What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Raptor42]

Today I returned to KSP after some time, launched new expedition to the orbit of Ash. The station that I sent after the crew vehicle arrived to desired orbit around 1 hour earlier than the crew. While they were on their way (about a week or so) I managed to build first part of new surface base that was launched to Armstrong (not the astronaut, but moon of Kerbin from planet pack) the gravity is so low there which means the base can land only using large vernier thrusters. Entire 20t base landed using four RCS thrusters that had 12 kNs of thrust each. When the crew arrived at the Ash space station I checked on my SCANSAT satellite that wasn't working quite properly. *facepalm* its orbit is 10km higher than the point at which the scanning instrument stops working. After returning my crew from orbit of Ash I completed contract and got another one to explore Ash... landing on surface, and a splashdown in its seas.

"We don't want vessels near Ash to start running hot. Splash one into ocean. We are pretty sure it isn't flammable." oh yeah, how could the ocean be flammable it is just a ocean of lava, it won't catch on fire any time soon. But how about the spacecraft? But hey, it provides quite a lot of money so why shouldn't I take it.

 

[Triop]

Today, Jeb solved the Lament Configuration . . .

 

[cantab]

Getting back into my RSS lifter design. Seems I forgot the struts...

Still made it to orbit though. 12 tonne payload and no Nervs.

https://imgur.com/a/d0qVahF

It's pretty basic, but something to start on. I plan to make it mostly-reusable, with only the drop tanks expended. (Which is why I use tanks rather than full liquid boosters).

[Triop]

Today . . .

No, yes, no, almost.... no.

 

Edited May 29, 2019 by Triop

[Guest]

I landed on mun south pole

Then the rover didn't work properly and the lander died... SO IT MUST BE AVENGED

So I made the follow-up

Mounojour 1 and 2

Find more on https://maarlandersinnovation.wordpress.com/2019/05/28/multiple-private-teams-begin-serious-development-on-landers/

[Guest]

I made a tiny little aerobatics plane, the BAK Bug. It's incredibly agile all through aerodynamic control, will take off at 15 m/s, and has extremely limited power. If you stall it, it will simply float down like a leaf, unless you push the stick forward to get some airspeed and bring it out of the stall. Are you good enough to land it on the helipad of the VAB?

(I didn't quite manage it yet -- I did get it down on the VAB roof intact once, but just missed the helipad. I'm sure it's possible if you're good enough though!)

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-Bug

[MisterKerman]

@The Doodling Astronaut

I think I might do something similar for my first Duna mission. Those are really really clean craft designs though. Had to say something!

[Martian Emigrant]

The last few days Jeb as been ferrying crews to the KISS in a variety of ships.

The Dream Runner

 

The SPlane

 

Here Bill is trying to figure out why the Viper refuse to get any closer to the docking port.

He could fly unimpeded between the ship and port....Go figure.

 

The CTV

 

The Orbitron

 

And finally the Guppy

 

 

 

[Hotel26]

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

land it on the helipad of the VAB

I gave it a try -- a few things went wrong...  (I thought I had set those brakes in flight before landing.)

 

And, next time, stick right back at the end of the landing roll. 

(I've nick-named this one, Nimble.)

Edited May 29, 2019 by Hotel26

[ARS]

Today, we did some testing on new craft design, this one is Black Falcon

This one is Black Lightning, and we go REALLY overboard with engine modifications

Edited May 29, 2019 by ARS

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

I gave it a try -- a few things went wrong...  (I thought I had set those brakes in flight before landing.)

And, next time, stick right back at the end of the landing roll. 

(I've nick-named this one, Nimble.)

Nice! I figured if anyone, you would do it!

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Spent the whole day yesterday putting up a communications satellite constellation over Gilly.

Gillycomm 2 entering orbit over a wildling potatoroid.

Gillycomm 2's entry into Gilly's SOI fulfilled my current exploration contract (the flyby) and unlocked the go-for-orbit contract, which also including transmitting science back to KSC. The probe burned into a 45x16 kilometer polar orbit and reached periapsis shortly after Gillycomm 1 entered Gilly's SOI and made its initial orbital burn. At periapsis, Gillycomm 2 circularized to 16 kilometers, at which point the two side comm sats decoupled, being re-designated as Gillycomms Delta, Echo and Foxtrot. Echo and Foxtrot then did high burns to put them into their final dispositions. Gillycomm 1 mirrored this behavior along the equator, becoming Gillycomms Alpha, Bravo and Charlie. ScanSat Gilly also entered a 60 kilometer polar orbit about this time and conducted an initial resource scanning pass, fulfilling the science portion of the exploration contract.

ScanSat Gilly entering orbit. This screenie is interesting to me because the positions of the six comm sats are also visible...these seven objects are all that I currently have at Gilly.

ScanSat Gilly was able to collect narrow-band pass data from all three of Gilly's biomes before the day was out. Unfortunately, the critical combination of Exotic Minerals/Rare Metals does not exist in any of them, so like Mun the place isn't suitable for on-site Equipment manufacture to support a Pathfinder outpost. That said, I did mark a spot for a base along the moon's equator in the Midlands - distances are small enough at Gilly that it may yet be possible to make a set of distributed bases in an adjacent biome. 

All of the comm sats were positioned before the day was out.

Da network.

Gilly's low gravity really proved to be a challenge for the normal process of putting up one of these constellations. The force from decoupling alone was sufficient to knock the sats out of inclination alignment with one another, which had to be corrected for, and even with 0.5 thrust limiters on Ant engines, I couldn't achieve the levels of precision in the orbits that I've been able to do elsewhere.

Necessary Evil also arrived at Minmus yesterday and conducted a course correction to put it towards a rendezvous with space station Minmusport. The ship arrived and docked at Minmusport this morning, and after fueling the craft, scientists Siefen and Dumin Kerman, pilot Melrie Kerman, engineer Bartzor Kerman and colonists Brian and Calble Kerman transferred to the Crater Maker 7 bulk lander, which departed the station en route to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface. I'll be landing the Crater Maker later today, where the colonists will disembark and the others will conduct flag-planting training. I've picked up a number of new contracts of late and I need to spend some time evaluating what will be involved with each one, so I couldn't really say what else today has in store. Probably going to be designing a TBD craft to handle the challenges Gilly's going to throw at me as likely as not. Also going to have to find a flat spot for a base, which will be a challenge in and of itself, no doubt.

[AFF]

Last stage of my Eveade)

Gotcha!

Docking second miner

KRAKEN attack!!

Spoiler

Holly f5/f9 and start mining

And take it OFF! Remoove chute system

Separate landing legs and ladder

And up. Looking for throttle, TWR too much

Separate

And we are in the low orbit!

Well, the craft have too much dV, it enought 7-8 km dV. This craft have over 12 km atmo dV at sea level, I was overly cautious remembering the times 0.24 when I was short 12)

Edited May 29, 2019 by AFF

[Richy teh space man]

Milking those tourist contracts early on to make some cash for later

[cantab]

Put enough fuel in my shuttle orbiter to take it for a decent jet-powered test flight, and learnt that body lift is a thing. Above about 300 m/s, if it gets enough AoA the thing just wants to keep flipping. It was controllable and I brought it back for a safe runway landing, but I do not want my orbiter handling like that! Wing lift backwards and weight forwards, I hope that will fix it.

[Guest]

Doing more research on long-range SSTOs. It's an interesting optimisation problem and I'm surprised at how feasible they are.

First I made a teeny tiny one. This has the range to get to Duna. Landing in one piece would be tricky and taking off even more so. It carries no oxidant at all; it will easily cruise into orbit on atomic power alone after the jets flame out. It'll make orbit with well over 2000 m/s in the tank.

Then I applied what I had learned on it to the MUNBAT mun shuttle. MUNBAT's replacement, the BAK Kassius, is also capable of making orbit without burning any oxidant as well as making a precision landing on the Mun on atomic power alone, although it has the capability to carry some, and if you bring about 200 units it will give a little bit of room for error in your acceleration to orbit, and allow for emergency braking for your Mun landing if you notice that you're about to turn into a crater. Take-off mass is a full 20 tons lower than with the MUNBAT!

I'm going to add the retro and nose-up Vernors to it as well, and carry a bit of oxidant to run those. Or perhaps Place-Anywheres and use the monoprop I can store in the cockpit. This will make Mun take-offs easier, as well as making it possible to back away from the Munbase if you happened to dock facing downhill.

This will probably be the final iteration of this design as I can't wait to get my hands on Breaking Ground which opens a whole new set of possibilities.

Edit: Here's the craft file of the BAK Kassius, now with added RCS jets for backing off from the refueling base on the Mun. This one is really pleasant to fly, it feels like it has just the right amount of power on tap for any situation and handles predictably in all flight conditions.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-Kassius

Edited May 30, 2019 by Guest

[KerikBalm]

So with breaking ground coming, I thought about the possibility of making a VTOL SSTO for 3x KSP. I was getting >10% or so payload fraction with my SSTOs, and my TWR on the runway was about 0.3.. Panthers get 9:1 static TWR. Assuming  I swivel the old jets, I'd still need an additional 0.7 TWR. Thus if I use 8% of total mass for panthers, in theory I could make a VTOL SSTO on 3x kerbin, but the payload fraction will be terrible.

But such a plane would have a very high TWR in flight, why not use at least whiplashes and try to improve high altitude/speed performance and gain some payload fraction back.

Then I though about doing a recoverable 2 stage spaceplane again. If I'd have a super high TWR, I could try to fling the plane high enough that I can circularize the payload and recover the launcher before it gets deleted.

I wasn't getting high enough, so I gave the carrier vehicle some oxidizer to fuel the 2nd stage engines

I still wasn't getting enough hang time on the carrier, and my 2nd stage ended up a little short of orbit (6x full ore tanks/102 ton payload)

I also tried to lower partcount, since the carrier is suborbital, FAT-455 wings were used:

Spoiler

I wondered if Rapiers could do better, and they could. 

I still wasn't getting enough hangtime, so I gave the carrier vehicle more oxidizer, and fired the rapiers for better TWR

And that did the trick...

Release:

First success was suboptimal, but I was able to switch back in time:

Turning the carrier vehicle around was a bit difficult, and I fired up the engines and ended up overshooting KSC:

Tweaks were still in order. The 2nd stage had insufficient control with just a V tail, I'll take the part count penalty and give it a normal tail:

Payload fraction was over 15%, and it gets to orbit much faster... I'm not sure how much I can increase payload mass and still have enough hangtime.

More rapier rocket fuel helps hangtime, but then I'm pushing closer and closer to an SSTO

Im so ready for breaking ground now though

Edited May 30, 2019 by KerikBalm

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) In preparation for the upcoming mission to put a Pathfinder outpost, I began my day yesterday with the design of the TBD 7dG base-seeding craft. Major changes from the earlier TBD 7d base-seeding rover included the removal of the wheels, additional chassis pieces for monoprop storage, and some RCS thrusters. A pair of O-10 engines tweaked to 20% thrust were added as well. I also added a Micro ISRU unit; along with the design's dinky drill, this gives it the capability of self-refueling no matter how achingly slow that process turns out to be. Overall it has 200 m/s of delta-V; since you only need 30 to get to Gilly's surface from a 10-kilometer orbit, I'm cool with it; the craft should be usable as a VTOL for surface exploration (knock on wood). The trick will be getting it to Gilly. Current plan is to have LSV House Corrino construct and then deliver the craft to Gilly once she leaves the drydock of the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna, which means I'll ultimately need to get an engineering team there. Corrino's construction will be finished in another nine hours.

Meanwhile, the Crater Maker 7 bulk lander conducted a landing at the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus. Pilot Melrie Kerman, scientists Siefen and Dumin Kerman and engineer Bartzor Kerman each piled out of the craft in turn to plant flags, and then Bartzor borrowed one of the outpost's KIS screwdrivers. He then proceeded to remove one of the extra Mineshaft docking tubes from the Crater Maker and attached it to the outpost, which allowed colonists Brian and Calble Kerman to disembark; their colonization contract expires in sixteen days. While still attached, the crew leveled up to two-star status and was refueled from the outpost's stores. Bartzor then unhooked the lander from the outpost, restored the spare Mineshaft to its original position, returned the screwdriver and leveled up himself before re-boarding the lander. All business completed, the Crater Maker launched and affected a rendezvous and docking with space station Minmusport, where the crew boarded Necessary Evil docked at the station. Fuel supplies were transferred between DH and Minmusport via mass driver, after which Necessary Evil departed and burned to return to Kerbin; she'll arrive at periapsis in another nineteen hours. 

After completing a quick ore-con job, I was tasked with the adjustment of satellite M-01059-053040 over Mun; took a single burn to adjust the plane of its orbit to fulfill the contract. Got another ore con as the replacement contract. Ugh...

Not wanting to take care of that right away, I decided to send the Delta 1 quadcopter on Duna to go pick up scientist Wehrdas Kerman, who had a rescue contract active. The 'copter flew nearly 300 kilometers northwest of its previous location where I'd conducted a pressure survey earlier.

The copter started down by the equator, so this pic oughta tell you something.

Despite bouncing off of terrain a time or two, the 'copter did make it to Wehrdas's capsule.

This guy stuck out his thumb. Can't tell if he knows where his towel is or not...

After Wehrdas boarded, the 'copter took off and flew pretty much straight south until it arrived at the Enchova Central outpost. Once it landed there, Wehrdas planted a flag and then boarded the outpost, punching his ticket to two-star status in the station's habitat module. The plan at this point is to build Wehrdas a launch vehicle and send him into orbit, where he'll board House Corrino for transport back to Kerbin.

This morning I decided to take care of the current exploration contract, which involved an EVA over Kerbol as well as science gathering. LSV House Atreides was over Eve doing not much of anything, so I decided to begin the process of sending her home. While still in interplanetary space, I disengaged the Alcubierre Drive long enough for engineer Jergar Kerman to conduct a quick EVA and transmit a crew report. The replacement contract involves a rendezvous over Kerbol. I'll probably be using a Minnow 7 touring craft attached to LSV House Harkonnen to send my engineering crew to Duna, so I'm hoping to be able to get that out of the way then. Meantime, Atreides is currently conducting warpback maneuvers over Kerbin to enter orbit; current speed is just under 12 kps, so it'll probably be another hour or two before she slows down enough to enter orbit.

Aside from putting Atreides into orbit, I have no idea what I'll be doing today. I might take care of that ore con job since those are pretty easy to knock out. I'm up to twelve colonists and tourists that need to come up to space station Kerbinport from Kerbin's surface; I might do that before the number grows large enough to warrant one of the larger, pain-in-the-butt-to-dock spaceplanes. Getting Harkonnen ready for departure might also be a high priority. Nothing else really to do at the moment.

[Guest]

tWo mORe hOuRS I don't know if I can stand this

In the meantime I made another harvester base, this one an ultra-light one built around the finicky mini-ISRU. It runs stably if an engineer is on-board. Main advantage is that dry mass is only 9 tons, about half that of the lightweight large-ISRU based station. I did use a pair of full-size drills on this, if I switched to mini-drills that could be cut down even further, but in that case it would only work on exceptionally good ore deposits.

[Guest]

wOooOoOOOoooOooO!!!

Introducing the BAK-50 X1. Jeb survived take-off, lurching around in the sky, and landing.

[fourfa]

The medium rotors aren't super powerful, but I got a small twin in the air without much trouble.

But serious aircraft will need the large 1.25m rotors

[Frank_G]

This Breaking Ground DLC is pure awesomeness

Edited May 30, 2019 by Frank_G

[KerrMü]

First flight with breaking ground. Me and Jeb are enjoying this.

 

I´m beginning to think planning this baby was a little bit ambitious, but to be honest, I pretty much knew that frome the start. 

I´ll have to tinker with the new stuff way lot more. Maybe we´ll come up with new awesome motor ideas. something with pistons... maybe???

Sooo much to do and even more to learn.

[Shadowmage]

.... Waiting for someone to make a full collective pitch helo using the new robotic parts.

Could someone sequence/construct a swashplate using the servo axis controls?   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swashplate_(aeronautics)

Likely that there is a simpler method though for CCPM, considering all of the functions available in KSP with reaction wheels/etc.

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

.... Waiting for someone to make a full collective pitch helo using the new robotic parts.

Could someone sequence/construct a swashplate using the servo axis controls?   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swashplate_(aeronautics)

 Likely that there is a simpler method though for CCPM, considering all of the functions available in KSP with reaction wheels/etc.

The BAK-50 has collective control but no cyclic, that would take some doing. It's a bit juddery but surprisingly nice to fly -- I didn't have much trouble landing it on the helipad, and I've never even flown chopper sims!

By the way @Shadowmage were you able to map rotor torque to throttle controls (keyboard only) because it didn't work for me, thing just went bonkers.

(Yes it's ugly, I'm just figuring out how helicopters even work so give me some slack m'kay?)

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-50-x2

Edited May 30, 2019 by Guest