battery. Then I turned the fuel cell on and waited for two days until it exhausted the Baguette tank. I was now as light as I could possibly be - with a DV of 188.

It would have to do.

I drove East until I was on Great Flats, made sure I was right under the orbital track and gunned it. With the reaction wheel and traction control off, Rover Max can hit nearly 70 kph on the flats. I got her going as fast as she would, then restarted the reaction wheel and TC, set speed control for 100 and ramped her off the slopes to the East, helping with a burst of monoprop. As she sailed into space with an AP of 7 kms, I set that number into MechJeb's Ascent Guidance, flipped Max's orientation to 'Up' and engaged.

It worked - brilliantly. Max's blistering land speed was nearly half that required for orbit and while 7km is white-knucklingly low for an orbit, it just clears the highest hills. I made it into orbit with nearly 30% of that 188 DV left. There was enough to target the return vehicle, match planes (1.3 degrees), plot a VERY conservative interception and rendezvous with the return ship.

(Rover Max ascends to RV with the return vessel)

(A picture-perfect interception. LOL check out the remaining fuel!)

There wasn't enough fuel left in RM's tank to deorbit the machine and really, I'm rather glad - she's a proud vehicle and did a magnificent job. Rover Max deserves more than to end up a pile of scrap on a distant moon. I hope one day we'll come out this way again to collect her. She'll have pride of place in the Kerbsonian Museum.

(Algee and Sanmore transfer to the return vessel with loads of science.)

Upon entry into the ship, I got another startling discovery: I thought this pod had built-in attitude-hold SAS. It doesn't - and neither Algee nor Sanmore is a pilot.

Oooops.

Well kids, this is where knowing the nav-ball REALLY becomes important. The little ship wiggling around like crazy, I got her going prograde right at the return point, then held down Q for a few seconds, putting in gyroscopic stability. A quick burn to break orbit, advance until I'm back in Kerbin's SOI, stabilize at retro and spin the ship like crazy again - those were two woozy little Kerbals by the time I was done with 'em. Burn to an Pe of 30, then since (Doh!) the life-support canisters are in the fuel tank, wait to detach the engine until the ship's well past the 70Km mark. 

(And yes, forget to transfer life support from the canisters to the command pod.)

Fortunately, even unguided the pod was beautifully stable and conducted a lovely 3g re-entry. Lovely, until the Mk 16 chute decided to take forever to open; not fully deploying until she was a scant 200m off the ground! She smacked hard, destroying the heat shield but saving the pod. Algee and Sanmore - and all their data - were shaken up, bumped and bruised but alive!

And the reward...was worth it.

Whew!

What a nailbiter - I definitely have to iron those bugs out.

Cheers!

 

Edited January 26, 2019 by NorthernDevo

[Xurkitree]

Today I launched 14 payloads to orbit for the Sigma Initiative.

I have created a huge fuel station with attached ISRU Drill Lander/Tug, but I had to launch it completely drained of fuel.

So today I kept sending up 1 payload over and over - a Mk3 Long LF Fuselage and kept docking and kept transferring and so on.

At one point TAC Fuel Balancer stopped working entirely.

I finished the final payload and now I'm sending a payload of Monoprop and Xenon and then the ship can leave for Moho.

[Delay]

So, yesterday I captured a class E asteroid. Turns out that with it I only have 24m/s, which was just enough to get it into a somewhat stable orbit. It buys me enough time to send a new craft up and get it into a proper orbit.

That happened today.

I also decided (a little late, frankly) to use the opportunity to go to Eve for a satellite contract.

I can't wait for the moment when I get the bigger landing legs and the appropriate probe core. The satellite was 4 t, something I could have gotten to orbit with a boostback and a second stage.
For now I had to deorbit it and let it burn up.

And I finally got to go back home after spending a lot of time in Gilly orbit!

[eddiew]

Spotted a celestial alignment.

Where Jannah is gold and sparkly, Hephaestus is... less so. Beige, wrinkled, mottled, and covered in what might be lava flows, it falls under the 'interesting but ugly' category.

Nontheless, the team had fuel to do a quick biome hop, doubling up on their science return before returning to orbit and setting course for Augustus and the mainstay of the expedition.

[NorthernDevo]

40 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Spotted a celestial alignment.

Where Jannah is gold and sparkly, Hephaestus is... less so. Beige, wrinkled, mottled, and covered in what might be lava flows, it falls under the 'interesting but ugly' category.

Nontheless, the team had fuel to do a quick biome hop, doubling up on their science return before returning to orbit and setting course for Augustus and the mainstay of the expedition.

Gorgeous! 

[capi3101]

Not much to report for my afternoon and evening activities yesterday. No screenies either, I'm afraid - all the ones I took just weren't all that terribly interesting to look at...

My afternoon began with a refueling mass driver shot from the South Base outpost near KSC to space station Kerbinport. Owing to the fact that South Base had just resupplied LSV House Harkonnen in a 300 kilometer equatorial orbit over Kerbin after that ship's initial infrastructure mission to the Duna/Ike SOI, there wasn't sufficient Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer available to completely refuel the station. I made sure that the two Brew Works refineries at South Base were set to manufacture LF/LOX before heading off to do other things.

Floppy rocket syndrome showing up at Kerbinport had me a little concerned, so next I got out of my game to check to see what was up with my KJR install. Turns out that a version or two back, I had deleted and failed to replace one of the KJR .dll dependencies, which is why it wasn't working properly. A quick reinstall job later, floppy rocket syndrome was no longer apparent at Kerbinport or Harkonnen. Pretty happy about that. 

An Auk VII 16-passenger spaceplane I had launched earlier in the day yesterday arrived at Kerbinport, and after shuffling around kerbals at the station, nine colonists - Linbo, Richlong, Jorbro, Merwise, Genenard, Juldous, Cerlin, Theofel and Sonden Kerman - embarked aboard Strange Cargo docked and fueled at the station, with Jeb giving up the driver's seat to Sonden (generally the ship operates on its probe core anyway). Strange Cargo departed Kerbinport and burned for Mun, where it should arrive in a few hours' time. From there the nine colonists will make their way to the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun. The colonist contracts for PA don't pay nearly as well as the one I got for Deepwater Horizon on Minmus a few days ago, but every little bit helps. After Strange Cargo departed, the Auk departed and landed safely at KSC 09, taking tourist Halvin Kerman back down with it; his contract was for a mere up-and-down, which had been well completed at that point.

The Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe under construction at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus was completed and released from its mooring. I immediately realized that I'd forgotten to fuel it up - luckily it had a small amount of monopropellant aboard and was able to turn around and grab ahold of the drydock. Fuel was shot up to Non Mentha and transferred to the probe, which then was released a second time and burned for a rendezvous with its target, a MOLE Mark One Habitat that Non Mentha's crew had brought up from the surface of Minmus a few days ago. That rendezvous is scheduled to take place in the next half hour.

Earlier I'd reported that the print job of a TBD 7c rover at House Harkonnen was scheduled to take 36 days to complete, which I'd classed as "not really acceptable". With attempts to cancel the print job causing the game to crash, I decided to take an alternative approach and attempt to rectify a flaw in Harkonnen's design by giving the craft a MOLE Bigby Workshop in an attempt to speed things up (I'd added MOLE laboratories inadvertently when I'd first designed the ship, and as a result Harkonnen's vessel productivity never got above 0.8 despite having a very competent crew aboard). A dockable Bigby module was designed; the original plan was for Harkonnen to print that up itself but with the game crashing, I elected to do it the old-fashioned way. After adding a 700 m/s transfer stage (roughly three times what's required to boost from 100-300 km over Kerbin) and booster to the design, a workshop was shot up to Harkonnen and docked successfully. Once the crew transferred into the workshop, the productivity jumped from 0.8 to 11.2 instantly - the TBD print job will now complete in a mere seven hours. The plan is to complete that job and before releasing it, use the TBD and Harkonnen's mass driver to store some Equipment aboard. Once that's done, Harkonnen is heading back to Duna, where the TBD will land and establish the Enchova Central outpost on the surface. It's looking like this is going to happen now; the only potential sticking point I'm seeing is that the TBD was designed in the SPH instead of the VAB (i.e. it's oriented horizontally instead of vertically), so there's a chance it may not fit in Harkonnen's drydock. Hopefully it does and the colonization of Duna can commence...  

(LSV House Atreides under construction at the Dystopia Planitia shipyards over Kerbin, incidentally, will have the same design flaw as Harkonnen; I'll ultimately have to rectify it the same way. The basic Muad'dib 7 Alcubierre mothership design has been changed to incorporate Bigbys at this point, so if I wind up with a third warp ship it won't have to have a separate Bigby module printed up. So there's that at least.)

Last thing I did was add a Titan Instrument package (from MOLE) to the design of the Minnow 7 3-hour touring craft and adjust the design's RCS thrusters to compensate for the extra weight. The modified craft - Minnow 7b - is currently sitting on the pad awaiting launch, which will take place after the Clinton grabs the aforementioned MOLE habitat over Minmus. From there it is heading to Kerbinport to pick up a group of tourists to take over to Harkonnen; they'll be riding along on Harkonnen's next hop for a smattering of different contracts. Eventually I hope to recycle the Minnow currently docked to Harkonnen; it got jacked up somewhere along the line and now it thinks it's still shrouded/stowed. Next things up in the pipe other than the habitat retrieval mission and the Minnow launch include the completion of ScanSat Ike's mission to perform narrow-band orbital scanning passes of all of Ike's biomes, the recharging of South Base's supplies, and the final completion of Mun Outpost 1's contract; a plan to put a lab on wheels and drive it over to hook up via KAS cable is in motion, with the printing of the lab-rover currently underway. I'm actually kinda hoping to get to a bit of a breathing spot in the action soon, and it's beginning to look like that might happen.

[Torn4dO]

Today I thought it was time to finally start to create something that has stock a hinge. Also I never tried to create a normal looking car or in this case a truck, so I thought lets combine the two:

I really like how it turned out although the design could still use some work, but everything works as it is supposed to, not bad for a first attempt!

Edited January 26, 2019 by Torn4dO

[Triop]

Going for a ride in my YF-24

 

[eddiew]

Having assessed Otho's two outer moons for interesting confectionary and come up with nothing but worthless gold dust, the team head back to meet up with the Pink Cougar.

Since the ascent pod can carry 5 kerbals, but there will be no lab facilities on the surface, pilots Jay and Lyssa, scientist Yuki and engineer Tora board the Blind Dragon and prepare for deorbit. Scientist Astrid will remain in the orbital lab to make a start on the data gathered thus far. Pilot Sakura will take the Sourdough Ascent Vehicle down them once the scout team has identified a suitably flat landing spot.

Atmospheric entry goes smoothly.

Too smoothly. Caught by an unexpected gust of wind, Yuki loses her grip on the handrail and plunges down into the chill alien atmosphere, her scream of panic shrill in her comrades' ears!

Until she remembers she has a parachute. Maintaining radio contact with the Blind Dragon, she glides down to a safe descent on what turns out to be a pretty hospitable patch of ground for the Sourdough.

(The parachute saga was unexpected. I am delighted that it didn't kill anyone and I thus feel able to live with the outcome.)

Spoiler

Because the atmosphere on Augustus is so thin, the Blind Dragon's engines don't really work below about 6-7km altitude, meaning there is little manoeuvrability and the crew just has to keep heading west. Eventually however, the engines get enough to work with, the Blind Dragon starts answering to the helm, and Yuki is indeed rescued safely.

 

[Tonka Crash]

The save that I've been playing since July went sideways in a big way and I decided it was time to start over instead of wasting more days trying to work around the problem. My end game relied upon a mod that's been flaky for me, but I had hoped the mod creator would fix it before it became a serious problem. The creator has been MIA for months and the latest bug I encountered completely locks up KSP. Since most everything I've built in the Kerbin SOI was based around this mod working as advertised there is no point in continuing, c'est la vie.

So, I've spent the last week setting up a new game with the Snarkiverse planet pack, the Probes Before Crew tech tree and a few other new to me mods. Most of the week was digging through the logs for errors and writing patches to get my mods to play nice with each other. Some are fairly old and the creators are MIA or have stated they are no longer supporting them. Others just don't have support across mods yet, like the latest Constellation release of USI-LifeSupport uses completely different part modules, so USI-LS patches had to be written for every affected part across several mods I use.

Another big time suck is cleaning up the part menus in the VAB. I use CCK to declutter the parts categories in the VAB by rearranging things to categories that make sense to me, like all things Xenon go in one category, air breathers get in a catgory (intakes and engines), etc. My ground rules is Utility is the category of last resort (mine has 9 items)

So, today was first launch after several complete restarts over the last week on what will hopefully be the new career going forward:

First Satellite in Orbit:

 

Edited January 28, 2019 by Tonka Crash

[Kerbal Madness]

I'm working on editng one of me new videos for me channel....

 

A massive, single launch, refueling station orbiting minmus, or the mun (haven't decided).

[Triop]

-stijlloze promotie-

Want to know what happened ?

Follow my adventure on:

[scottadges]

Getting back into KSP again after many months away and this time started a new Career Game in version 1.6 with Making History installed.

Got through some basic flights, first orbit, and even a Mun flyby. Then got to the Stockalike Station Parts tech, which is what I was aiming for to start building stations.

KSS Alpha (Station Core, left) with KSC-005 Payload Specialist & Chief Scientist Mission (Docked Craft, right)

The station itself doesn't have scientific instrumentation, since most of that science was completed in early orbital missions (KSC-002 and KSC-003). For KSC-005, this multi-purpose mission included newly-unlocked scientific instrumentation, a Payload Specialist (contract) to "repair a malfunctioning airlock", and finally a full-fledged Scientist (Bob Kerman) to ensure everything is going smoothly.

KSS Alpha is expected to have a shorter lifespan, once additional technologies are developed to allow for roomier accommodations in Low Kerbin Orbit. But this station is already providing important real-world learning for the gang back at the KSC in terms of spacecraft design, mission efficiency, and overall systems planning.

Design Note:

The basic station core for KSS Alpha is the smallest Stockalike Station Parts Redux command section and habitation section along with an external airlock. Overall, I'm trying to build very efficiently and minimally with this Career. The mantra is basically "If it doesn't do a job, don't put it on" which is much more restrained than my approach to other spacecraft.

I also tried to model this in terms of the Kerbal's current progress in space technology. They don't have the capabilities yet for large-scale rockets and massive space stations. They're starting with smaller, multi-purpose craft (much like Mir / Soyuz) that will grow as technologies become available.

Edited January 27, 2019 by scottadges

[Lisias]

What I did? What I am doing!

Spoiler

 

 

[Triop]

A or B ?

[Delay]

2!

[Triop]

15 minutes ago, Delay said:

2!

You mean green ?

Edited January 27, 2019 by Triop

[Castille7]

Wanted to see what something like this would look like. Gif kinda funky tho

https://i.imgur.com/aELkTJu.mp4

 

[kurgut]

Servicing and tourism mission to the Kibis Space Hotel! Bringing there some 16 tourists, and also some little details, like adding solar panels that we initially forgot, hum hum...

Come on Jeb you can dock this

Bill is going in the cuppola, checking everything is ok before tourists get in:

Then Bill, will quickly place the solars panel, needed to aliment the 20 jacuzzi, and 35 sauna of the stations..

Done, let's take a bath now Bill!

[eddiew]

A rescue borne of my own Yuki Gaelan's incompetence.

Turns out that kerbals fall more quickly than the Blind Dragon, so it takes a while before the ship is able to fire up its engines and swing around to recover its missing crewmember. It also turns out that landing on Augustus requires active engagement from the vernier jets, since the lower gravity vs Gratian does not make up for the thinner atmosphere, and the banshee engine just can't provide enough lift to keep the craft airborne in a hover. Nonetheless, both pilots are skilled and while there is some bickering about who controls what, between them they bring the scoutplane down to a gentle landing just 50 metres away from where Yuki is waiting.

And as luck would have it, this biome looks exactly perfect to bring the Sourdough down on, being low altitude and relatively flat. Time to radio up to Sakura.

Once again, a rather boring descent ensues, but now we have confirmed our evac zone, morale picks up and the expedition can get underway.

Edited January 27, 2019 by eddiew

[NorthernDevo]

Just a quick easy mission; placing a contract science base on Minmus:

Smile - I love my sunrise shots:

It's just to satisfy a contract; Minmus is pretty much scienced out.

Cheers!

 

Edited January 27, 2019 by NorthernDevo

[Castille7]

14 hours ago, Triop said:

You mean green ?

No the other Left!

[Delay]

Setting up a geostationary satellite for Eve:

...And also bringing someone back from Gilly!

And what can I say?

The mission was... very lucrative!