What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Guest]

The Big Mun programme continues... and ends.

E & J drove too far afield, drawn as I imagine many Kerbals are by the sweet allure of science. This ultimately had dire consequences as efforts were split into two locations. From the edge of one of the Midland Craters, which also includes areas of Lowland strata, they roll their powerless rover down the inside. Carefullly, I might add, but all the same it begins to roll in more than one way. The duo survive the disintegration of their rover, but Jean seems unresponsive (there wasn't a Leave Seat option in the menu until I reloaded the scene).

 

Oh well. She seems happy enough with her newfound view of the stars above. Elimore stuffs a surface sample in her back pocket and goes to collect another. The intrepid duo are now, however, far from the giant food box where they initially landed. So a number of fresh launches are hurriedly prepared, and take place at night. No time for dawn and fair weather with lives on the line. Fortunately none of them go wrong.

 

The habitation module lands. I have a rule of not landing on engine bells, but wanted the module to sit relatively flush with the ground, so I reversed the direction of the decoupler on the bottom and used some of the smallest engines available, which the decoupler is taller than. It was barely flyable due to the lack of reaction torque and engine gimbal, but I did get it (and the unpictured return vehicle) down. At this point I realise something that had completely slipped my mind as an inevitability - the Munar sunset is upon us, and it will be many Kerbin days before dawn. This means night landings for the extra supplies also on their way.

The third support launch carried a pair of prototype 'space taxi' vehicles able to carry one Kerbal across the terrain much more quickly than a rover. They didn't feature lights, but landing at night was much easier than expected thanks to Engine Light and Better Burn Time. Everything was landed safely, although not very efficiently. Jebpond makes his way over to plug his suit into one of the taxis' oxygen tanks (or something like that; apparently being in a seat counts as IVA for the purposes of USI-LS), since the original lander pod was running out by now.

 

E & J have to bring a box landed ~750m from them over to the hab module. Thankfully I made the discovery that one can carry mountable containers even if they're heavily laden. Between everything she was carrying, Elimore weighed over 2.3 tons! Under Mun gravity that is equivalent to 380kg. Perhaps Kerbals get stronger in low gravity rather than weaker?

With their immediate needs taken care of, the team sits tight until the Munar dawn. Due to the dangerous situations continuing to accumilate, mission control calls a halt to the Big Mun programme. E & J have some extra idle time ahead of them as Jebpond embarks upon an epic journey to join up with them and the return vehicle. He makes a disappointingly small hop in one of the taxis, then a smaller hop with his jetpack, then the 14km march begins. This isn't so easy when you're a Kerbal - only 1m tall with proportionally tiny legs.

 

I learned a lot from this whole endeavour. Initial complications really do snowball hard; I need to make consistently safer choices. Preparation level needs to be over 9000 and no mission should rely on future tech possibilities to improve its own outcomes. I'm not sure I feel these three Kerbals really ought to be alive; certainly in any case they will enjoy a long rest at the KSC.

 

With 200m/s left after making a 10km orbit, the "return" vehicle can't actually return by itself. Here the fuel tanker finally comes into play. Only – it's full of monopropellant, the return vehicle has no RCS, the Kerbals have no EVA propellant, only the tanker has a docking port, and neither vessel has fuel ports. I could send another crew out to help, but for now I decide to try pushing with the robot.

 

With a meagre 4.5kN stationkeeping engine, it takes all the tanker's might to make a burn fast enough. This was easier than expected, as the return vehicle's reaction torque is totally adequate to top it tumbling away. After this the tanker will eventually return to a Munar orbit to continue providing communication support.

 

The three land safely and emerge unharmed. I don't think I will be starting any more ambitious missions for a while.

Edited September 1, 2019 by Guest

[Marachdrifter]

Today my Eve unmanned mission arrive on eve and start a burn to get to orbit. i was planning to use aerobraking, but the inflatable heat shield have less tolerance to heat than i though. So it was decided that it would get a large orbit first with the engine, and then do a little aero braking on each orbit to get a shorter orbit.

 

 

However during the burn Kerbol got between Eve and Kerbin, so i lost communications, and before i realised that i could still cut off the engines, i burned most of my fuel. The probe is in orbot, but it will stay there for a long while...

[KerikBalm]

Ditched the mk3 cargobay based surface modules, and went with robotics for deploying stuff on the surface:

 

[ChrisSpace]

So, today I tested a new design for an Interplanetary Ballistic Missile. It's intended to be used in RSS, but I was away from home with only my Mac which doesn't have that so instead I launched from Kerbin and tried to see how fast I could hit the Mun.

 

[Delay]

Here, have a spacecraft on Gilly with a really kerbal antenna setup.

[Curveball Anders]

12 hours ago, november india charlie said:

My first orbit! Total newbie here, but I'm having fun!

Welcome to orbit.

May it be followed by many more

 

[catloverjerrygarcia]

I just designed a concept for a space station.

Station Concept 2 by AdmFranzvonHippie, on Flickr

[SuicidalInsanity]

help my boat is on fire what am i doing wrong

[Cavscout74]

I continued to advance my 20% science career this weekend, with upgrades to the pad & tracking station after numerous tourist contracts.  The pad upgrade allowed me to upgrade from a 2-seat tourist rocket to a 4-seater, which improved my income and allowed the tracking center upgrade faster than expected. 

Splashdown of the last OTV-2 tourist craft

Launch of the first OTV-4 from Woomerang

With the tracking center upgraded, it was time to complete the contracts for first rendezvous & first docking.  Jeb performed the rendezvous with a previously launched KTV-1 (Kerbal Target Vehicle), then landed and a few days later Val got to perform the first docking of this career, also with KTV-1

Val's rendezvous with KTV-1, in preparation for docking - which ended up being in the dark.  Of course.

Almost....

Docking successful.  Pictured here after timewarping to sunrise

Finally, Jeb took a CR-01 up to investigate another anomaly and found an abandoned space center. 

I also discovered there is an entire set of controls at the back of the cockpit I never noticed before

[Kerbinchaser]

After seeing the benefits associated with having a fully-functioning, albeit old capsule floating in orbit, the KSP has sent a CSM to dock with the abandoned spacecraft and tow it to Müner orbit, where it will join the science station in orbit there. After resupply, this 50 year old spacecraft will be reused for orbital tug & Kerbin return.

48 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

What mod adds that Gemini? I know I've used it in the past, I just forgot the name. 

Edited September 1, 2019 by Lo Var Lachland

[Cavscout74]

7 minutes ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

What mod adds that Gemini? I know I've used it in the past, I just forgot the name. 

The pod is stock (actually a Mk1), but the nose, fuel tank & maneuvering engine are from Corvus CF.  The nose has a built in docking port that is compatible with clamp-o-tron Jr, built-in RCS & built in parachute.  I modified it (the parachute portion anyway) to work with the stock Mk2 pod, but it still works (too well) on a Mk1 pod also. 

Edited September 1, 2019 by Cavscout74

[Kerbinchaser]

3 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

The pod is stock (actually a Mk1), just the nose, fuel tank & maneuvering engine is from Corvus CF

Corvus, right. Thanks!

Edited September 1, 2019 by Lo Var Lachland

[SwissSpace93]

I tested the Extraplanetary Launchpads (i hyperedited it to Minmus in my KerbalTest Programm)

and build my Moho-Lander rocket, with 14km/s DeltaV and tried to fly near the sun

 

 

The Launchpad mod is very glitchy (KSP 1.3)  i cant go to IVA and have no Kerbal Portraits shown, after this it gets down to 1FPS and then it crashed . Maybe i have done something forbidden so KSP stopped me from prooving that Kerbol is flat (even the "alt-F12" KSP-Cheats dont work).

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

I also discovered there is an entire set of controls at the back of the cockpit I never noticed before

If you double-click the computer screen where it days 'docking mode' it will take you to those controls.

Edited September 1, 2019 by Guest

[catloverjerrygarcia]

Here's my latest redesign to my space station conceptualization.

Space station concept 3. by AdmFranzvonHippie, on Flickr

[Angelo Kerman]

I got the specular map and normal map done for the baseline parts, and fixed some texture artifacts for my mothership, then took it on a flight:

 

[catloverjerrygarcia]

Some additional conceptualization for my planned space station.

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmGDyogD

[coyotesfrontier]

7 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

I also discovered there is an entire set of controls at the back of the cockpit I never noticed before

Double click on the "Docking Mode" panel while in IVA.

[Technical Ben]

I put this one together a few days ago. But time to transmit some more science.

Robotic parts help.

Not enough power? No probs. Bonus points for spotting the special little robotic parts and what they do.

https://imgur.com/a/fZM01Us

Edited September 2, 2019 by Technical Ben

[Kerbinchaser]

The interstellar spacecraft "Pandora" has returned from a 6 year unmanned journey from Eeloo and back on a test flight to study the possibilities of manned interstellar flight. 

After an engineering crew boarded the spacecraft and inspected the entire length of the vessel, the spacecraft was deorbited to make room for the next-gen of interstellar craft, the "Conquest."

Edited September 2, 2019 by Lo Var Lachland

[Klapaucius]

I built a plane that uses helicopter blades as wings. It actually flies really well.

 

 

[Cavscout74]

Had another busy day in my career - went from early attempts at a 2-man pod capable of making Mun orbit to my career first manned landing, as well as an automated sample return missions from Mun & Minmus.

OMV-2 performing braking burn.  I didn't have any engine plates unlocked yet, and I made due with what was available.  It did manage to get to Mun orbit & back, which unlocked another 90-point science node & instantly made this design obsolete

There are a few nice shots of the first Mun landing, especially since it was just a few hundred meters from a landmark.

Spoiler

IML-2 (Interim Mun Lander, 2-seats) launching from KSC.  Although the manned Mun orbit had opened up some extra science and enough funds to unlock the level 2 VAB, I was still scraping by with what parts I had available.   The three large external tanks have landing legs mounted on them, and are intended to be jettisoned after Mun takeoff.

IML-2 descending towards something interesting

Flag planting and some sight-seeing on the surface before returning home

Preparing to burn for home

Oddly enough, the automated Mun sample return mission occurred after the crewed landing.  The design leaves a small base station with limited science behind to take care of those "collect science from the surface of..." contracts.  The first design had one itty bitty flaw - no batteries on the base station, just the handful of EC in the drone core.  Once I realized that, I used the remaining fuel to take off & crash it into the Mun

Spoiler

MSR-2 (the MSR-1 design was a disaster) in Mun orbit

Descending to land after jettisoning the transfer stage.  Solar panels have been folded in case of mishaps during landing

Safely on the surface.  Once all science has been gathered in the return stage, the 3 pairs of sepratrons fire in sequence to boost the return vehicle back to Mun orbit. 

The sepratrons are then jettisoned and the 5 kN mini-aerospike (it's the only small 0.625m engine I have) finished the job of bringing science back to Kerbin

Once in Kerbin's atmosphere, it burns its remaining fuel then jettisons the return stage

And finally makes a safe parachute landing - in this case <30 km from the desert launch site

Mun base station before I took it off to crash into the Mun.  Would've been great except for that whole no batteries thing.   MSR-3 was an improved design (with extra batteries) that successfully went to Minmus & back

I also succeeded in landing a small remote rover near Mun's north pole

And finally, Val took a newly available jet up to investigate a pair of magnetic anomalies on Kerbin.  The first was in the mountains to the east of KSC - which resulted in the loss of that jet, but Val was recovered successfully - and the second in the mountains to the north of KSC, which also resulted in the loss of the jet but another successful recovery of Val.

 

 

[Thiagobs]

Remade my old tongue-in-the-cheek 'replica' of Santos Dumont's 14Bis

 

 

 

Takes a while to takeoff, but Jeb is patient

 

 

 

 

Alas, like the real thing, it won't go very far

 

[Delay]

1 hour ago, Thiagobs said:

It's flying backwards!?

[JadeOfMaar]

I made mischief with Stock Kerbin and Kerbal Konstructs. Please ignore the fact that the harbor rebelliously rotated the wrong way and refuses to be fixed right now.

I cloned the Panther and NERV to make advanced or feature-rich nuclear engines to include in Rational Resources.

As a proper nuclear turbojet, the panther clone no longer needs LiquidFuel or Oxygen, but it now has a nuclear reactor feature and requires that to not be in the red in order to function. Users of NF Electric integrated nuclear jets will find this one easier to operate. Thermal load by throttle isn't a thing, except when in runaway thrust in thick atmo.

The NERV clones together can switch between 5 propellants (maybe 6 soon) excluding LiquidFuel, thanks to B9 Part Switch 2.10.0. B9 does not allow plume switching but these clones will use my plumes, not Nertea's, just so they can be distinguished from the normal NERV while burning fuel.

Edited September 3, 2019 by JadeOfMaar