What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Nezclaw]

9 hours ago, Kchinger said:

So I'm not the only one having crew management issues. 

Maybe I need to hire a manager to keep all these people straight and get them on the correct ships.

the first time i tried it i got it right, only i had a mun hop go wrong and i had to revert. I'd forgotten a few pieces on that ship anyway, like a parachute. Despite that, it went pear shaped once i hit minmus. I'd built a rover and dropped it down, only i'd failed to account for the fact that minmus's gravity is SUPER low, and also the site i was trying to land at was on the night side. And I didn't have any lights. Cue Patbert Kerman tumbling wildly over the terrain as I think my wheels got hit with a small kraken. Once i'd warped to daylight it calmed down a lot. Unfortunately, the anomaly I thought I'd seen on Kerbnet and dropped a waypoint to investigate didn't actually exist on subsequent passes. So it was ultimately all for naught. I can't even transmit Science cuz I forgot the blasted antenna. what kind of a name is patbert anyway i might have to save him just for that ridiculous name

Edited November 14, 2019 by Nezclaw

[Kchinger]

Got my Minmus base to the surface after picking up a new scientist from a rescue in LKO. Had to hop a few times to get within range of the KAC hose (35m I think) and then actually banged my solar panels into the other ship's panels on deploy, but no harm done. Got the ore loaded onto the ore return probe, and loaded it up with fuel, so it's ready to head back whenever I'm ready. 

Will have to send the new scientist back to Kerbin surface at some point to complete the rescue contract, but for now he and another 2 star are in the MPL on Minmus surface, loaded with data. Considering its Minmus and on the surface, I don't think it's making appreciably more science than the one in Munar orbit, which seems odd. 

Tomorrow will be to return the ore, and I'm not sure what else. Maybe start building some fuel ferries to make the mining worth it. And perhaps time for a probe to Duna, leave the Kerbin system finally. 

[coolgogo12]

tried to make some kind of "base" and tested it on kerbin. flipped over in the first 3 seconds.

[Guest]

8 hours ago, nelso said:

I spent many hours messing with gravity assists, trying to optimize a kerbin-eve-eve-jool path (and other paths) using a reasonable time, like under 10 years.

What are your results? I've never tried an Eve assist to Jool, although I'm pretty good at gravity assists in the Jolian system -- I can reliably get to stable orbit around any of the major moons with about 200 m/s dV from the Jolian transfer just by tweaking the transfer to get the assists, it's not really random once you figure out how it's done.

The cheapest reasonably easy way to get to Jool that I've managed is by refuelling in Munar orbit, then doing a dive to Kerbin. My total dV budget for getting from Munar orbit to stable orbit around any of the big Jolian moons is about 1600 m/s. Of course this does have the additional complication of having to refuel at the Mun. I know it would be cheaper still from Minmus but the orbital period and inclination make it a quite a lot more fiddly. 

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) RL cut into my time pretty heavily yesterday, so I don't have much to show for my day other than beginning a lot of construction work. To summarize, I ordered up...

• ...a Boop-Boop 7x probe at the Non Pollinis Grano Shipyards over Pol, to be completed in 82 minutes.
• ...a Dystopia Planitia 7 Kerbin shipyard at the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo, to be completed in 35 hours and 49 minutes.
• ...a Bill Clinton 7b probe at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus, to be completed in five hours and 35 minutes.
• ...and a Spamcan 7 Bop-A refinery lander at the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus, which those show-offs will have built in half an hour.

Non Pollinis Grano hadn't been supplied after its launch a few weeks ago, so I had to rectify that rather quickly with a mass driver shot of Rocket Parts and fuel from the Petrobas 36 outpost on Pol's surface. Otherwise that probe would've taken quite a good deal longer to build. I did finish up that construction before the day was out and the new probe was launched after fueling, burning to a 617.8 by 27.7 kilometer, 110.78° inclined orbit on the first leg of a contract. Usumacinta also prepped up a pair of Castillo Depots to support the construction/fueling of the forthcoming Tylo shipyard. I still need to get out and deploy those Depots...

Only other thing to report yesterday was the arrival of Roy Hinkley over Gilly.

Roy Hinkley still before the encounter. Gilly is dinky, y'all...

The craft arrived with sufficient fuel to attain a slow orbit and set up her intercept with space station Gillyport on RCS thrust; she'll arrive at the intercept point at two hours and 24 minutes, where a burn to take her to rendezvous with the space station will occur.
 

Hoping to have a busier day today. I'd tell y'all about it but I really should be working right about now...

[Retro Starship]

Well still flying around with my tiny airship! Got some real far away contracts to a continent that looks like Africa to the east. It was a very long ride even with time-warp active. Had fun riding all around tho at night, doing eva's and getting surface samples at lower altitudes.

[Sppion1]

@capi3101

Hi !

I don't all those mod you are using.... like just seeing your toolbar and I'm like : "What are all those for ?".

So I recognized Toolbar, Stage Recovery, Action group extended... And that's it.

Can you list them for me please ? Thank, have a great journey to space

[djr5899]

Nothing exciting.  Just redesigned my main satellites to use an Ion engine.  With a single Ion Engine, a 5700 unit Xenon tank, a 2-4K in batteries, I can get about 10,000 dV for the satellite.  Plenty of dV for adjusting orbit if needed, or reducing orbit to send the satellite into Kerbin atmosphere to burn up on re-entry.  Not sure why I never did this in the past.  Most times I just attached a small lf/ox tank and a terrier engine, but I find this much more compact and efficient.

[capi3101]

37 minutes ago, Sppion1 said:

@capi3101

Hi !

I don't all those mod you are using.... like just seeing your toolbar and I'm like : "What are all those for ?".

So I recognized Toolbar, Stage Recovery, Action group extended... And that's it.

Can you list them for me please ? Thank, have a great journey to space

All of them? I don't know that I can list them all off the top of my head...but I'll give it ago.

On the left (Blizzy's Toolbar) you've got Docking Port Alignment Indicator, Kerbal Flight Data (the on/off toggle), Protractor Extended Continued Continued ad infinitum, TAC Fuel Balancer, Trajectories, and WaypointManager.

Then down the right hand side and starting from the top there's Extraplanetary Launchpads, PatchManager (I think), Kerbal Konstructs, Ferram Aerospace Research (I'm low res on account of playing on an office machine rather than a dedicated gaming rig, so it appears black instead of proudly saying "FAR" unfortunately), Stage Recovery, EVA Enhancements Continued, Velocity......something or other - it's a vertical velocity manager related to RCS Land Aid, RCS Land Aid, Action Groups Extended, Pathfinder, Pathfinder's Flight manager (for tiltrotors, mainly), Kerbal Alarm Clock, ShipManifest, NavUtilites, Kerbal Flight Data (again) and Kerbal Engineer Redux at the very bottom. I have a couple more there but they're out of sight in the screenie.

[ValiZockt]

So today i managed to land my Falcon 9 right on the center of a drone ship 

[Geonovast]

2 minutes ago, ValiZockt said:

So today i managed to land my Falcon 9 right on the center of a drone ship 

 

I love the name of the ship!  Are you flying manually or is it scripted?

[RealKerbal3x]

10 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I love the name of the ship!

I believe that ship is from this mod:

 

[ValiZockt]

43 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I love the name of the ship!  Are you flying manually or is it scripted?

Manually, but with the help of trajectories, shows pretty accurate where my impact point will be.

[Thygrrr]

I did NOT go to Duna today. 

Mission Album: 

https://imgur.com/a/TiDKBsj

 

Edited November 14, 2019 by Thygrrr

[Damon]

3 hours ago, ValiZockt said:

So today i managed to land my Falcon 9 right on the center of a drone ship 

Is that in KSP 1.8.x? If so, I need to update some shaders cuz something looks off..

[Cavscout74]

Work continued on my asteroid station, with a crew module arriving and docking (via claw - although I have an idea to improve this next time) along with a second parts craft so Greghat (my engineer on this project) stayed busy for another day on extended EVA's.

I've also found it works better to use a single long truss and mount two gigantor solar panels or radiators opening to the sides rather than a short truss with a single panel or radiator opening out.  It will also reduce parts count of the final station, except it will need at least one more parts craft to bring up the long trusses to replace the short ones.  I may just leave it as a "lesson learned" for the next time.

My next launch for this will be the permanent ISRU module, and my idea is to use weldable docking ports - take one & attach it to the asteroid via KAS, then dock the module normally and weld the ports rather than have everything hanging onto the asteroid with a big ugly claw.

In between EVA's my Moho infrastructure (station, fuel base & a load of fuel) departed Kerbin. Pictured here is the fuel base with nuclear transfer stage & landing crane.  The small tank hanging off the side is just lead ballast to keep the center of mass in the centerline, and is fitted with a self-destruct charge to dump it after landing. 

Finally, I tested a new low-tech jet design, powered by twin Juno's.  The first attempt as a bit too heavy, but it handled the ditching well:

After shedding some weight, the second try was much better - acceleration is still pretty slow, but that's pretty realistic.  Handling was ok, although aggressive maneuvers are limited by the slow acceleration.  Stalls, both clean and landing configuration, were gentle and easily recovered.  I haven't tested top speed yet, but it's somewhere over 220 m/s.  It will need a few tweaks (mostly to the elevator angle of incidence) and I forgot a ladder for the crew, but otherwise I'm fairly happy with it.

 

 

[nelso]

13 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

What are your results? I've never tried an Eve assist to Jool, although I'm pretty good at gravity assists in the Jolian system -- I can reliably get to stable orbit around any of the major moons with about 200 m/s dV from the Jolian transfer just by tweaking the transfer to get the assists, it's not really random once you figure out how it's done.

The cheapest reasonably easy way to get to Jool that I've managed is by refuelling in Munar orbit, then doing a dive to Kerbin. My total dV budget for getting from Munar orbit to stable orbit around any of the big Jolian moons is about 1600 m/s. Of course this does have the additional complication of having to refuel at the Mun. I know it would be cheaper still from Minmus but the orbital period and inclination make it a quite a lot more fiddly. 

Once I got the Eve encounter (like 1000 km/s from LKO), it's almost zero delta V, just lots of patience.  I think I maxed out at about 56 giga-meters apoapsis with 2 good Eve assists (about Dres), then needed a Kerbin assist to get to Jool.  Brad Whistance said he usually does Eve-Kerbin-Kerbin-Jool and I've found this seems more consistent and easier (depends how the planets are aligned I guess).  I had a lot of trouble with certain technical things, like occasionally time warping right past carefully prepared encounters or nodes (using better time warp), also leaving RCS on by accident which changed my velocity as it rotated. I've started making new quicksaves before any burn or encounter and doing burns manually.

Getting back to kerbin is another matter, but a single carefully-planned Tylo-Tylo assist could get me almost anywhere.

I think I will try that mun refueling method.  Eventually I plan to park a Class-E asteroid in kerbin orbit for refueling, though it does take a huge amount of patience.

Here is me trying to get back to kerbin using a Jool assist to slow down.  This will be the second assist from Eve, although the kerbin encounter is 8000 m/s.. this kerbal is in for a long trip. 

 

[Triop]

Today, my Kerbals got a make-over.

Edited November 15, 2019 by Triop

[Cavscout74]

Had some time to do a little tinkering with 1.8 and tested out a new mod to go with it - "Completely Non-Aggressive Rocketry"   @DylanSemrau  did a beautiful job on his V-2 & WAC Corporal.

Now I'm going to have to start a new career where it will be useful, especially since almost all the mods I use are updated for 1.8 now.  I should probably get Jeb & company back from Duna at least before I abandon 1.7.3

 

 

[JadeOfMaar]

I made a replica of the anime hypersonic airliner "Spaceplane Orion." It needs some sprinkles of Tweakscale to meet the mark. Now you know exactly where nearly all the involved OPT parts came from.

The above is more visually accurate but this one (below) is the flight-tested version that I spent a few hours on. Less Tweakscale, and including the J Inline Boarding Ramp so kerbals can get in/out without using ladders. It's a low-rider, as a consequence, and can't nose-up enough before reaching the end of the runway. (There are small wheels on the center engine (J-60 ScreamJet) to prevent tail-strikes).

 

[Nezclaw]

I am trying to figure out how best to launch my asteroid drill to intercept the asteroid that is on a very nearly polar orbit without having to burn too much normal/antinormal.

[DoctorDavinci]

 

[ValiZockt]

14 hours ago, damonvv said:

Is that in KSP 1.8.x? If so, I need to update some shaders cuz something looks off..

No, that's 1.7.3, a few mods I've been using have not been updated to 1.8 yet.

[Bev7787]

Dove 2 (Ares A4) launches on its way to refuel the Ares Duna mission stack. Dove 3 (Ares A5) waits its launch window in the background. Ten Dove refuelling flights in total are required to refuel the Ares stack, with eight refuelling the central core, and two follow-on flights refuelling the stack's external tanks.

The Dove is a tanker for orbital spacecraft. It comprises of a 2.5m tank with a shielded docking port, along with avionics. It utilises a bus from the Messenger CSM for orbital manoeuvring. It is launched by the LV-3-4 Pigeon with four additional solid rocket boosters.

Edited November 15, 2019 by Bev7787

[Hotel26]

4 hours ago, Nezclaw said:

how best to launch my asteroid drill to intercept the asteroid that is on a very nearly polar orbit without having to burn too much normal/antinormal.

The simplest stategy is to launch from KSC directly into the very same plane.  There are some good video tutorials on this.

When the target asteroid is inside the Kerbin SOI, set it as target, wait until KSC is under the target trajectory (Map View); launch and pitch over on the appropriate heading.  Bear in mind that inclination is relative to East and compass headings are relative to North, so a mental adjustment is required.  Map View gives a decent picture.