What did you do in KSP1 today?

[NHunter]

Now that a good part of Gratian has been mapped, it is the time for landing:

- Lander (with extra fuel for semi-powered landing) loitering in 500km orbit

- Descending into Gratian's atmosphere

- Parachutes deployed, approaching Gratian's surface

- Obligatory flag planting (could've landed on a bit less inclined surface... )

- The Martian Gratian-man?

Joking. This Gaelan just went to check out a nearby anomaly, everyone was waiting for him.

- Time to go home!

Edited February 6, 2019 by NHunter

[ValleyTwo]

D'Oh!   So...after everybody explained to me the issue I was having was the type of antenna I was using I built a new Relay Sat.

I placed it in polar orbit around the Mun.

And also visited the landing site during the day.  It seems to be a valley with a flat bottom.  So it should prove to be a good place to land and mine.  

Next mission will be a crewed one to check out the site first hand.  Maybe with a rover and some science stuff.  Plant a flag.  Collect a few rocks for the OSS.  And find the perfect spot for the mining base.

[kerbinorbiter]

did a few test launches today, I have to note that RSSVE is totally eye candy thats all from today

[Zosma Procyon]

I successfully rescued a Kerbal and his shipwreck off of Minmus's surface. It took about 20 minutes of fiddling with RCS to get the klaw to actually grab the wreck.

[Triop]

Today we flew a buggy to cp7 for our Elcano adventure.

Someone at R&D forgot to set a seperate stage for our brakechutes ending up with decoupling while landing.

 

[Cavscout74]

My fresh Duna crew arrived and went to work - first with an Ike landing to check on the refueling operation there.

Then I landed the mining wing of my Duna base.  I came down just over 2 km away, but the addon is wheeled, so it wasn't a big deal.

All hooked up & ready for the crew:

First sunrise at the new base:

Finally, I brought the Duna Flyer II over to the base.  The sandstorm started after I took off.  There's a base down there somewhere....

But I eventually found it & landed.  I'm also happy to report, I can turn off the 2nd pair of fans & still maintain a pretty good airspeed for economy cruising. Tomorrow I'll have the pilot & a scientist head out for some exploration.

Edited February 7, 2019 by Cavscout74

[scottadges]

 

42 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

My fresh Duna crew arrived and went to work

[snip]

I just started watching "Mars" on Netflix (the NatGeo show directed in part by Ron Howard) and so this must be synchronicity. Seeing your lander, the rover, and the basecamp reminds me of the first episode of that show!

4 hours ago, NHunter said:

What engine is that on this craft? I know I've used it on a previous save, but it's been a while and I must not have that mod installed (or maybe I just can't find it). Love the simple-yet-functional design!

[septemberWaves]

14 minutes ago, scottadges said:

What engine is that on this craft?

That is one of Nertea's monopropellant engines from Near Future Spacecraft.

[Starman4308]

As per usual when I take a break from KSP, I think "I can totally just catch up on the WDYDIKSP thread then post".

I've... given up on that.

So: backlog of imagery, from an RP-0 campaign, then the RP-0 campaign after I realized I didn't have part unlock costs, then RP-1 after I decided to check that out.

A totally safe vehicle returns to Earth from a suborbital flight. Incidentally, on one of these, I accidentally steered south, so I can only assume the pilot was defecting to Cuba.

Spoiler

A historically implausible rocket: an RD-108 powered core (straight out of the R-7 Semyorka), an AJ-10 powered upper stage (similar to the Able), and a half-dozen A-9 boosters.

This is a Soviet core stage, with an American upper stage, and boosters made from an American improvement over a... German rocket.

Spoiler

I'm lucky that, even in its few flights, I had only one loss-of-performance on an A-9 booster. Those are not exactly paragons of reliability.

My first lunar impactor of the campaign. Vernier engines were used in place of anything restartable, since I didn't have any high-thrust restartable engines at the time.

Spoiler

 

 

This rocket, which is clearly not a ripoff of the R-7, separates its RD-107 boosters from the RD-108 core stage in what is absolutely not a Korolev cross.

Spoiler

 

[harrisjosh2711]

Been playing around with BDA for the past few days and got the itch to fly one of these bad boys. Almost got her ready for unity. Now if I can just stop myself from making anymore parts and actually play with it.....

[NHunter]

9 hours ago, scottadges said:

What engine is that on this craft? I know I've used it on a previous save, but it's been a while and I must not have that mod installed (or maybe I just can't find it). Love the simple-yet-functional design!

 

9 hours ago, septemberWaves said:

That is one of Nertea's monopropellant engines from Near Future Spacecraft.

Indeed, though I did modify it a bit to add a bi-propellant mode.

Either way, it's an awesome engine: you can use it as landing legs (and a lander that isn't very tall will be quite stable - I can land my 3.75m lander this way even on 10+ degree slopes) or you can use a small attachment node down there and put a small docking port between engine nozzles.

[AFF]

Beep-beep!)

Space cowboy Jeb on VTOL Horse (require flammable straw)

[Mister_Casual97]

Well, it's time for the bore-fest that's going to be getting this severely under-thrusted lander back to Kerbin.





Bye bye, Minmus!



next step is to perform a mid-course correction to get a mun encounter to help slow Jeb and his craft down.



Next move is to use up most of the remaining fuel to slow down, since I gave the heat shield a low amount of ablator.



almost there, Jeb!



And there we go, safe and sound!



So, mission summary... 835.3 Science! Whooooee! That'll help with research. So Jeb is back home after a long time in space. We're glad to have him back, but there's work to do.

[AFF]

[MiscelanousItem]

I just finished my first Minmus mission:

Jeb was jealous that Val was allowed to land o n the Mun so he got sent out:

 

"Whittaker's dream" says Jeb

 

 

I'm pretty happy

[purpleivan]

Another day, another cash grab in my 1.6 career game, in the form of kerbals to be rescued.

First one in Kerbin orbit, who seems pretty glad to be leaving his stricken ship.

Then headed off to Mun orbit for a 2nd passenger.

Here the passenger from Kerbin orbit was so excited at the prospect of orbiting the Mun, that he decided to go out and grab a pic of the occasion.

With the photo op over, it was time to pick up the next paying customer, before heading back to Kerbin, where a return vehicle awaits.

[RizzoTheRat]

After a fair bit of software testing Jeb boarded the wobblerocket for hands free Mun flyby, fully KOS driven.  No radial decouplers so far but I did decide to unlock the terrier to make it a bit easier.

I've given up trying to figure out the correct direction for the Circularization burn for now and just accepting that burning on the dV vector means I finish up a few hundred meters low

 

Look mum, no nodes!  Burning prograde centred about the time calculated on phase angle and a burn duration for a Mun impact.  Actually burned a little bit longer to pass in front of the Mun for the circumlunar return trajectory rather than the usual pass behind it.

Original plan was a circumlunar free return trajectory, but that would mean a fairly high altitude flyby that wouldn't get me a Flying Low Above the Mun for my science package (material bay, goo, thermometer, barometer, crew report and EVA report), so aimed for about 30km above the Mun instead.  This profile got me a science package high above Kerbin, high above the mun, and low above the Mun, plus a bonus couple of bits of data at the landing site.

This meant a wait of a few days and an extra burn of about 170m/s to drop the Pe to 40km for an aerocapture

And this is what it was all about

 

However my global warming problem seems to have got worse while Jeb's been away.

 

All that juicy science means I now have radial decouplers, Clampotron Juniors, and RCS, so I can move on to an Agena type mission and develop a docking script.

Edited February 7, 2019 by RizzoTheRat

[ValleyTwo]

Today I tried again and again to find a way to send a Lander to the Mun.  But I just could not get that finally booster, the first stage, that gets everything into orbit just right.  More fuel meant more mass which means less Delta-V and so on.  So I sent a Basic Lander into orbit. 

And then sent a Robotic Nuke-Tug.

I plan to have them link up then go and link up at the OSS to top off the tanks.  The Tug could also take from fuel from the Lander's Booster before they decouple.  IF the Senior Docking Ports of the Station and the Nuke-Tug are facing the right ways of course.  *sigh*  Otherwise I will rage-quit and come back in half a year when I want to try it again.

[RizzoTheRat]

13 minutes ago, ValleyTwo said:

IF the Senior Docking Ports of the Station and the Nuke-Tug are facing the right ways of course.  *sigh*  Otherwise I will rage-quit and come back in half a year when I want to try it again.

We've all been there 

[Tonka Crash]

I went to the Mun to test the old ASET Landing Legs. I guess these have been around since before 1.2, but haven't been fully functional in a while. I took a look last night and think I got them working. Download in my Feb 6 post in the ALCOR thread:

 

The lander itself was another experiment. There is a central core from the capsule to a Terrier that's used for both the landing and return. A decoupler on the end of the terrier and a structural tube going up around the core allow a squat design with everything needed for landing to be staged away for to return to Kerbin.

 

Edited February 8, 2019 by Tonka Crash

[septemberWaves]

I conducted the first spacewalk (of my current savegame), deorbited a faulty space station, and sent a satellite to the Mun's L4 point. Details can be found here.

[Kergarin]

I have tested where ese my little rocket can go 

 

 

[MaverickSawyer]

@Tonka Crash can you share the legs? I've missed those something fierce.

[Tonka Crash]

@MaverickSawyer Check the last post in the ASET thread I linked to above. It's why I included that link.

[Cavscout74]

I performed my first Duna aerial exploration mission - flying down to an anomaly in the southern hemisphere, about 230 km away.  After takeoff, I switched off two of the fans, and still maintained 270 m/s at 6000m for the trip, while having about 3 Ec/s power surplus during the day.  I didn't even check top speed with both sets of fans.

Preflight checks

Heading for the anomaly

Spoiler

Where did this come from?!?!?!

After checking out the anomaly, Sarah decided to test out her parachute on the way back to the Flyer

Return trip to Pegasus-Duna base

Safely back at base - I floated for over a km trying to land & am taxiing back here.  In another sandstorm. What does this planet have against my base?  The entire trip was sandstorm-free except for 5 km or around the base.  For future reference, I might try a longer stub wing to mount the gear on, to give a wider wheelbase as it's still kinda wobbly as-is.  I'm also really tempted to add a fifth ducted fan, facing to the rear as a "thrust reverser" since it maintains airspeed so well on Duna.