What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Dafni]

1 hour ago, Zedwardson said:

What is RP-1?

In this context probably Real Progression. Must have confused it with RP-0 maybe?

In a general Rocket context, Rocket Propellant-1, used in KeroLOx engines.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Dafni

[Jacke]

2 hours ago, Zedwardson said:

What is RP-1?

Wikipedia is very good on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP-1

[Zeiss Ikon]

3 hours ago, Zedwardson said:

What is RP-1?

Realistic Progression 1 -- the career mode/tech tree for Realism Overhaul.

https://github.com/KSP-RO/RP-0

The links call it RP-0, but internally it's been RP-1 for a year or more.  Contracts are compatible with real space program progression, from sounding rockets and basic aviation up to exploring the Real Solar System.

[Guest]

Broke down and violated a self-imposed rule in my career: went and installed KIS. It was supposed to be pure stock but eh, KIS is fun anyway and it's my career.

Reason is, there was a minor design flaw with TANTOR-V. It has insufficient power cells to power the drill if there is a sufficiently competent engineer on board. Grr. Since I don't want to scrap it and launch a new one, KIS it is: I will send up an engineer with a bunch of fuel cells and bolt those on to solve the problem. This is a lot more fun than crashing it into the Mun and launching a new one.

Other than that, prep for the Jool mission is going fine. Alexei Leonov is now in orbit around the Mun. I'll get those fuel cells installed and do another resupply run, then we should be all fuelled up and ready to go.

After that, I'll make one more launch -- the Duna plane with a deep-space vessel and crew container -- and we'll have two pretty cool missions waiting for the transfer window.

[Bev7787]

I learnt how to supersample images in KSP, and then proceeded to use hullcam mounted on a rover to get some decent shots.

Artemis 2A and 2B on the pad. It's a double launch Mün mission. Artermis 1 failed because I ran out of d/v and aborted the landing using a münar flyby to get me back safely. Parts are all stock other than the cameras, and the launch pads. I might get KJR again because my space station is very wobbly, especially after I docked two shuttles onto it.

EDIT: Here is Artemis 1 as it conducts a flyby of the Mün on its way back to Kerbin.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Bev7787

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Another day of hauling for the most part yesterday. I began my day with the return of both Next Objective and Necessary Evil to LSV House Atreides in a high, inclined, retrograde and highly eccentric orbit over Minmus; both ferry ships had been in transit from space station Minmusport for the better part of a day after delivering a large batch of colonists there. Once both ships had docked successfully, Atreides broke orbit and warped to Kerbin. I had a mishap here with the final warp in and wound up on a course that would take the ship to entry, but having put both ferries on central ports and with them relatively full of fuel they were able to counterbalance the ship's Bigby Workshop effectively, and for once I was able to burn Atreides's conventional engines at full throttle without too much drift. I eventually got the ship into a 302.2 x 130.1 kilometer, 0.7° orbit. The two ferry ships departed and after refueling from Atreides's stores, with Necessary Evil departing ten minutes after Next Objective; both began maneuvers to take them to space station Kerbinport, arriving and docking safely after about seventy minutes of flight on average. The South Base outpost near KSC then sent up fuel supplies to Atreides via mass driver shot; Atreides didn't use up too much Exotic Matter or Xenon Gas with this flight, so I forewent sending replacement Alcubierre Drive fuel supplies from SL Shai Hulud (at least for now).

Finally having a suitable window in which to work, LSV House Corrino broke orbit of Kerbin and warped to Jool, where after two warp-backs I put the ship in a 5,900 kilometer equatorial parking orbit awaiting final warp to Tylo. The ship proceeded to the optimal point with Tylo directly overhead before conducting the final warp and arrived at a velocity of 2,724 m/s; after two warp-back maneuvers, the ship settled into a 610.4 x 510.8 kilometer, 0.87° inclined orbit.

The big one - and the last of the Joolian moons to see Corrino in orbit.

Once in orbit, Val left her seat aboard G. Grant docked to Corrino and went on a brief EVA; between Corrino entering orbit and Val's EVA, the latest exploration contract was successfully completed. I have not yet been to Mission Control to see what the next mission entails - which is first thing on my agenda next session, seeing as that's probably going to affect what I do next.

After finishing Val's EVA, I had Corrino warp into a polar orbit at 88.08° inclination and roughly the same altitude. Once there, the Pink Noise 7 communications satellite carrier that she'd constructed over Kerbin was fueled and released; the nascent Tylocomm Alpha probe burned to increase her apoapsis to 677.9 kilometers, and will arrive there in about 39 minutes before circularizing and deploying its two sub-satellites. Meanwhile, the crew aboard Corrino began building ScanSat Tylo, an easy job that the engineers aboard the ship had finished after 5 minutes and 33 seconds of work. After fueling, the ScanSat was released, ending my day yesterday. Right now the ScanSat is too high to begin biome scans; I'll be lowering its altitude and beginning the search for a base site later today.  

My next order of business is going to depend a lot on what the replacement contract is. If it's a contract to return to Kerbin from Tylo orbit, Corrino will print up a G-LOC for the job and then probably print up a Hellhound 7 rover and skycrane to deposit in orbit - I checked the numbers in the VAB last night and the normal skycrane should be capable of a Tylo landing without modification (Tylo TWR is 1.25, but that's my only real concern). If it's a landing contract, I can go straight to building and landing the Hound. In any event, my day today is likely to be spent on the biome scans. Space station Polport should also be ready for launch at this point from the Petrobas 36 base on Pol's surface unless I'm much mistaken; I'll probably be taking care of that today as well. Long term, Corrino will be heading to Bop since she's got two tourists aboard wanting to visit, and by that point I may be ready to begin building the TBD 7e base-seeding rover that will establish my Tylo outpost; the Bohai 2 base on Bop could easily support that effort as needed. Corrino will ultimately be heading toward Gilly, with two tourists aboard wanting to head there as well. I also want to print up a Hellhound 7 rover at Deepwater Horizon on Minmus to support an EVA survey I've got out there, and I've got a satellite to launch at Vall as soon as I've got an available drydock out there. Still have to begin planning my Eve litter-cleanup mission I've gotten myself into as well. Lots of things going on at the moment; I'll be sure to keep y'all up to date on the more interesting stuff.

[AHHans]

I had a practical demonstration of why I do crew rotation today. In preparation of my asteroid ejection mission I exchanged the crew on my large asteroid tug. To do so I sent a crew spaceplane to LKO, and have the tug meet it there. After the exchange the spaceplane went back to the KSC. Well, I overshot a bit, so after slowing down to mach 3 or so I did a sharp-ish turn and suddenly everyone from the old crew blacked out. Come on! Just because they spent the last couple of months in deep (or not so deep) space is no reason to black out from a measly 22 gees. Why do I pay and put extra crew accommodation with centrifugal gravity on those ships? That you can set them to 0.5 g and enjoy the easy life? Hmpf! Luckily Jeb was piloting the spaceplane, and he is made from sterner stuff. And now those wimps can enjoy their stable 1 g in the astronaut complex.

It is sooo hard to pick good minions from space junk these days!

5 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

It has insufficient power cells to power the drill if there is a sufficiently competent engineer on board. Grr.

Yes, I notice this problem when my batteries don't last for a full night anymore. Everything is running fine, until this young whippersnappers come along, turn the converters up to eleven, and then act surprised when they run out of power while in the shadow.

For me, I decided that if those engineers can coax so much more performance out of the equipment, then they can also turn them off when they run out of power and turn them on again when they are back in the sunshine, so I use the old "when I'm not looking you're not using power" trick / cheat.

[Cavscout74]

Now that my manned Duna mission is on its way, it was time to catch up on fully establishing my Minmus mining base.  The mining/hab facility has been in place for a while but there's been no rover for local exploration and no fuel tanker to move fuel up to the station in orbit, so it was time to fix that.  First up was a Lynx rover with large scanning arm.  Somehow, I forgot to update the design with a graviolli detector, but it had every other piece of scientific equipment available.  After landing it safely at the base, the resident engineer & scientist took it up into the hills to finally complete a contract for a complex scan of an olivine formation.

Nice view of Kerbin & Mun overhead

Mission accomplished

I think this is the largest greenstone I've ever seen.  I brought one home long ago, but maybe the lab in the mining base can get some more info out of it

Finally, the fuel tanker landed & is getting filled up at the base.  Also the first use I've gotten out of the extendable fuel arm.

 

[DoctorDavinci]

 

[PT]

OH FRAK YOU! YOU OVERGROWN BALL OF GAS!

In order to get rid of some never ending "do X at KSC" contracts I deployed Kuriosity for test ride. But nooo, eclipse just had to happen exactly here and now...

in meantime I discovered that Joint Reinforcement got updated by folks from RO, yay! Time to build big. I experimented with my failed runabout design from last session. Turns out asymmetric design does not work well without gimbal on engines. So while I wait for advanced NERV's I had to make something that works.

An ugly space bus has been built.

With low-G VTOL capability as delivery of crew to Aptur Yard is on its list of duties.

And stable in standard flight, which is major improvement from last design.

While SB1 did its run I ejected Apollo B, with major assistance from certain autonomous booster, from Sonnah system into deep dive into sun gravity well.

Booster, sadly, will not be recovered but upon booster separation Apollo B was almost full of fuel.

SB1 turned out to be quite successful vessel. I visited oldies in Kerbin orbit to gather everykerb up.

And took them to Jeb's Triginta Duo...

...and during crew transfer I remembered about that silly flag planting for crew xp so I took them down at 4 fps caused by Quattro Formaggi which has just finished fueling up.

So to get my FPS back I launched it on its mission to asteroid belt where it's four cheese block drones will perform space rock science.

As a light cruiser (light compared to 500 ton Apollos and a thousand tons of Jebs new base of operation, it sits at meager 250 tons) it required a bit of assistance in take off. Extra control authority from Thud's gimbal was quite useful as well. Now I just need to find some rocks fitting contracts it was made for.

Once it was gone Kerbs enjoyed a party:

After which I VTOL'ed SB1 half a meter forward because pipe was too short...

Aptur Yard received new commander, and one more engineer to boost productivity. And then I launched again, to deliver crew to for Jeb's ship, fully enjoying smooth switch from VTOL to space flight.

 

Edited October 15, 2019 by PT

[NHunter]

I've planted flag on Narisse

[Mech_Jeb_42]

I summoned the Kracken, made a Kerbal launcher, you know, normal KSP stuff.

[Zedwardson]

tried to make a SSTO today, and failed.   So I slapped on a bunch of solid rockets and actually got it suborbital and decided for now I am going to stick to rockets.

[Castille7]

3 hours ago, Zedwardson said:

tried to make a SSTO today, and failed.   So I slapped on a bunch of solid rockets and actually got it suborbital and decided for now I am going to stick to rockets.

We know the feeling! SSTO's are very sophisticated and they have a need for speed, aerodynamics, least weight as possible and just enough fuel to get the job done which helps with the amount of weight. @Rune is one of the SSTO guru's on the forum if you plan to get back into the SSTO thing again.

[MiscelanousItem]

Hey I've been making SSTO's to:

My first one: the Badger-0

The main problem with my SSTO's are that they are very back heavy:

For my second flight a decided to go to Minmus with a new SSTO the Badger-1:

Edited October 16, 2019 by MiscelanousItem

[capi3101]

The real big trick with spaceplanes is that you need them to be maneuverable enough to fly in the sub-sonic regime for take-off and landing whilst being not terribly draggy the rest of the time they're the atmosphere, while also remembering that they're rockets up much above 30,000 on Kerbin. And like a rocket, they work best when you only really add whatever it is you need in order to do the job you want to do.

You want formulas? I've got some. They work for me at least. There are seventeen different craft in my Auk spaceplane series and while some of them weren't successful designs, all of them were at least successful spaceplanes. But I digress...

 

(1.6.1)  Much of my day was spent over Tylo yesterday. I started with LSV House Corrino in a high polar orbit over Jool's largest moon, where having been told by KER that there was sufficient delta-V for the job, I began construction of a Hellhound 7 rover with skycrane; the crew aboard Corrino had the rover built about 45 minutes later. While that was going on, I went ahead and lowered the periapsis of the recently launched ScanSat Tylo to about 400 kilometers in preparation for biome scanning, and I received a signal from the Petrobas 36 outpost on Pol: construction of space station Polport was finally complete. I went ahead and headed out to Petrobas, fueled the station's boosters and launched it to a 25 kilometer equatorial orbit.

As what happened over Gilly, Polport really didn't need a booster rated for launch from the surface of Ike. Extra fuel at the station for now...

The crew at Petrobas began work on an orbital shipyard next; construction there is expected to take 22 hours and 37 minutes.

The Tylocomm Alpha communications satellite carrier reached its final position in a 677.8 kilometer circular polar orbit with a ninety minute period next, and upon reaching final position, Tylocomms Bravo and Charlie were released and made their maneuvers to set up a standard comms triangle over the moon. Both satellites reached their final positions before the end of the day; at this point, the intended communications network in Jool's SOI is complete with the exception of the ground station that will eventually be set up at the forthcoming Tylo outpost.

ScanSat Tylo also finished its maneuvers to put it into a 400 kilometer circular polar orbit and I began biome scans in search of an area to establish a ground base. I completed taking readings of eight of Tylo's nine biomes, though I'm not 100% certain of my readings for the Grissom Crater; at the time, the ScanSat barely had the Crater in its field of vision, which was pulled out all the way. I'll be double-checking my readings when the crater comes more in line with the probe's orbit here in about twelve hours. The Galileo Crater is the only one I don't have readings for at this point. Early favorite for the ground base is the Minor Craters biome, where six of the Heavy Seven resources are present (assuming those readings are accurate). Rock is completely absent on Tylo, but there are other ways of making Konkrete so that's not a big concern. There is a Minor Crater along the equator near the Gagarin Crater, which I marked as the landing area for the Hellhound.

With an equatorial landing zone selected, I needed to get House Corrino into an equatorial orbit, so that was next on the agenda.

House Corrino in preparation to warp to equatorial orbit. First time I got Jool, Laythe, Vall and Tylo all together in a screenie (Tylo's on the bottom if you look closely enough).

I was able to get the ship into a 793.8 x 545.7, 3.63° inclined orbit with a minor amount of fuss, and once there the rover was cut loose.

Got a big discrepancy between what KER said I had and what the game says I have delta-v-wise...that's not encouraging.

My first attempt at landing did not go well at all, with the skycrane running out of fuel while still well above the surface. I'm thinking KER might've lied to me, which immediately makes me concerned about the design of the landing stage of the TBD 7e. Good thing I haven't started building that yet - there's still time to go in and fix the stage. Meantime, I'll be printing up a Last Chance 7 emergency de-orbit grabber probe to try and get the rover down. I still want to know if that equatorial Minor Crater is as good as I think it is. Ended my day by ordering the Imo Pyramis Shipyards over Bop to begin printing up a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft; printing will take 3 hours and 40 minutes. The idea will be to send that back to Kerbin aboard Corrino after a quick Tylo flyby on her way out, satisfying that portion of the current exploration contract. I'm hoping that I'll land on Tylo before that happens.

Short term plans are the finish my biome scans and to have Corrino head on to Bop. The ship is almost out of Rocket Parts at the present time, so I'll need to grab some more before I attempt to print up anything. Bop's the destination since there are tourists going there, and I also will have cause to send Corrino on to Pol on this trip before everything is said and done (engineer delivery going on there as likely as not). Not much going on otherwise; I do have some other contracts worth doing in the pipe but right now Tylo's got my full attention. I'll keep y'all appraised.

[Zedwardson]

5 hours ago, Castille7 said:

We know the feeling! SSTO's are very sophisticated and they have a need for speed, aerodynamics, least weight as possible and just enough fuel to get the job done which helps with the amount of weight. @Rune is one of the SSTO guru's on the forum if you plan to get back into the SSTO thing again.

I have a campaign that I am posting, and I might include some attemps (and failures) to make SSTOs (and spaceplanes in general) as part of the storyline.  As I am really good At making rockets so I know I can keep that side of my program going, but it might be fun to see some abject failures.

[Castille7]

59 minutes ago, Zedwardson said:

I have a campaign that I am posting, and I might include some attemps (and failures) to make SSTOs (and spaceplanes in general) as part of the storyline.  As I am really good At making rockets so I know I can keep that side of my program going, but it might be fun to see some abject failures.

Maybe call it "Spaceless Planes" for those that fail? 

[Zedwardson]

1 hour ago, Castille7 said:

Maybe call it "Spaceless Planes" for those that fail? 

Perhaps, I was going to call it the "X Program" or the "YZ Program" and just number various variations.   Though for now I need to start doing the Mun missions I am signed up for. 

[Cavscout74]

I didn't make a lot of progress in my career, but I did get a few worthwhile screenshots.

Although not useless, Kerbinport Station had fulfilled its intended mission and hadn't been manned for well over a year, so the decision was made to deorbit it.  Last image before reentry:

And last image before parts started exploding - after getting a suborbital trajectory, most of the remaining fuel was spent aiming radial in to increase velocity & ensure plenty of explosions during reentry

It was also finally time to replace the Minmus station crew.  One scientist was left on the station, mostly due to there being only 3 seats on the crew vehicle.  The new crew arrived at night (of course) during something strange going on with KSP - the 42-part crew vehicle was experiencing horrible lag on its own, and when it came within range of the station to dock, it turned into a a slide show.  I still managed to safely dock - somehow - but a restart was required before I could transfer crew to the station.

The old crew returned to Kerbin safely - and a well timed screenshot captured the spent orbital stage exploding behind the crew capsule during reentry

 

[PT]

Today in Aptur Yard Misadventures...

I found my missing fuel pipe in stationary orbit at not so stationary attitude.

Bill got ready for space varpines.

Bill uses alternate way of relocating new pipe.

Jeb's Triginta Duo got Station Science payload for its voyage. A little wrench got into my plans as it turned out there are no Kibals on Aptur, I'll gotta launch them from KSC.

Other than that, I mostly watched DS9 while MechJeb took care of stack of maneuver nodes.

[OutOfAblator]

Made my first SSTO, the K.S.S. Cigar. It can go to sun orbit. Its Incredibly complex, only has 1 engine that can't turn off.Look at it go!Its rather annoying that you cant shut off SRBs, because  if I waited to reach apoapsis to burn horizontally, I would have ran out of fuel.Wooh! Kerbol Orbit!It's very hot. 1.8 is great. And it appears I lost my probe core and nosecone, that's probably because that's what happens when you try to reach orbital speed in atmo.

Edited October 17, 2019 by OutOfAblator
typo

[Triop]

Today...

 

[Zedwardson]

Upgraded to 1.8
Developed my first working airplane, though I still might do the whole "Unleash parachutes  and land  under a canopy"   -- Nothing special, kinda of a Mig-15 type that a pain to lift off but once it lifts off it flies well.
Tested my mods - all seem to be functional,  Mechjeb has some UI issues but nothing to get worked up about.
Had two complete failures of sat launches:  Has been ided as the fairing design in 1.8 causes a wobble that caused a failure at booster seperation/gravity turn that caused the entire rocket somersault.  
Developed a new com-sat launcher (still unnamed) and new fairing that put the com sat into the KEO style orbit as designed, so the new design will get the workout as I launch rockets.    (I put it in a slightly higher then KEO so it will fall back a bit, then it will be lowered to KEO to take it station.  

[Hotel26]

If you're like me, you know the equatorial belt of the Mun like the back of your hand.

I typically look for flat plains to land equipment on.

I took a "flitter" for a spin on Ike, which is fairly mountainous.  The flitter is just a fuel tank with a deck chair and a couple of tiny Twitch engines but it's great for lunar exploration.

It has a surface scanner, too, although I've never made serious use of these.  They work up to 1km above the surface.

On Ike, I was shocked to see the ore concentration go from 6% to 12%.  Because I didn't think it was worth the effort to go look for...

So I've taken a spin on the (flatter) Mun -- I figured it's possible to do high-speed low-altitude terrain-following.  Indeed.

200 m/s at around 500 m above the surface.  Whereas ore is generally 5.2% at the equator, I'd say, and what I've been mining, I quickly turned up two stretches [no spoiler] showing a concentration of 14.3%.

Now I wonder whether my fuel miner/refiner is adequately equipped to process ore at that rate?!

Anyway, this is no news to anyone about ore concentration.  The main exercise here was to have an excuse to blitz across the Mun surface at good speed!  Fun and not much more expensive than running a Juno on Kerbin.

(Which gives me the idea its time to fit a surface scanner onto a survey plane to do the same job on Kerbin.)

Edited October 17, 2019 by Hotel26