What did you do in KSP1 today?

[NHunter]

With my Stock+OPM career essentially completed, I decided that it's about time to do stuff in the GPP one. And, today, my probes began arriving to Gauss:

- As usual, the forward relay arrives first:

- It was followed by one of the mapping satellites a few days later:

^ That while dot right next to the edge of antenna dish is Ciro, the system's sun. It's so tiny and dim out there...

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Spent much of my day trying to get Strange Cargo, which had delivered a group of colonists to Gilly several days ago, to a point where it could dock with LSV House Atreides in Eve orbit. SC had arrived over Eve yesterday but it was clear the ship would not have sufficient fuel to affect a safe rendezvous, so my day began by dispatching Andrea Doria from space station Eveport for a rendezvous, which was set for three hours and 35 minutes after Doria departed the station. While that was pending, the crew aboard LSV House Harkonnen in a nasty orbit of Bop completed the print of a lab module, which was used to level up everybody aboard. Engineer Beamon Kerman achieved five star status as planned, and all of the colonists that Harkonnen is scheduled to deliver to the Bohai 2 outpost on the surface reached level 4 status.

I checked in with the Enchova Central outpost on Duna next, which was producing Xenon Gas for delivery to the nascent warp tanker SL Shai Hulud in orbit. The outpost delievered a full tank's worth, after which I went up to Shai Hulud to begin making Exotic Matter for her Alcubierre Drive and to start converting the Xenon Gas into Liquid Xenon for storage and delivery. That 1800 unit tank of Xenon Gas translated to a little over 60 units of Liquid Xenon, which was enough to convince me that I was going to have to revert to other means to fill the Liquid Xenon tank.

Before I could begin making plans there, Doria rendezvoused with Strange Cargo.

Look kids, I took a screenie today!

Once Strange Cargo docked up to Andrea Doria, a refueling mass driver shot was sent up from the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on the surface, refueling both craft to full capacity. Refueled, Strange Cargo undocked and headed to a rendezvous with House Atreides, scheduled to take place a little under three hours later. Doria for her part burned to return to Eveport, where she arrived and docked about 1.5 hours later. 

At that point I had time to plan to fill up Shai Hulud's Liquid Xenon tank - the plan I came up with was to make a supply available at the South Base outpost on Kerbin near KSC and to shoot it up directly with the outpost's mass driver. For this plan to work of course, Shai Hulud would need to be in orbit of Kerbin, and to that end I lit the craft's conventional drive and burned it into a 182.5 x 182 kilometer, 0.03° inclined orbit over Duna. Unfortunately, the conventional drive set up a bit more in terms of vibration than I'd anticipated when I designed the craft, and when the final burn completed I discovered that one of the ship's SAFER reactors had come off mid-burn. I'm lucky it didn't blow up anything. I was already having issues providing sufficient power to operate the craft's Exotic Matter generator continuously; this is likely to exacerbate those issues. I should still be able to operate the Alcubierre Drive to get the craft to Kerbin, assuming I'm careful about the XM generation. Meanwhile, I fitted a Wisent 7 utility rover with a Liquid Xenon tank from IFS, and drove it the three kilometers out to South Base. At this point it's parked nearby awaiting Shai Hulud's arrival before I go to hook it up to the outpost.

Strange Cargo affected a successful docking with House Atreides, and with no further business to conduct at Eve I began the process of returning the craft to Kerbin, stopping by Jool first to bleed off much of its speed; the craft arrived at Jool going 8,632 m/s and settled into a 5,750 x 5128.6 kilometer, 7.13° inclined orbit after one warp-back maneuver. The ship should reach optimal position for a final warp to Kerbin in just over 1.5 hours from now. The aforementioned colonization contract - the one where Strange Cargo acted as the delivery ship - completed itself just as I was closing out business today; I'll go out to Ocean Ranger to finalize the completion first thing tomorrow.

Tomorrow I hope to be able to get House Atreides and LSV House Corrino to Kerbin and to put House Harkonnen in a better orbit of Bop. I'm also hoping to be able to get Shai Hulud out to Duna, though that one will depend on how much free time I get to play and the real extent of the damage it took today. It's entirely possible I'll be forced to send up a repair mission to Shai Hulud before everything is said and done. I'm also thinking very hard about reinstalling Kerbal Konstructs so I can get access to Runway parts; intent there is to put a Runway out by the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe. Not much else going on right now; I picked up a second satellite contract for Dres so I'm pretty sure that's where the game is planning on sending me next at this point. Won't actually go out there until I have the exploration contract to do so, of course...

Edited September 12, 2019 by capi3101
posted early, apparently.

[Guest]

After finishing work on the Elvira, I relaxed by playing around a bit with prop planes. I slapped together one I called Kerbules, it's a ridiculously overpowered four-engine with a big wing and control surfaces; maybe I'll publish it later after I make it a bit prettier. It is a lot of fun to fly already -- I made a prop preset that has it take off from a really short runway and then climb at, like, 45 degrees while accelerating; it'll also drop out of the sky if I reverse the props and is super controllable low-and-slow by using the throttle on that prop preset -- I can skim the ground at ca 40 m/s, climb over terrain, and what have you. 

Anyway, I'm really digging the handling characteristics of these prop planes -- they're super stable, super coordinated, and the power delivery is instant, like on a rocket plane, but they have all the endurance you want. Easily the easiest and most fun to fly craft I've made in KSP; if you're new to flight sims or planes one of these would be a perfect way to learn.

Question to any of you who have played with the Breaking Ground props though: what's the top speed of your planes in straight and level flight? I got Kerbules up to 255 m/s, which is the fastest I've reached. The Elvira went up to 240 or so with half the power and much more mass. I think it's constrained by prop aerodynamics (as it should be...).

[catloverjerrygarcia]

I just accomplished this in my sandbox game(The Simulator/s for my Career game).

Lookie Lookie by AdmFranzvonHippie, on Flickr

[Guest]

A technology demonstration was prepared to gather support for upcoming near-Kerbin asteroid missions.

It did not go to space today.

[Guest]

I finished a fun little side project, the BAK-130 Kerbules. It's for parachute training. It's also a ton of fun to fly, with an absurd amount of power on tap at low speeds, while being at the same time manoeuvrable without being twitchy. It'll climb almost straight up at 80-90 m/s, and stop like it's slamming into a wall if you reverse thrust, and you have to make an actual effort to crash it. Perfect for trainee pilots... and parachutists.

Top speed is ca 255 m/s which is the best I've managed with a prop plane.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-130-Kerbules

[NMWXCO]

Did some minor stuff yesterday.

 

I started off building a ship to carry the replacement crew back to the KSS horizon to resume research and add 2 recently unlocked experiments using KIS....the vessel was called the Halley2,  all resupply and station shuttling missions will carry that designation from here on. .... this mission was completely cursed and i ended up doing it 3 times over. On first approach to the KSS horizon it mysteriously exploded 2km out when it loaded in because the robotics on the solar arrays freaked out. ... on the next run i realized i comletely forgot a cupola for a science experiment meant to be done on station. ... On the next run the docking proceeded again but i realized i had not read the contract and i in fact needed to run my observations on the very first KSS-1 station.... however the Halley2 did not have a probe core so i needed to keep atleast one kerbal in the command pod and that i needed to take a extra docking port with me and engineer because the KSS-1 used older ones....

Spoiler

 

 

 

I sucessfull performed the rendezvous with the KSS-1 and managed to dock after bouncing off once. .... In my ultimate wisdom i decided to attach a scaled down KAS connector between the vessels for ''extra stability''.... then move it. this was a mistake. the pod shook violently then turned sharply and destroyed the main fuel tank on the KSS-1 and some other hardware. i decided to reload the last quicksave which took me back quite far so i had to move all my kerbals and prep for the redevouz again.

The next round around i did succeed though. the science report was sucessfull performed.... but in my ultimate wisdom i decided to move the observation port, with the data in it to the KSS-1 and forgot i had to recover it on kerbin. I then re-docked with the KSS horizon to make the final crew selection and transfer some things. The container that carried the items with the halley2 was bolted it to the KSS Horizon by a engineer wielding a electric screwdriver and the brave engineer from the KSS-1 was moved into the return pod as he was overdue for a break. The kerbals waved goodbye through the windows and the halley2 then returned home, completing the crew rotation contract.

After this i was completely and utterly broke and had to wait 6 days for the monthly funding to come along and increase my funds from 12.000 to 1.200.000 funds.

The next mission after this was a survey scan mission of kerbin, the mun and minmus....it turns out i did not carry enough batteries so i changed the transmitter to allow partial transmission. this made it possible to eventually finish the scanning. Because of transfer windows and the time it took to recharge the batteries during transmissions it took all in all around 20 kerbin days to map all 3 bodies, with the minmus leg of the journey being the longest.

 

Edited September 12, 2019 by NMWXCO
forgot a image.

[coyotesfrontier]

Got the Propulsion, Science, and Life Support Modules of Rust Spear into LKO, but when rendezvousing the Habitation Module, I discovered that the solar panel arrays on the LS Module were somehow spinning extremely fast, as if they were mounted on a motor set to maximum speed.

I had to abort the docking due to spinning-caused ghost forces moving the craft, and decided to see if I could somehow get rid of the kraken-possessed arrays. Fortunately, the spinning reached a point where the arrays each ejected themselves from Rust Spear, though that was only after I had reverted the Hab Module flight.

As there was only a single docking port open on RS (for connecting the LS module to the Hab), I sent up 2 kerbals on a mission to attach two new ports for new solar arrays, using KIS.

I currently have to send up the hab module, 4 refueling missions, and the crew shuttle, and after that Rust Spear will depart on its 3 year mission to Duna orbit and back. Despite playing since 0.90, this is the first time I've stuck with a science save long enough for interplanetary missions, so I'm super excited to get this done.

 

[Cavscout74]

I didn't get much done other than a handful of course corrections for the probes going to Duna and the outpost going to Minmus arrived in orbit.  The only other thing was a passenger airline contract from KSC to the desert field & back.  I used my new Comet jetliner which performed perfectly.

Climbing over KSC. 

Even with 4 Juno's, it's climb rate is pretty bad fully loaded - I actually had to go around the mountains west of KSC for the first time rather than over them. 

"If you look out the left windows, you'll see ruins of an ancient civilization hidden in the mountains"

Returning to KSC at dusk

Edited September 12, 2019 by Cavscout74

[Delay]

Behold!

My genius 5 burn plan to Moho (which uses 4600m/s out of 4800m/s available, 3100 of which are for capture)!

So it turns out that I've done my parking orbit wrong. The obit's ascending node lined up with Moho's descending node, so the orbits were flipped in inclination (one is +20°, the other -20°). I decided to employ the help of Eve to not only correct my inclination, but also get to Moho's orbit with a fraction of the speed and a fraction of the dV.

Because I'm using a gravity assist which, by the way, takes me very close to Eve's atmosphere, and because Moho is a fairly small target, all of these 5 burns will have to be done with extreme precision, something I do not look forward to!

Anyways, the final orbit will be circular at 75km, with ~200m/s to spare.

Why does the universe have to be this chaotic...

[Castille7]

Today it's Cheryl's Chichier she shed

Thanks to Juggernoob for letting me put his little Fachwerkhaus House on fire here! 

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Got my trainee flying solo this morning, so I figured I'd try to sneak in a report real quick for y'all...

Began my day yesterday with acknowledging the completion of a colonization contract at the Ocean Ranger outpost on Gilly. The contract was only for four days, and as might be expected the delivery ship - Strange Cargo in this case - had only just made it back to the warp ship LSV House Atreides for delivery back to Kerbin. I will be re-training five of the eight colonists, three as engineers and two as pilots as soon as I get the chance.

To make up for the loss of a SAFER reactor during a standard burn into higher orbit of Duna, I decided to print up a Hodor 7 nuclear battery and add it to the docking stack of SL Shai Hulud. To that end, one was ordered up at the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna, with total printing time expected to take six hours. 

 
Did try a mock up of the Shai Hulud's stack in the VAB with the Hodor added, and I'm worried this plan isn't going to work. At least, not whilst still leaving the mass driver unit intact...

I discovered that when Shai Hulud departed BLK after the launch of the craft's mass driver prow, it took all the available Enriched Uranium with it - the station's batteries would've been completely drained had it not been daylight at the time with the solar panels deployed. I quickly rectified that situation by shooting up more nuclear good stuff from the Enchova Central outpost on the Dunan surface via mass driver.

The bulk of my day was spent with a double-warp (against my usual disposition towards attempting such a maneuver), with LSV House Corrino warping over to Jool from Laythe and then both her and LSV House Atreides preparing to warp to Kerbin from there.

To get to Kerbin from Jool, you've got to speed up. So both warp ships are headed at Jool in this screenie. Had to carefully manage their altitudes here - if either one had gotten below 3,000,000m, it'd've been some form of lithobraking (hydrobraking?) time......

House Corrino got to the point where she was going fast enough for the warp first, so she departed Jool's SOI and warped most of the way back to Kerbin. With House Atreides still in free fall towards Jool at the time, I didn't want to get to maneuvering Corrino into Kerbin orbit just yet and have Atreides get too low to activate the Alcubierre Drive as a result. Atreides reached a decent point to warp to Kerbin in short order, though.

House Atreides pointed directly away from Jool in preparation for departure, with two of the moons visible.

Atreides warped directly to Kerbin and wound up arriving at 3,357.5 m/s, a hair too fast for orbital entry. Two warp-backs later, the craft settled into a 628.5 x 606.5 kilometer, 1.67° inclined orbit. Another colonization delivery mission is already lined up for her. Meanwhile, House Corrino was allowed to proceed to Kerbin, where I was rather delighted to discover that I'd gotten her going kinda slow - she arrived at 1,033 m/s. I had had the thought to send her to Mun both for the sake of getting the crew aboard 2-3 extra XP and to load some extra Xenon stores, so that worked out nicely.

Did have to deal with the issue of the target body having another celestial object in the way, but that turned out to be no big deal.

I did need to do just a little maneuvering to bleed off about half that speed so she could orbit Mun, and then proceeded to warp to Mun directly from there, where she settled immediately into a 347.2 x 270.5 kilometer, 2.09° inclined orbit. Supplies of fuel and Xenon were shot up to Corrino from the Piper Alpha outpost in orbit, after which Corrino broke Munar orbit and returned to Kerbin, speeding up a little bit before settling into an 804.9 x 751.2 kilometer, 6.64° inclined orbit.

Upon arrival in orbit, the G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft that I'd printed up at the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe departed Corrino with rescuee pilot Gregeny Kerman aboard. The craft made its way into a lower orbit over Kerbin before final deorbiting.

At night, of course. At least the numbers from Trajectories are looking mighty good...

The craft came down safely about 2.19 kilometers north-northwest of the space center. It fulfilled Gregeny's rescue contract in the process but I was dismayed to find it didn't settle the current exploration contract.

Hmm...I would've thought it would've counted as having "flown by" Laythe by entering orbit. Apparently I'm going to need to try something else...

I have yet to make plans for another shot at fulfilling the other half of the contract; going to be doing that today. Finished up my day yesterday with the transmission of an EVA report at Enchova Central for contract, and I began work on finishing up an ore con job over Eve and Gilly. I did drill up the necessary amount of ore for the contract at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve, but discovered that neither of my orbital space stations over Gilly already had the prerequisite amount of ore in them. I'll probably be working to rectify that situation first chance I get to play this morning. Have yet to check new contracts as well, so I don't know what shape my day (and by extension my weekend) is going to take. LSV House Harkonnen over Bop is just about in position to attempt to improve her orbit, though, so I'm liable to be working on finally getting her tourists down to the Bohai 2 outpost on the surface over the coming days. Only been trying to get that done all week, so I know I'll be working on that at least...

 

[catloverjerrygarcia]

Basic non-fancy shmancy update.  In my sandbox mode save I learned how to use MechJeb to execute rendezvous and docking.

[Delay]

This just in: Kraken enraged over in-game MM reload:

Who knew oceans could be upside down?

Even space is flooded!

Edited September 13, 2019 by Delay
This just keeps getting better!

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

Ah, KSP... your wonders never cease...

[Cavscout74]

Finally made a little more progress in career after things calmed down some today.  My Minmus outpost landed yesterday and the first crew arrived today to set up surface experiments and start their month long stay on Minmus.  I still need to get a rover launched for them to explore and hopefully find a nice rock formation to scan.

I also had a load of tourists make an orbit around the Mun & back for a pretty nice paycheck.   During reentry, apparently the orbital stage was draggier than the crew module, because I had already staged it away a few seconds before this image & the two parts stayed like this for quite a while after. 

And I launched another Minmus lander, this time with a tourist on board in addition to a pilot & scientist.  They are carrying an extra surface solar panel assembly for the Minmus outpost (since the engineer I sent was only 1 star)

Finally, Val went on a solo trip to investigate the last Mun monolith.  The science she brought back got me up to 160.6 science points, allowing me to purchase the Mk1-3 pod so I can start on larger missions now.  I didn't have time to put a craft together tonight, but I already have a pair of LKO rescues lined up for the first mission with the larger pod.

Edited September 14, 2019 by Cavscout74

[Guest]

I entered LMO today and landing on moho will be tomorrow after I launch real rockets

[Guest]

My website has changed a little bit to make a more up to date site icon

Go look yourself

https://kerbalanders.wordpress.com/

[catloverjerrygarcia]

I mostly did design work, simulations, redesign work, and more simulations.  But it resulted in these designs for my Mun landing mission.

Launch preparations are well on their way, the Sanshoo will be the first to launch from pad C followed by the Washi IV on pad A..

 

 

[RealKerbal3x]

I spent this morning working on a replica of SpaceX's Starship Mk1, examples of which are currently under construction in Texas and Florida.

I even replicated the actuating fins utilising Breaking Ground hinges, which worked nicely until...

Eventually, however, I decided to replace the small hinges I had been using with the huge alligator hinges, and the flaperons' kraken tendencies disappeared. 

[Dizzle]

Hadn't played in a long time, but recently heard of KSP 2 and decided to try again. Started a new career, messed around with the Mun and Minmus, played with some new toys that had been added. Did an Apollo-style Duna landing, was only after the orbiter was on a trajectory out of Duna's SOI and back to Kerbin that I realized all of the surface science was in the lander.

[catloverjerrygarcia]

This morning I launched two spacecraft for a Mun mission, and docked them in orbit over Kerbin.

 

[WooDzor]

Jeb almost dodged a rover.

[Ratwerke_Actual]

The final braking burn of a 128,000 ton Class 'A'  asteroid.

At 90% ore it will refuel anything I ever desire.

This took about 3-1/2 hours of total burn time from 45 nuclear engines.

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Fairly minimal day to report for y'all yesterday; didn't have much more than 90 minutes real-time to play though, so that's to be expected.

Started the day at the Ocean Ranger outpost on Gilly, where I shot up 2000 units of Ore via mass driver to the Samwell Tarly Yards in orbit; switching over to the Yards completed a contract to deliver said ore to Gilly orbit. Granted, that ore was supposed to come from Eve, but if the game isn't going to keep track of that, I sure ain't (in fairness, I had drilled up that much from the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve on Thursday). Followed that up with a delivery of fuel supplies and Rocket Parts via mass driver from the South Base outpost near KSC to LSV House Atreides in orbit, the ship having freshly arrived from Eve and Jool the previous day. After that it was to Mission Control for some fresh contracts.

I picked up a tourist contract where one of my tourists was headed to the surface of Eve, and a two-kerbal colonist contract for Minmus. With no ferry ships currently available at space station Kerbinport to begin conducting these missions and with enough colonists headed out otherwise to warrant doing so (I already had another nine-kerbal colonist contract for Duna), I reluctantly ordered up the construction of the Minnow 7b touring craft Roy Hinkley at the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyard over Kerbin. Shipyard engineer Ceri Kerman will have the craft finished in 34 hours. Meanwhile, Strange Cargo departed House Atreides and set course for space station Kerbinport, reaching an intercept point 25 minutes later and burning to set a rendevous then - flight time to the rendezvous will be 58 minutes.

Rest of my play time was spent over Bop, beginning by moving LSV House Harkonnen from the ugly orbit that I put her in a few days ago into something a little more operationally better. Had to use the ship's conventional engines for the job, and it was definitely slow going.

You can barely see the flames of the ship's twin Poodle engines, but they're definitely there if you look hard enough. In this screenie, Harkonnen had burned below the safe altitude for Bop; burning radially out to rectify that.

Ultimately the ship settled into a 68.5 x 26.8 kilometer, 3.39° inclined orbit, which was good enough. Fuel was transferred back into the main tanks of Next Objective, J. G. Backus and Gilligan all docked to Harkonnen, and one by one the craft departed the ship. Both Next Objective and J.G. Backus burned for individual rendezvous with space station Bopport, with the two scheduled to arrive in a little over 70 minutes; there's about ninety seconds worth of spread between the scheduled arrival times of the two craft. Gilligan burned to rendezvous with the Imo Pyramis Shipyards; Jeb will be dropping off engineer Luddorf Kerman there, where the latter will be taking up his permanent post and bring the shipyard permanently online.

I also availed myself of the opportunity to send the Bill Clinton 7c probe hauling Deoly's Pod these last few weeks over to rendezvous with Harkonnen. After an hour's flight time, the probe arrived and docked at Harkonnen safely.

I bet Deoly's really ready to get out of that box by now. Incidentally, about five seconds after I took this screenie, the two craft crossed the terminator into night and I lost my light...it happened just as the probe docked. Glad I got this screenshot when I did...

My day ended with the completion of the Hodor 7 nuclear battery being built at the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna. First thing on the agenda for my next play session is to fuel the thing up and then get it over to SL Shai Hulud still in Duna's orbit. I'm still not confident that the addition of the battery to Shai Hulud's stack will solve the ship's power issues nor do I yet know if the mass driver will break off the first time I go to activate the warp bubble (on account of it not being wholly contained within the bubble - a big no-no with the Alcubierre Drive mod). Only time will tell there...

I'll also be sending up the next batch of tourists and colonists. I have sixteen kerbals to send up at the moment, so an Auk VII spaceplane flight will be in order - I seem to recall having done some changes to the craft's RCS systems after the last Auk VII flight, so hopefully docking won't be horribly slow. Only four of those kerbals will be heading back to the surface eventually, so at some point I'll want to make an Auk IX flight as well - that need not happen today if higher priority items come up. I've got my kerbal colonists headed to the Bohai 2 base on Bop, and I'd like to be able to get Harkonnen back to Kerbin ASAP - got to get my three ferry ships back to dock with the warp ship before that can happen, of course. I'm considering sending my two scientists currently at Kerbinport over to go help Ceri build Roy Hinkley; Ceri is a 5-star engineer (believe it or not), and even though they're scientists I've learned that they can provide some productivity boost with an engineer present. It would be nice to not have the construction job take 5+ Kerbin days.  

Chores at home today, so I don't anticipate having too much to show for the rest of my weekend; I'll be sure to let y'all know if anything interesting happens on Monday, though, if not sooner.