What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Pretty minimal day to report to y'all this morning - my log has three encoded entries and that's about it. Nothing wrong with a relatively short post, though.

After beginning my day with an ore and fuel supply resource mass driver shot from the Bohai 2 base on Bop to space station Bopport in orbit, I went over to the Alexander L. Kielland base on Eve; at the tail end of my day on Sunday, I had received word that one of my ongoing colonization contracts was complete, and it turned out to be the one for ALK. The colonists out there were rapidly put to work and I'm hopeful that the next time I need to launch a craft from the surface it won't take several days to construct. Going to Mission Control shortly afterwards, I was dismayed to find no replacement contract.

The entire rest of my day was spent nursemaiding the nascent Vermilion Block 380 base on Vall. By the end of my morning break the little drill on the Victor 2 rover had dug up enough ore for me to generate sufficient Equipment to deploy the outpost's first drill unit. After engineer Ludvis Kerman moved the Micro ISRU from Victor 2 over to 380, the base's growth started to snowball; by mid-day the foundry module, geology lab and commercial labs were up along with the other three planned drill units, and by the end of the afternoon the remaining portions of the tent city had been printed up and deployed, with the base's remote launch pad also seeing installation.

Vermillion Block 380 on Vall, with the Victor 2 (left) and Victor 1 (right) rovers also visible. Base is coming along nicely.

The permanent structures were all printed up in the evening, with the walkway leading out to main dome installed and inflated. At this point all the Pathfinder steamer trunk boxes (i.e. all of those structures) are sitting atop that walkway with the main dome attached and awaiting inflation; have to have the Konkrete to put it up before I can actually do the job there. This puts Vermilion in about the same state as the rebuilt South Base near KSC; it's just a little bit behind. I did wind up going out to the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe thinking that the spaceplane docking piers for space station Laytheport were ready for launch; game jumped the time to three days as soon as I got there and proceeded to blow the three remaining walkways that were there, so I did have to spend some time printing up and installing replacements. Annoying as that was, it did give Vermilion some time to make Konkrete.

Today I think I'll leave Vermilion to stew for a while; if I go there at all, it will be to get a return-to-Kerbin craft of some type going so I can finish the Vall exploration contract I have at the moment and maybe to deploy the main dome. I'll have to review the design of the G-LOC 7a; I don't think the craft has sufficient oomph to get off of Vall's surface (having been designed for Mun primarily). South Base will also likely warrant a brief visit to deploy structures. I still need to warp both LSV House Atreides and LSV House Harkonnen back to Kerbin to begin new contracts and I have a new base to begin work on on Pol. Still hoping to get the docking piers up at Laythe, and I've still got J. G. Backus heading out to Minmus; she's got three days left until she gets there. All in all, not a whole lot going on at the moment; looking forward to doing something other than base construction in the near term.

[PT]

Rock.

It refused to move.

Bob refused to let it refuse.

Differential throttle was required.

Heat!

With some creative screwdriving Bob refused to let it overheat.

ISRU consumed three quarters of rock to bring it back. Harvesting space rocks does not work that well in New Horizon.

Ugh.

 

[Cavscout74]

I started assembling my Minmus station and got the first crew on board to finish assembly & start research in low Minmus orbit.

Starting off with fuel/power module 1 arriving & docking.   After it is docked, the two transfer stages are jettisoned and set to crash into Minmus after draining most of the LF/O & monoprop - the fuel module was sent up mostly empty to make it easier to launch, although I haven't unlocked ISRU yet so any fuel will have to come from Kerbin at the moment.

Next came Jeb with Kelrik the senior engineer & Ambera the senior scientist to bring the station on line.

In addition to transferring over a lot of assorted equipment - I totally forgot to stock the KIS containers on the station with tools, spare solar panels & antennas, KAS attachments, etc - Kelrik then welded the docking ports for the fuel module

Then it was time for the science module to arrive & dock, requiring a second EVA by Kelrik to weld those ports as well.

Minmus Station is now in (partial) operation.  Another fuel/power module is on the way, along with a new lander design (the Mini-Minmus lander) to give landing capabilities as well as a limited crew escape craft.  Once I unlock greenhouses (requiring another 300-point node), I'll add a life support module to complete the station.  I also have a replacement crew getting ready to launch in a few days to take over for the vets now that the station is on line.

The science gathered so far (apparently I hadn't used the DMagic MultiSpectrum Imager around Minmus yet, so I got a load of science transmitted back to KSC) allowed me to unlock nuclear propulsion.  I've been intentionally waiting to unlock it, and I've managed to send probes to every body except Dres with just conventional rocket engines which is unusual for me - usually nuclear propulsion is one of the first 300-point nodes I unlock.  My Moho Pioneer probe hasn't actually departed yet, but it is in orbit waiting for the transfer window with just a Cheetah to fling it across the vast emptiness of space. 

[Triop]

5 hours ago, PT said:

Differential throttle was required.

Heat!

YOU ROCK !

You will make a great Sith Lord....DO IT !

Edited October 2, 2019 by Triop

[Guest]

Huh, I'm getting into rock harvesting as well, also with difficulties. (In simulation at this point.)

I made a rock harvester/tug, lined it up with the rock's CoM, clamped on. And... got into a wild oscillation no matter what I'm doing. I experimented a bit with autostrut and think I figured out what the problem is, will make a more rigid rock tug and try again.

But this is clearly not as simple as I thought.

[PT]

27 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Huh, I'm getting into rock harvesting as well, also with difficulties. (In simulation at this point.)

I made a rock harvester/tug, lined it up with the rock's CoM, clamped on. And... got into a wild oscillation no matter what I'm doing. I experimented a bit with autostrut and think I figured out what the problem is, will make a more rigid rock tug and try again.

But this is clearly not as simple as I thought.

KIS/KAS and strut yourself to that filthy rock!

Claw is horrible structural element and long rocket will greatly compound any CoM/CoT offset.

Thats why I went with stubby design with claw in its butt. Due to improvements in thrust occlusion I had to kerbhaul those engines to better spots, which gave me stable wide design (stable with MJ automatic differential thrust, that is). You could have it wihout mods, by delivering bunch of clawed engine pod drones.

[Guest]

Just now, PT said:

KIS/KAS and strut yourself to that filthy rock!

Yeah well I'm doing a pure stock/DLC career so I'll try to find some other solution. I have something in mind actually, will post here if I get it to work.

[capi3101]

Gave up rock catching myself a long time ago. A lot of effort for minimal rewards, IMHO...and in my case, since I couldn't get the contracts done in one sitting, the rewards were usually nil in any event. Anyways...

 

(1.6.1) After spending my whole day on Monday building up the Vermilion Block 380 outpost on Vall, I decided to spend my time yesterday getting some stuff to where it was going. Opened the day with LSV House Atreides, which broke orbit over Eve and warped directly to Kerbin, arriving at a speed of 15,955 kps. It took 64 warp-backs for the ship to slow down sufficiently for orbital entry; ultimately she attained a 536.9 x 422.7 kilometer, 1.47° inclined orbit. While that was ongoing, I did go over to Vermilion briefly to start the print of a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft, having determined that the design could launch from Vall and have sufficient delta-V for a rendezvous with LSV House Corrino still in an inclined orbit over Vall. Print time was anticipated to be just under 3.5 hours.

After Atreides attained orbit, Gilligan undocked from the warp ship and set course for space station Kerbinport, with a total flight time to rendezvous of 84 minutes. Ten minutes after Gilligan departed, Strange Cargo also departed from Atreides for Kerbinport, with a total flight time to rendezvous of 76 minutes. While the two ships were in transit, I took the opportunity for LSV House Harkonnen to break her orbit over Bop and warp to a 6,253.1x 5928.3 kilometer, 39° inclined orbit over Jool, as a first leg in her return flight to Kerbin. Later in the day I was able to work her down to a 12° inclination, and while that was ongoing I received word of the completion of a colonization contract at the Bohai 2 base on Bop. Retraining of the crew afterwards yielded one new pilot, five scientists and three engineers.

After Gilligan and Strange Cargo docked at Kerbinport, Vemilion completed its print of the G-LOC. After fueling, the craft was launched and put on a course to have it rendezvous with House Corrino; total flight time is anticipated to be 99 minutes. Construction of what will become space station Vallport began at Vermilon, with total construction time anticipated at sixty hours. As with the ongoing building of space station Laytheport, Vermilion's stores of Rocket Parts are by themselves not sufficient to complete the construction, so I will be checking up on it and revising the construction estimate as time passes.

Earlier this morning I had the crew at Vermilion print up a recycling arm for the Victor 2 rover parked just outside the base, and used it to recycle the skycrane for the Victor 1 rover, which was still parked about 1200 meters away from the base. The recycler worked reasonably well; it was night so there were a few parts I missed, but I'll get to those when I can. The recycler did fail to produce Equipment as hoped - still not sure what happened there, as Victor 2 was configured for Equipment hauling and storage at the time. If I use this method of recycling again, I might try configuring it for Materials Kits instead. While I was out there, Vermilion also finally produced sufficient Konkrete to deploy her main Castillo dome, and engineer Ludvis Kerman busied herself with the deployment of walkways and the installation of the remaining base Castillo structures. The base's mass driver is online at this point as is its ground transmitter, leaving just the storage depot, observatory and factory modules left to inflate. The main dome has been configured for Konkrete production at this point, so I anticipate that the base will be completed in the very near future. At this point, construction at Vermilion has surpassed that at the rebuilt South Base near KSC, despite the latter beginning its construction first.

Business for today includes getting House Harkonnen to Kerbin, getting the G-LOC to Corrino and then getting Corrino back to Kerbin, and landing the G-LOC; these are the main things I want to accomplish with the rest of my day today. The spaceplane docking piers for Laytheport are nearing completion at this point as well, and J. G. Backus is only a few hours out from Minmus's SOI now; I may have to begin maneuvers to bring her to rendezvous with space station Minmusport at some point today. I'm hoping the return of the G-LOC will unlock permissions for further ground operations on Pol; I still have a crew on the ground there waiting for the go-ahead to begin building their base. Time permitting, I also hope to finish up Vermilion and South Base today as well.

[Pipcard]

Y51, D188 - Negi Maru enters orbit around Slate, the largest moon of Sarnus

Sarnus Rabbit 1 does what it was designed for: landing on the high-gravity moon

[Guest]

Yay, my asteroid miner/tug actually works!

Stuck on like a limpet, did not wobble, is able to manoeuvre that little rock. I'd call that a success!

[Triop]

Just give me a minute . . . . .

[Piper]

39 minutes ago, Triop said:

Just give me a minute . . . . .

Mein Gott!  What did you do to that guy?!

[PT]

Space dongle.

Lucky launch window.

Ion Drive slaved to RCS controls.

Contact.

Everything went according to plan. Mission failed.

Liquid fuel, instead of Lf+Ox, tank has been built. ISRU can't provide Ox directly to smelter so smelting can't start.

Two failed asteroid missions in a row caused two obsolete labships to go almost dry of science to squeeze out:

An early failure which required visit from emergency bat-drone to be usable.

And overly creative failure which, despite successful Aptur landing and rover deployment, ended up in a mess because you can't really drive without meaningful gravity...

[Cavscout74]

My career continued to progress - I've mostly finished my Minmus station and made the first successful spaceplane flight to orbit.  A second crew attempted to launch to Minmus Station, but the SRB's collided with the core during staging, resulting in a launch failure.  I can't even call it an abort - the radial LFO boosters broke free after the collision & destroyed the LES as they shot past the crew section.  By some miracle, they missed the actual crew section though, so the crew were recovered successfully in the highlands east of the Desert launch site.  They are currently preparing for a second launch in a few days.   Two of the trails are from the radial boosters, I'm not certain on the third one

The Mini-Min lander arrived & docked with Minmus Station.  It is purely monoprop powered, and provides landing and escape capabilities to the station crew.  I'm hoping the "ladders as landing legs" will work ok - they should have enough impact tolerance for Minmus, but I haven't actually tried them yet.

The second fuel/power module arrived & was added as well.  Now I'm just waiting to unlock greenhouse modules to add a life support module which will finish the station.

The biggest announcement was - due solely to a lucky part test contract (Test Whiplash in flight above Kerbin) combined with just last night unlocking nuclear propulsion, I was able to roll out the CS-01B Falcon spaceplane.   The -01A version uses a single Panther while the -01B upgrades to the Whiplash and is a little easier to get up to speed in the atmosphere.  Since Jeb was off lounging on Minmus Station, Vall drew the honors of taking the Falcon up on it's maiden flight.

Climbing over the ocean

Once in LKO, she made less than one full orbit before deorbiting to return to KSC

One more good thing - the Falcon's old habit of going nuts (stall/spin/other) near the end of reentry seems to be fixed, it was rock steady the whole way down.  On the down side, it overshot KSC by almost 300 km and had to fly back.  Vall was down to <50 units of LF on touchdown

Since the Whiplash is still an experimental part, I didn't want to recover the Falcon, so I parked it near the SPH & sent a fuel truck to refill it for future missions.  The engineer who brought the fuel also kindly added a ladder to the cockpit (Oops...)

[Triop]

1 hour ago, Piper said:

Mein Gott!  What did you do to that guy?!

'Leave seat.' 

[Jacke]

5 hours ago, Triop said:

'Leave seat.' 

"And Jebediah found out he'd driven into...the Triop Zone."

[Triop]

1 minute ago, Jacke said:

"And Jebediah found out he'd driven into...the Triop Zone."

[Hotel26]

Regarding asteroids, I do wonder about the utility perhaps of a roaming space colony in a strategic Kerbolar orbit, that wanders from huge asteroid to the next as it consumes them.  Imagine such a thing a stone's throw from Moho[*], but in the ecliptic (zero inclination).  Getting there is half the job.  Then refuel.  Then perform the inclination change and set-up the rendez-vous.  (This might work better further out, making the inclination change easier, but then you might need a series of them to give faster transfer windows.)

There may be easier ways (in general), but I'm thinking in particular about the task of moving heavy equipment.

Maybe another application is a series of gas stations in an inner orbit to allow more frequent transfers from Kerbin to outer planets (and vice versa).  No slingshot but full tanks and a wind shield wipe.

* clearly, Eve arguably fulfils this role, so it's not a fine example(!)

Edited October 3, 2019 by Hotel26

[Triop]

Today, I fired my new graphic designer . . .

 

Edited October 3, 2019 by Triop

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

Regarding asteroids, I do wonder about the utility perhaps of a roaming space colony in a strategic Kerbolar orbit, that wanders from huge asteroid to the next as it consumes them.  Imagine such a thing a stone's throw from Moho[*], but in the ecliptic (zero inclination).  Getting there is half the job.  Then refuel.  Then perform the inclination change and set-up the rendez-vous.  (This might work better further out, making the inclination change easier, but then you might need a series of them to give faster transfer windows.)

There may be easier ways (in general), but I'm thinking in particular about the task of moving heavy equipment.

Maybe another application is a series of gas stations in an inner orbit to allow more frequent transfers from Kerbin to outer planets (and vice versa).  No slingshot but full tanks and a wind shield wipe.

* clearly, Eve arguably fulfils this role, so it's not a fine example(!)

My initial reaction is that this would be a lot of work for little utility. There's no point stopping for gas in mid-transfer; in most cases your intercept and RV would likely consume more fuel than you'd spend in the capture at your destination. 

I'm also discovering just how much work dealing with asteroids is to start with: you have to look for them, find one that has a reasonable encounter with the body you're on, RV (which is usually expensive because very few asteroids encounter neatly around the equatorial plane; the practice attempt above had an inclination of 41 degrees), then there's the capture. 

My tentative plan (in this semi-hardcore no-probes career) is to set up an asteroid space station in the Dunatian system. This is a multi-stage operation; I will need a SENTINEL to find a suitable candidate, then capture it and drag it to a useful orbit, then set up the rest of the operation there. I'm already certain that this is going to be a lot more complicated than just running fuel from Ike, but that's part of the fun. I don't even know how much fuel a type B asteroid yields!

Another thing that I kind of want to do is set up logistics based on running ore rather than fuel, mostly because it'd be cool to have a big ol' orbital refinery with massive tanks and solar panels and what have you. Trouble is I can't seem to get the numbers to work. Ore has the same energy density as Lf+Ox which is great, but you can't burn it; this means that since my drill craft doesn't have an ISRU I'll need to carry enough fuel to get to the mining site -- and back, while carrying a full load of ore. Depending on where I am that ends up as a lot of fuel I'm hauling back and forth, so much so that it's more efficient to just have an ISRU onboard. Which means I'm right back to those tidy self-contained mining/fuelling stations which are nice and all but not what I set out to do.

[PT]

3 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

... 

My tentative plan (in this semi-hardcore no-probes career) is to set up an asteroid space station in the Dunatian system. This is a multi-stage operation; I will need a SENTINEL to find a suitable candidate, then capture it and drag it to a useful orbit, then set up the rest of the operation there. I'm already certain that this is going to be a lot more complicated than just running fuel from Ike, but that's part of the fun. I don't even know how much fuel a type B asteroid yields!

... 

Not nearly enough if you want to move it. Rock size does not matter much. If you want to move it a lot then tyrany of rocket equation makes you burn most of it.

I am tempted to try ion tug, but long burns are waste of dV... 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, PT said:

Not nearly enough if you want to move it. Rock size does not matter much. If you want to move it a lot then tyrany of rocket equation makes you burn most of it.

Hmm okay, I was kind of afraid of that. That would mean that asteroid mining is a pretty labour-heavy activity -- find a suitable one that you can capture with the smallest possible dV, mine it until it's dry, repeat. Problem is that because it'll likely be in a really bad orbit the fuel runs are going to be stupidly expensive. 

IOW it really doesn't make much sense if there is an option just to set up shop on a comfy moon somewhere.

[capi3101]

Y'all doing rock catching might find this technique helpful. It's old, but still very applicable. Anyways...

 

(1.6.1) Lots of mass driver supply transfers to report to y'all this morning (which in the biz is known as "boring-ass whale-feces", with a somewhat stronger yet forum-banned word in place of 'feces'). The rebuilt South Base near KSC was able to send up fuel and Rocket Parts to LSV House Atreides freshly arrived from Eve, with SL Shai Hulud sending over supplies of Xenon Gas and Exotic Matter to Atreides as well. Later on in the day, South Base sent up fuel supplies to space station Kerbinport, and the Vermilion Block 380 outpost on Vall was able to send up supplies of fuel, Rocket Parts and Enriched Uranium to LSV House Corrino still in orbit. Shai Hulud also sent warp fuel supplies (i.e. Xenon and Exotic Matter) over to LSV House Harkonnen after that ship returned to Kerbin.

That happened, incidentally. Harkonnen returning home, I mean; it arrived at Kerbin at 5,715.9 m/s and required eight warp-backs to slow down and attain a 690.2 x 606.1 kilometer, 1.45° orbit.

Construction of South Base and Vermilion continued yesterday. Both bases were able to deploy their remaining Castillo structures, which for Vermilion means that construction is now complete. South Base would be the same way, but I made the decision to add a pair of additional Pathfinder Hacienda-Claimjumper drill units to the base. Those are printed, but they haven't actually been attached yet; would've done that last thing last night but the game froze up on me, so it's on the agenda for this morning.

Now for the more interesting stuff - the G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft that had launched from Vermilion on Tuesday successfully rendezvoused and docked with House Corrino, which stayed in Vall orbit to take on fuel supplies (as was already mentioned). Corrino's business at Vall is now concluded and I have getting the ship back to Kerbin as a top priority; unfortunately a sufficiently large window for the necessary warp maneuvers did not present itself yesterday. J. G. Backus arrived at Minmus after her twelve day flight from Mun, rendezvousing and docking with space station Minmusport 74 minutes after burning for Minmus orbit. While that was ongoing, the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe completed its print of the spaceplane pier extension for space station Laytheport (finally). After fueling, the module launched successfully to Laythe orbit.

Screenie. Inherent coolness. 'nuff said.

After a 37 minute flight, the pier module rendezvoused with the space station, and ultimately docked successfully.

Just so y'all know which part of the craft in that first screenie was the business end. There's a little driver probe on the nadir port that got cast off and deorbited once docking was complete.

With Laytheport now up and running for the most part, my attention will turn to building an orbital shipyard at Laythe. Apparently my current Dystopia Planitia 7 shipyard design does not have a Kerbin-launch booster attached to it, which I would use for Laythe. Makes me wonder how I managed to get DP up over Kerbin in the first place...

Only other thing to report right now is that the two ferry ships that were attached to Harkonnen - Roy Hinkley and Next Objective - have both departed for Kerbinport, with intercepts of about 26 minutes apiece.

Today I want to get Corrino home and the G-LOC down to the surface - that's tops. Roy Hinkley and Next Objective will probably get to Kerbinport, I want to get the Haciendas added to South Base, I want to get a shipyard going at Laythe, and I've got a pair of colonists aboard Backus scheduled to head down to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus's surface. I'll be happy if I can get all of that accomplished today. Haven't really given much thought to the longer term of late; been enough of a struggle just to take care of the little daily stuff.

Hopefully today will be more interesting. And hopefully things will stop happening at night so I can have a better selection of screenies...

[Pipcard]

Y51, D195 - The Negi Maru enters orbit around Eeloo, the third moon of Sarnus (in the Outer Planets Mod)

Y51, D200 - Landed on the surface

[PT]

A grey blob.

With an eye.

Took bunch of photos. Discovered some planets. Went bankrupt. Apparently taking photos of new bodies devours some credits, and taking lots of new pics devours a million of them.

Off to new, greener, orbits!

But first lets align solars to sunlight...got enough sails to sustain engine, but not so much with battery capacity.

Great Credit Devourer parked itself at the edge of SoI pending funds for few more photos before heading out to deep space to burn even more credits by taking photos from another SoI's... gotta pump those commercial flights...

With mere 2k credits in bank and mission limit long hit there was only one thing to do...

Chunk random obsolete drone into random planetary body to finish random old contract! Kaching, +150k.

Edited October 3, 2019 by PT