What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Guest]

Made a quick jaunt to the Dunatian surface in the R.E.Howard. Boy howdy was this less stressful than with the conventional rocket type lander, I don't think I'll ever be using those on Duna again. And man does the new Duna surface shader look gorgeous! Some pics from the mission:

Coming in for a landing. The idea is to come down at a steep AoA bleeding off speed, giving a kick from those hover thrusters to avoid hitting the ground too fast. When going at a safe speed, touch down with gentle assistance from the thrusters. It only costs a few m/s. 

To take off, use forward thrust to build a few tens of m/s speed, then switch to vertical to lift off, then back to forward, pitch up and fly to orbit.

Back home on the Salusa Secundus, everyone present and correct. Only trick to docking is to use the main thrusters for retro, there are no retro RCS thrusters as those would be a bit redundant. I could have put one in the wingtip cluster...

 

 

[Cavscout74]

17 minutes ago, Saturn5tony said:

but me, I just finally did a few last night for my 1st! Yippee!! Man it is fun but at first a little intimidating and it was done in sandbox. (needed a break from career). Had to get used to the controls fast

Congrats on your spacewalk!  It does take a bit to get used to the controls - I lost an engineer on one of my first ones, had to quickload because she was so far out in space & I couldn't figure out how to recover her.

I had two main operations going yesterday in my career - first was rendezvous & capture of a class E asteroid.  It is currently waiting for another batch of ore to process - with full fuel tanks and a vacuum Isp of 1500, it still only has about 80 m/s due to the asteroid mass.  It was enough for capture around Kerbin, now I'm waiting for the ISRU between maneuvers to get it into a useful orbit.  It's currently something like 78* inclined with Pe around 5 Mm and Ap around 48 Mm. 

Matching velocities

Moving to attach

Entering Kerbin orbit.  The position of the capture vehicle doesn't look like a good spot for balance, but looks can be deceiving - it is remarkably stable, holding its direction without need for RCS or even much engine gimbling.

The second main operation was testing a new single engine jet, the CF-05 Fury.  Originally built as a whiplash-powered high speed interceptor, it flew so well that I built a Panther-powered version for "normal" speeds.  Currently, both versions handle and perform better than anything else I've built in their equivalent classes (single-engine panther & whiplash) and it uses an Airplane Plus 2-seat cockpit.

Low altitude speed test - it can reach just over 1300 m/s below 1km altitude

Initial version used a fairing to protect the nose, but it proved unnecessary in later tests & was dropped.

Coming back from the first speed test, I pulled some maneuvers while still at too high an airspeed, and Theodred the test pilot and the random scientist that snuck into the back seat had to bail out of the rapidly spinning forward section of the remains of the airframe.  Both crewmembers deployed chutes & splashed down safely within a sight of each other

Further testing at the island airfield

Even the Panther-powered version was pretty quick & handled wonderfully.   Dawn flight to the island airfield

Intentional ditching to see how it would take it.  Other than the engine exploding, it went well.

 

[Retro Starship]

5 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

Both crewmembers deployed chutes & splashed down safely within a sight of each other

I know there are some awesome stuff in your pics above @Cavscout74, but Kerbals can deployed chutes & splash down safely? So COOL!!

[Cavscout74]

37 minutes ago, Saturn5tony said:

but Kerbals can deployed chutes & splash down safely?

They added that back in version 1.4 IIRC.  It's not fool-proof - I've bailed kerbals out & killed them with the parachute too.  Kinda depressing actually - bail out of your failing jet, only to "splat" into the side of the VAB.  But I've also saved an entire spaceplane load (6 at the time) with personal parachutes after Kerbal Launch Failure decided I was not going to space one day and caused a Rapier to explode - not just fail, but actually explode - taking out the back half of the spaceplane

Edited November 10, 2019 by Cavscout74

[Triop]

Today, I upgraded windows, winter is coming . . .

Not too happy with it, but it will do for now.

[papuchalk]

finally built my first drone, and most importantly i found the proper set up for easy controll. Hovering and landing is a bit tricky. But After 5 minutes of practice i managed to land on KSP base main building heliport, and then safely back to ground at comfortable 1,2 m/s impact speed.

it is powered all by batteries and solar panels

question is, will this fly on Eve?

[Elro2k]

Had some fun with an SSTO I got from KerbalX today. First time going to Minmus with an SSTO

 

 

 

If anyone wants to try the craft out it's right here. Remember it isn't my creation and all credit goes to the original creator.

https://kerbalx.com/XLjedi/SP-06-Star-Ranger

 

[Stewcumber]

I've been interested in World War 1 for a while now. I find the early aircraft carrier prototypes fascinating where wooden planes were catapulted from the top of a gun mount with essentially zero runway, and floatplanes would land in the sea next to the plane and be winched up rather than land on the deck.  Which sounds like a perfect opportunity to engineer something stupid and unnecessary. 

Allow me to introduce the HMS McBain and the plane especially designed to take off and land on it (by which I mean I put the landing gear closer together so it would fit on the narrow deck easier and made it a tail dragger so it pulls itself up as well as along on take off). Following the British tradition of naming planes after cities, please welcome the Chipping Norton.

(Hmmm this is actually an old version as I lengthened it a bit, gave it more engines and improved the crane)

To be fair it flies really well; it's very balenced without an SRS active. It doesn't use any electricity at full power.

 

Looks legit.. and safe.

Each GIF is about 10mb so I'll save your bandwidth a bit and put some as links...

https://i.imgur.com/UZbzGTW.gif

 

*safety Intensifies*

https://i.imgur.com/K4wuqUt.gif

https://i.imgur.com/QvsiVVU.gif

10 m/s

Take Off! (I could probably improve this significantly by adjusting the angle of the blades for low speed power and removing the harshness of the ramp (or removing it all together) to allow a gentler take off).

Many landing fails were had. 

Does this count? I feel that this should count.

https://i.imgur.com/hlJVIUU.gif

https://i.imgur.com/Qx1bQ8a.gif

Tomorrow I'll land in the sea next to it and winch it back on board maybe.

[CBase]

Actually I spent the last 2 days mastering my pilot skills since I thought that the thin Duna atmosphere makes it superfluous to add some aerodynamic top. Well ... regarding thrust and dV it was, but dealing with the high drag at very front proved to be very difficult Next time I will care about aerodynamic stability.

After like 20 launches I finally got it to orbit and was not too busy with piloting to gather some more science in low atmosphere.

Reintegration in Base with a heatshield parked behind was rather minor trouble. At least after I realized that it is way easier to pickup the heatshield with smaller lander first and then do powered reconnect instead of trying to target a free floating port with a massive rocket. Since I did care about rotation angle docking was all manual

Thanks for the recent forum reminder of Snarks great tutorial, was good to read again. Targeting a passive docking port is tricky compared to another ship that auto aligns.

Now doing world first contracts on Ike before returning to Kerbin.

[panzer1b]

So yeah, i did a small 1v1 battle, and spent a bit of time with logistics and rearming/refueling a ship that miraculously took no damage of any meaningful sort.

Got restock installed so that the parts actually look half decent in terms of quality, really makes a difference with NTRs and a few of the otherwise bland stock parts.  Some of it i disable (i actually prefer the stock 1.25m fuel tanks and most of the revamped engines squad did in the latest updates), but for the most art restock > stock.

While this thing is borderline useless (no range, engine thrust is so offcenter you need to constantly lower thrust levels, pathetic firepower, no TWR, exposed bridge), it did actually survive a weapon that normally would have blown a BCorp vessel in half with a direct hit to the centerline like this was.  Still, it was designed to tank fire, and that is did quite well.

Despite the rather impressive explosions, the Broadsword class frigate didnt do squat, blew off most of the wing paneling (which is purely asthetic anyway), and the only genuine damage it did was destroying 1/12 of the Nebula class's fuel capacity (so 1 LF tank), something said ship can easily live without as its got overboard dV to begin with (close to 3000 with the weapons payload i gave it).

And returning fire with broken SRMs (update made them useless, i used to have the engines tweaked to 200% thrust with ablator added to compensate for mass, but 1.8 made it impossible to exceed the 100% setting rendering the ibeams too slow to do jack besides knock off the unarmored exposed bridge and a few of the ships fuel tanks.  While it was dissapointing, at least it forced me to remove the final "cheaty" aspect my ships abused in KSP and ofc upped the part count of the heavier SRM podsmmaking it harder to carry ammunition without lagging to death (to be honest they were a bit OP with just 4 parts per missile, now its 6 so not crazy bad but less capacity for most ships if i dont want to lag to death).

here she is after the battle, half the crew is intact (noone actually died, both the main bridge and side pod that were lost just got shot off), engines work (albeit 2 of them need to be shut off if i wanna go in a straight line), 4 of 6 weapons hardpoints can be reloaded, and it is fully controllable.  I think ill try and have the pirates operating in higher orbit drag it away and fix it there, given that a ship this damaged has no place serving any of the primary factions, that or pull it to the closest station and add it as a sort of disaster shelter (it is still armored so a kerbal inside it has a good chance of surviving ordinance).

Launched a quickly whacked together ammo dump to the mun to rearm the Nebula that emptied almost every round it had. 

So yeah, the reloading droid was beyond painful to use as i had to rush like crazy so it didnt loose power.  Apparently i forgot to add any power generation or batteries to the thing, rendering it extremely finicky and forcing me to use the frigate's own RCS system (which also survived with no damage) a couple times to save the unpowered probe.  Hopefully ill remember to add useful things the next time i send ammo to a ship, that or like the last time, forget to put RCS on teh tug drone (which makes it extremely hard to get ammo onto a ship, since it sorta needs RCS to move at all...

[Nezclaw]

i've been trying to rescue jeb from mun after his craft exploded due to a bad landing. then the first rescue mission ran out of fuel. but at least he has a pod to hang out in now.

i'm also trying to figure out how to deflect an asteroid that is on a very steep collision course with kerbin. i have very little idea of what i'm doing. this game is dwarf fortress levels of complicated only without the comprehensive wiki.

[Cavscout74]

After tinkering with 1.8.1 for a while and getting frustrated trying to write a MM patch that the game isn't even recognizing, I went back to my 1.7.3 career for some ore mining, test flying & asteroid wrangling.  The ore mining was nothing special - 4 contracts (Minmus, Mun, Ike & Duna) for pretty substantial ore amounts (smallest was 2250 units) but I already had miners in place, so it was just a matter of dumping old ore & time warping.  Getting my recently captured class E into a better orbit wasn't overly exciting either - it's caught & being mined for fuel, just a matter of time now.  It's down to around a 20 degree inclination (from something like 78 degrees), and the next maneuver should get it to zero, then it'll be time to start on the Ap & Pe.  Then I tinkered with yet another new jet, based on the F-15E.  It's not as quick as my last one, but handles nicely.  Down low, it can barely break mach 1 without afterburners, and gets up to around 1.5 with them.  At altitude it comes close to mach 3 with afterburners.  Stalls just cause it to mush & drop the nose, with a slight tendency to gently break to one side.  You do need to be careful on landing - it doesn't have a lot of room for error before you smash the panther engines on the runway.

Speed test at 10km

Theodred makes a low pass over R&D so they can get a good look at their new design

Theodred posing after another successful flight test.  Jeb is going to be furious when he gets back from Duna & finds out someone else got to test a whole fleet of new aircraft!! 

 

[Triop]

Today, I've set a new personal land speed record with a Viper.

[Kchinger]

Yesterday I finally returned everyone to Kerbin from set of explorations and rescue contracts at Mun and Minmus. 

Got about 6k science, mostly from Minmus, which helped my tree considerably. I haven't even spent it all, since I'm not sure exactly what I need most. 

Today I built a small Minmus hopper/lander probe with empty ore tanks and a KAS fuel line and a surface scanner. Sent it on its way to Minmus to find the best spot and hang out. Have to bring 600 ore to Kerbin surface for a contract. I'm hoping I can slow it down enough. Stage Recovery says yes. We'll see. 

Then I spent a ton of time building, testing at KSP, and refining a Minmus mining rover. Based on one I saw here, it will land on the bell and then tip onto wheels, with two Thuds to slow the descent of the nose. I'm hoping I can land it. I managed it once in Kerbin gravity, so might take a few tries but I think I can manage. 

Strapped it on the biggest rocket I've built yet (36t or so payload to Minmus surface). It made orbit, sort of, but middle stage TWR was too low so the orbit was super eccentric and wasteful. 

Made a couple modifications and I'll try again tomorrow with a more efficient launch. 

6 big drills, 1 big convertor, 12 gigantor panels, another few surface mount panels from Near Future I think, enough radiators to cool all drills plus two conversions.

Should be enough to be efficient. No fuel cells, so no nighttime mining, but that's alright. 

My first try at mining, I'm excited. Once I get the base set up I'll build a fuel ferry or two to get it from surface to Kerbin or Minmus orbit, and then I can start heading to my first planet. 

[Okhin]

I'm wondering if the mission builder can be used to create some kind of interactive narration stories / RPG with stock KSP. After tinkering a little bit, and working on a start base on Dres (first time I got to use all parts from KSP, never really did sandboxes first), I finally understood what it is.

It's a finite state machine. Not turing complete, but you can probably do some things with it (setting the score to specific value and have those value being the start points of some specific scenes). I miss the possibility to give a player a choice of actions, but I can probably get around that using some narration technique (having a specific kerbal entering a specific part of a station or spaceship could be one way to do that. It would require some specific writing, but nothing undoable). I also miss the possibility of creating custom assets (I'm not sure I can have a GameData folder specific to a mission) or setting variables. But the computer nerd in me is kind of enjoying trying to get around those constraints.

So maybe, I'll do some mission writing. Need to check others mission too, to understand how you people do things there, but should be fun.

Also, I'm trying to figure out if it's cheaper to go to Duna while doing an Eve fly-by, or if I should do it with two craft. I like the idea of the first option, but it seems like planning a window for it would be math crazy while I can probably just bruteforce it all the way down, using moar nukes. I also need to drop a lab on my solar outpost, and adding a return vehicle would be nice I guess.

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Spent much of this past weekend working on a project to make an origami Piecepack set (what notes I have on this are over at the BGG forums). Damn near finished it - three chess pawns and it's done as of this post. Had the unfortunate side effect of cutting into my KSP time but then again I didn't have a whole lot going on in the first place...

On Friday, after heading out to the Enchova Central outpost on Duna to complete a colonization contract, I went into the VAB to design a test rig. The part was an IFS cryo tank (a CDT2002 IIRC), and the target parameters were to test it in a sub-orbital trajectory over Vall. The rig was designed and designated with the functional name of Test Rig 7 Vall, and then ordered up at the Non Est Hic Shipyards in orbit. Construction took two hours and 34 minutes to complete. While that was ongoing, I went ahead and slapped a Kerbin-rated booster onto the design of the Minnow 7b touring craft in the VAB (I had a booster designed already but had it saved as a subassembly) and I went ahead and drilled up 2600 units of Ore at the Ocean Ranger outpost on Gilly; heading from there straight to the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve (where there was that much ore extant already) fulfilled a mining contract. The test rig was completed at Vall and the test took place as planned, after which a new Boop-Boop 7x probe was ordered up at the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna; construction took three hours and thirteen minutes, after which the probe was fueled, launched and put into a 4,167.4 by 4.0 kilometer, 178.37° inclined "orbit", the first burn in a maneuver to put the thing into a final position out past the orbit of Ike for contract. 

TL, DR: Friday was spent knocking out small potatoes.

Saturday didn't see a lot happen. I decided I'd go ahead and take care of getting Module L-H50 back to ALK, something that's been needing to happen for much of the past week. The Echo 3 quadcopter was still out there with pilot Lerod Kerman and engineer Taning Kerman aboard, so I had the two kerbals pile out to mount the module to their vehicle.

"Made in China. I wonder where that is", sez Taning. I was just noting that this was not a Buffalo ISRU like I thought, and now I'm wondering if it'll fit in the service bay of Woodsy Owl when it's all said and done...

The two kerbals wound up having no trouble getting the module mounted to the top of the craft. Even moving Echo 3's chute out of the way turned out to be less of a hassle than I anticipated, and soon they were able to begin the long flight back to ALK.

Echo 3 at Kerbolrise on Eve.

After about two and a half hours of flight covering a distance of 1,530 kilometers, Echo 3 returned without incident to ALK. To minimize the effort once again when the Woodsy Owl 7 launch vehicle completes construction at ALK, the copter was parked as close to the base's launchpad as I dared to go.

Man, I hope when I mash finalize on that construction button it doesn't take off a rotor...I'm already kinda worried about the launch.

TL, DR: Saturday I hauled junk a long-ass way in a copter over Eve.

Yesterday my limited play time was spent at the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo, where the construction of space station Tyloport was finally completed. After transferring fuel supplies to the booster, the new space station launched, successfully attaining a 101.3 by 100.98 kilometer, 0.5° inclined orbit over Jool's largest moon.

Space station Tyloport on the pad at Usumacinta. Would've gotten a shot of the launch itself but by then I had my hands full...

A backlit nascent space station in final orbit, with the two inner moons and Jool itself visible.

With the space station away, construction of the Minnow 7b with the Kerbin-rated booster (unimaginatively designated Minnow 7b Kerbin) was ordered up at Usumacinta. Construction will take eight hours and 32 minutes to complete. Plans for this craft are to have it rendezvous and dock with LSV House Corrino still in orbit of Tylo, with Val conducting an EVA over to the new craft prior to docking. From there, Corrino will head back to Kerbin to undock the new Minnow, which will then deorbit (it's not like I really need another Minnow right now). This should fulfill the latest exploration contract. I'm hoping it opens up one of the three remaining worlds for visitation. Hoping for Dres.

Finished yesterday up with a second burn of the Boop-Boop 7x over Duna, putting it into a 4,171.4 by 3,638.2 kilometer, 178.37° inclined orbit. I still don't have the thing in final position.

TL, DR: Damn, you people are lazy, do you know that? I only wrote three sentences for what I did on Sunday...you can go read that in its entirety. I'll wait...

 

So not a lot going on in general right now. My notes have me fueling up Tyloport and then doing the stuff with the new Minnow, and that's it. Contracts are still tied up with things either needing to get where they're going, needing for construction to finish up, needing for the clock to run out, or needing permission to visit their target worlds. Only have thirteen contracts right now because three of them being offered are lame. I'll let y'all know if anything interesting happens today; it's not looking like it...

Edited November 11, 2019 by capi3101

[Retro Starship]

(1.8.1)  Well even though I am still doing contracts by bringing passengers into sub-orbit for career mode, I got one that needed two passengers for that and a full orbit around Kerban. Got them here into space just fine. I had just enough fuel to set my rocket back to Kerban out of orbit afterwards. I then ejected it and started heading back to a Pe of 44km. But before it started the re-entry, I got Val to do a spacewalk. I think my 2 passengers were very happy when she came back in. They both looked very frightened during this entire ordeal. This was all on the dark side of Kerban as well.

Yanno, doing many passenger contracts makes quite alot of kerbucks too! I am already completing most all of the full upgrades to the buildings around KSC, and I am still at tier 4.

 

Edited November 11, 2019 by Saturn5tony

[Cavscout74]

No new jets today, sadly.  I did get my big rock into an equatorial orbit, and it's down to about a 2000km Pe & 6000km Ap.   It's also down to roughly 2250 tons (from somewhere above 2550t - I was already processing it after the capture burn before I ever looked at the mass).  There are two capture vehicles attached, which means 4 drills & 2 converters working to refuel between each maneuver, but it's low enough now that I had to wait an orbit or 2 for the next burn

I also launched a new large lander on its maiden flight, the Titan lander.  Seats 16 passengers & 2 crew, with around 2800m/s dV in the lander - mostly because I needed the conversion tanks between the Mk 3 passenger cabin & the 3.75m & 2.5m other parts.  Hard to tell from this image, but the core launcher is 3.75m with 2.5m radial boosters & SpaceY heavy lift SRB's.  The mid stage turned out to be a little light on dV (ran dry at the end of the Minmus transfer rather than the plan to have enough to circularize at Minmus).  I think part of it was too steep of a gravity turn, which left me in the atmosphere longer with the big draggy lander on top.  I think this one needs to start the turn a little later & shallower until I'm at least above 10km.  Or possibly just stick the entire lander in a fairing like I do with most of my landers.  Also, due to the lander's size, the Pebkac LES systems were too small, so I have 16 large sepratrons around the nose cone as a LES (supplemented by the lander engines), which adds to the drag and mass.

 

[Zeiss Ikon]

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1)

I spent my free time yesterday redesigning Diana Mk. 3 to increase battery life without adding weight (and losing dV).  MechJeb reported, in the VAB, that I'd succeeded.

MechJeb lies.

MechJeb claims this stage has 1100 or so m/s to spare for the Lunar insertion maneuver (it's a flyby, so I don't need another stage or kicker beyond that, and I do have RCS for small corrections).

But note the short red stripe at the bottom of the burn indicator, and the red burn time?  My burn is 9 seconds longer than the fuel i have left, (on burn time MJ and the main game seem to agree), and I run dry when my apogee is just over a quarter of the way to the Moon.  This stage ought to be able to do this; the same engine and tank, pushing a heavier spacecraft, made the trip on the previous attempt from the same orbit, with a couple hundred m/s larger insertion burn (but the batteries ran down before the SOI change).

I'm about to go fiddle with the maneuver node to see if I can save a couple hundred m/s on the maneuver; if I can't, I may have to rush the construction on the next iteration to have a chance to fly the mission before the contract runs out (it was two years, but this is the second attempt and these rockets take about nine months to build and roll out) -- or take my medicine and let it expire (or cancel it).  One time won't bankrupt the program, but this problem with dV estimation needs to be solved before we reach the point where vehicles take even longer to build, cost even more, and potentially have lives on the line.

[JadeOfMaar]

I camped out in the VAB all day, messing with shiny stuff (Damon's Starship). I've confirmed that it can do expendable SSTO without Super Heavy in JNSQ (on methalox, not LFO). I made it with 100 m/s to spare but I'm no expert pilot. I'm sure 100 or 200m/s more could be squeezed out.

I visited the TU Recolor Depot and whipped up a sample of my vision for shiny OPT spaceplanes. White is modestly shiny with dull reflections; Gray is less so; Black is zero shiny. No pure chrome anywhere. The mis-matched shinier pieces are stock parts.

 

[panzer1b]

Made a new house, since i wanted a bit of a break from the usual combat in KSP i normally do.  that and installed KS3P now that its been updated and ofc tweaked it to remove the annoying crap like motion blur (i dont know why but ive hated motion blur in like every single videogame ive ever played, never felt "realistic", made it hard to see stuff well, eats resources, ect).

Dropped this near the pole, since it features more interesting terrain, views, and is less likely to get attacked by pirates.

Nothing too fancy, just tried to make something that actually felt like a sci-fi orbitally dropped housing unit that looks like a shipping container on a girder base, and i think it came out decent in that regard.

This was teh older iteration, not the one thats pictured above, but it shows a much better view of the actual design (only change with new one is the hitchhiker being moved internally and just a singl fuel tank visible below).  Now to make a HQ in this style (my older skytwoer design is much cooler from a HQ standpoint, but it just doesnt fit well with this style housing), and ofc deploy a LRM battery for defensive purposes if i can actually come up with some sort of long range guided missile that doesnt suck, require crazy part counts, and looks like something that wasnt vomited out by my pirate factions...

Edited November 12, 2019 by panzer1b

[Triop]

Today, we found a old truck...

How did it get up there ??? 

Managed to get it back to the base, it will need lots of work...

[Kchinger]

Today continued my work from yesterday (doesn't it always?). Got the huge mining rig into LKO, took 4 orbits with the little NERV to get it to Minmus intercept. It actually beat the Ore Lander/Return ship to Minmus, but I parked it high up and then sent the lander down to scout for a good location. Hopped once and got to the Great Flats, with 15% ore. Perfect.

Tomorrow will be landing the rover, and starting the mining. Should be fun.

 

Rover in its fairing looks a bit ridiculous, and makes the huge rocket look ridiculously tiny. But it worked.

 

 

The much, much smaller ore transfer lander. This will satisfy "return a ship from Minmus" and "return 600 units of ore from Minmus" at the same time. Well, at least it will if I can manage to keep it from smashing into Kerbin's surface once it has 600 units of ore on board. It's loaded up with parachutes, drogues, and a 10m inflatable heat shield. And it's pretty light otherwise. We'll see.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Kchinger

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Not a lot to report for my efforts yesterday.

After sending up fuel supplies and Ore via mass driver from the Usumacinta outpost on the surface of Tylo to the nascent space station Tyloport, it was time to head out to the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve for the glorious launch of the Woodsy Owl 7 Eve surface-to-orbit garbage hauler. Nothing exploded upon mashing the finalize button aside from the night-vision camera on the Echo 3 quadcopter (I think the launchpad may have whacked it when physics kicked in), so pilot Lerod Kerman and engineer Taning Kerman piled out of the 'copter and began the process of attaching Module L-H50, a Convert-O-Tron 150, to the Woodsy Owl. 

Taning getting ready to unhook the load from the 'copter's roof while Lerod provides some light.


Okay, so what we want you to do Lerod is wait here until Taning gets the payload attached, then go light the fuse...

Once the payload was attached, Lerod and Taning got back into Echo 3, the rocket was fueled and launched.

Launch #1 of Woodsy Owl 7 from ALK. I really wish I'd designed a better rocket...

Alas, a clean launch was not to be. Having skimped on Sepratrons and placed the radial decouplers too high, the first booster set collided with the main stack upon stack separation resulting in loss-of-vehicle. Thrice. Reverts and subsequent launches took out ALK's launchpad. As of this morning I've reverted again and I'll be having Lerod and Taning unload the payload from the rocket at the next opportunity so I can try again with a better design later. I'll need to replace ALK's launchpad (once again) and put a new camera on Echo 3, but these are items that can all be easily dealt with at the base. If I'm annoyed about anything, it's the delay...the Woodsy Owl was performing beautifully up to that point.

Ended my playing day with the scheduled warp transit of LSV House Atreides from Kerbin to Eve. The ship did a direct flight, arriving at 15,805 m/s and requiring 35 warp-backs to settle into a 644.1 x 483.3 kilometer, 3.61° inclined orbit. Number of warp-backs for a Kerbin-to-Eve flight is definitely trending downward as the two planets slowly come into phase with one another. The plan is still for Atreides to haul back Module L-H50 from Eve as well as to haul Roy Hinkley home after she's done visiting Gilly; she won't arrive there for another nine hours or so. Got the launch of the new Minnow at Tylo to handle first. Also got an expansion module for space station Ikeport almost finished building; probably will be dealing with that today too.

Edited November 12, 2019 by capi3101

[Retro Starship]

(1.8.1) Nothing big last night, just had to test out the RE-L10 "Poodle" Liquid Fuel Engine up above 70km. I was a large engine so a bit of a bulge in my rocket was required. This was in the 4th tier of career mode I am doing. I think there is a medical term in how this rocket looks shape wise...