What did you do in KSP1 today?

[brian_mcgee]

Today I rescued a guy who's been stranded on eve since july.

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/WlxCP/embed"></iframe>

100% unpowered landing on eve, the only damage was two torn off parachutes and inline stabilisers, and most of the legs couldn't retract.

Ran out of fuel just barely before orbit, but bailing out with the jetpack was more than enough to make up the difference

The missing pieces made it very difficult to hold the ship on target during liftoff. I wonder if I would have made orbit If I'd still had them to balance the center of gravity, or if I'd have fallen even shorter due to the extra mass..

[KerbMav]

Finally, the Duna Expedition Ship is on its way - lets see how long that beautiful encounter at 100km over Duna's equator can be maintained - but it is only a mid-course-correction-maneuver-node-projection for now anyway.

Burned for a while at a TWR of 0.357 - hope that will not pose to much difficulty to get into a Duna orbit. Without the heavy lander and half empty fuel tanks the return flight should be easier.

Only now realized that I never checked if a trip to Ike would be possible - the DES runs on Kethane powered nukes only and the lander has (hopefully ... !) enough L/OX to go to Duna and come back up into orbit.

To do:

Will have to get a space station up and running as well as an surface-to-orbit crew transport for when the eight kerbonauts return, but that will take a while anyway.

The Kethane mining operations on Mun could do with a larger crew, so a bigger crew module and one or two rovers might be good to have up there.

The one-man mobile-Kethane-miner on Minmus should be brought back too.

Next window up is Eeloo - maybe a quick probe launch ... ?

[Felsmak]

I tried to lift my ion throne to the Mun.

I'm not doing very well.

[coreross]

I increased the size of my Mobile base on Duna, I am so proud of her. Once I docked together she rolls along the surface to stable.

Once there are more bioms on Duna I will be rolling in science.

[JenBurdoo]

Orbited Minmus for the first time ever, and picked up all the EVA biome science in one go! Landing was not so easy; I kept my engine burning until landing on Kerbin at about 5m/s, but when it tipped over the Science Jr. was destroyed, splitting the rest of the ship in half (capsule on one side, engine on the other, SciJr nowhere in between). I think Circle VII will try for a landing on Minmus. Now that I have the Skipper engine and Rockomax tanks I should be able to loft three SciJrs, fuel and engines into Minmus orbit.

[Deathsoul097]

I am about half way through a heavily modded career. I need some extra science, so I thought, hey, you know, I hae been to mun and minmus loads. Lets try something new! So I built this 300mT monstrosity. On the outside, it looks very silly, and very "LOL SOKERBAL XD". However, like everything I do, I tried to think it out as much as possible. Because I don't do the Permadeath or No-Reverts, I am fine with just launching and reverting as needs be until it works. The transfer stage actually has a hab, which will be used by the crew in transit and in LDO. The lander capsule has ebough fuel to land, and do part of the ascent on the descent stage, Incase it proves 1800m/s proves unable to return from duna's surface to the orbiting CM. The CM is a watered down version of my MPCV, and with all of the unnessecary extras the standard MPCV has, that can go to jool on it's own. This one should be able to make it to jool and back on it's own. So yes, inside that ridiculous, and gigantic fairing is a fully fleged, Apollo style mission to another world.

[Felsmak]

I improved the aesthetics of my ion throne a bit.

I also made Jeb king of the Mun.

Edited February 12, 2014 by Felsmak

[DunaRocketeer]

I made my first (flyable) spaceplane last night! A lot of Kerbals were sacrificed, bu it was worth it! I've been playing KSP for about 3 or 4 months now, but getting the knack of spaceplanes has always been difficult for me. I went with a Dreamchaser style booster and mini shuttle combo, and I think I'll start using it for space station crew rotation. It's a lot of fun to be actively piloting a spacecraft from orbit to runway

[Streetwind]

Yesterday I built my most complex rocket yet. 147.5 tons in 176 parts and 12 stages, it carries three identical landers inside its payload fairing*. Each lander is a completely self-sufficient manned vehicle, fitted with 10 days fo life support** and enough delta-V to b able to land on either Mun or Minmus and return all five of its scientific experiments plus crew safe to Kerbin.

The number three was chosen because Minmus has 9 and the Mun has 15 biomes to visit; both numbers divisible by 3. Therefore this rocket is perfectly suited for doing science on them. By inserting into a polar orbit and decoupling landers one by one when passing over the desired biomes, all possible ground-based science can be achieved in just 3 or 5 launches, respectively.

* KW Rocketry

** TAC Life Support

[Tw1]

Though really, this more describes what my IRL day was like, rather than what I did in KSP.

Edit: Hey! What is this doing un stickied?

Edited February 12, 2014 by Tw1

[iNUKE]

Tried ONCE again to land in Duna AND come back to kerbin with science, to once again fail due to lack of fuel.

[BBcokeley]

Nothing, stuck in work, not a lot to do, reading forum, reminiscing on times past and flights gone by, chuckling at first time landing attempts, and the look on Bill Kermans face as his rocket ell apart mid flight.....

Jeb is out there somewhere.....somewhere..

[Biker Joe]

I built a rover and was gonna send it to the mun, built a rocket (waaay too big and heavy) which failed miserably and could barely get off the launch platform, was quite funny!

[Concentric]

Wasn't exactly today, but finishing yesterday, plus a little background.

I'm playing a completely stock Career, with very little play experience - didn't do any sandbox in 0.23, and only clocked about two hours play on the demo. Reverting and quicksaving are perfectly normal, but so far no transmission if any science at all is lost.

Once I got the thermometer, after a quick jaunt to grab Kerbin's thermoscience, I decided to make a Mun landing, taking with me three thermometers, and planning to do my first biome-hop. That all went well-ish, if a little inefficient. Then I burned to escape. In the wrong direction (relative to Kerbin). So, almost no fuel, on a Kerbin escape trajectory, haven't quicksaved since launch. Good thing you've got RCS, Jeb, I thought. 10 monoprop in capsule, 100 in tank and another 160 from those four Roundifieds, 270 total should be just fine, right?

Managed to pull out of Kerbin escape, left myself a hair away, and transmitted my EVA reports and Crew reports. So, with so little fuel, I needed to get right up to my 82 million meter apoapsis so I could lower the 11 million meter periapsis for aerobraking. 35 km should do it without being too steep, leaving me with a little over 5/270 monopropellant. 'Just' fine was right. Given that that was now 6 days or so away, I decided to leave it be and not timewarp it in for a while - get some other things done, like my first three successful SSTOs (One even put up my first orbital probe - but only barely, and I needed to quickload after I... let the plane fall back, killing the kerbal within...) and getting the first docking port research node. Started a first space station, too - but I think I'll talk more about that when I complete it.

So, MunTherm's return. While up at the apoapsis, I realised that it was possible that my landing could be pretty hard, and there was a chance that my thermometers would be destroyed. Unacceptable! I had only recently learned of EVA data collection from a Youtube video, but it was worth a shot. Way up there, and for quite a bit around, thrusterpack EVA was utterly ridiculous. The frame of reference is continuously flipping and Jeb is wasting fuel trying to 'right' himself, only to 'realise' that he is now on his 'side' - I mean seriously, is this relative to Kerbin North, the lander's 'down', or gravity? KSP didn't seem to be able to decide. I noticed that I could reach two out of three from a ladder, but the other definitely required the thrusterpack, so I kept trying, quicksaving and quickloading as I lost control. Eventually, I gave up on getting the last reading this far out and (after getting the station into an okay-but-incomplete shape at 200km) warped in for an aerobrake pass. First pass was pretty normal - into atmosphere, stow solar panels, and out again a little slower. Got out and went for that last reading (much easier with an apoapsis below Mun orbit), and put my solar panels back out. So, all science in the pod, that's two surface samples and three thermo readings, meaning any return of even the slightest success means full value. Safe!

Then, two more full passes - in, brake, out - before my final landing pass on this, my first multipass aerobrake. And then, disaster (almost) struck! Parachute deployed normally at 149m/s, full deployment at 500m altitude... and there's a sudden wrenching. Lack of struts was the culprit, along with using a single XL parachute to land the whole lander. If there had been radial chutes on the lander's fuel tank, or struts connecting to the capsule, most likely the rest of the craft would also have survived... Fortunately, that moment of forethought at apoapsis, that little doubt saying "But what if the lander doesn't survive?", and the watching of KSP Youtube videos saved the mission! Splashdown into the ocean, recovered - forgetting to take ocean samples, but that's fine - and that brings me up to the 300 science I need for Electronics, my first of the 300-tier technologies.

[Masked Turk]

http://i.imgur.com/BWMrghK.png?1

Though really, this more describes what my IRL day was like, rather than what I did in KSP.

Edit: Hey! What is this doing un stickied?

[Wooks]

http://i.imgur.com/BWMrghK.png?1

Though really, this more describes what my IRL day was like, rather than what I did in KSP.

Edit: Hey! What is this doing un stickied?

My rendition of your awesome image:

[SpaceGremlin]

Just prototyped a seismic monitoring station for my current career (for KSP Interstellar impact experiments).

Its a KAS ground pylon, battery, OX-STAT, accelerometer, and a LLL microchip. Takes up 47 storage units in a KAS box. Now to deploy these all over the place...

Edit: and I forgot to add, the battery won't charge unless you quicksave and reload.

Edited February 12, 2014 by SpaceGremlin

[capi3101]

My rendition of your awesome image:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-vBOXSRrNxhk/UvutbzK7JOI/AAAAAAAAANw/u2039hwfqgY/w753-h635-no/BWMrghK.png

I sense the genesis of a meme here...

[Doctor Axel]

Its a KAS ground pylon, battery, OX-STAT, accelerometer, and a LLL microchip. Takes up 47 storage units in a KAS box. Now to deploy these all over the place...

wait wait wait wait wait wait wait... you can put non-KAS stuff in a KAS storage box? How's that work?? =o

[SpaceGremlin]

In the VAB/SPH you right click on a KAS box to open its inventory editor. To make a part available there it needs to have some attributes added to it with Module Manager I think. KAS 0.4.5 does this to a number of stock parts by default, and LLL has a number of KAS enabled parts as well.

Edited February 12, 2014 by SpaceGremlin

[Deadweasel]

In the VAB/SPH you right click on a KAS box to open its inventory editor. To make a part available there it needs to have some attributes added to it with Module Manager I think. KAS 0.4.5 does this to a number of stock parts by default, and LLL has a number of KAS enabled parts as well.

In %KSP_FOLDER%/GameData/KAS/addModule.cfg:

Add in a simple block of code to the end of the file that references the part that you want to be grabbable:

///////// RCSBlock ///////
GRAB
{
    stockPartName = RCSBlock
    evaPartPos = (0.0, 0.00, -0.18)
    evaPartDir = (0,0,-1)
    storable = true
    storedSize = 6
    attachOnPart = True
    attachOnEva = True
    attachOnStatic = False
    attachSendMsgOnly = False
}

I did this with Aviation Lights by adding one of these for each kind of light available in the mod:

///////// (this is a comment line) AviationLight-Green Navlight ///////
GRAB
{
    stockPartName = lightnav_green
    evaPartPos = (0.0, 0.09, -0.23)
    evaPartDir = (0,0,-1)
    physicJoint = true
    storable = true
    storedSize = 2
    attachOnPart = True
    attachOnEva = False
    attachOnStatic = False
    attachSendMsgOnly = False
}

The orientation of the part when it's picked up is determined by the evaPartPos and evaPartDir directives. I'm no good with KSP's coordinate system, but perhaps those who are better with it will know how to get things oriented so they look more realistic (assuming the defaults I posted don't do the trick well enough).

All that said, using the ModuleManager method would be better for those who want to maintain their mod customizations (such as those B9 currently requires for some minor bits) across updates, without having to re-edit the config files for each mod all over again.

Unfortunately, I can't offer guidance with the MM method, as I don't have the relevant knowledge to work effectively with that either (yet?)

[NoPanShabuShabu]

I noticed that my KSC Runway marker flag had somehow gotten knocked over. I don't know who did this, but it's pretty disrespectful.

Then I checked the Island Runway and found that the vandals had done their mischief there too! Not only that, but they'd thrown it way down the runway! Found some incriminating evidence here though.

[jfull]

I tried a dumb idea

(it didn't work)

[Wooks]

I tried a dumb idea

http://i.imgur.com/6x868lZ.png

(it didn't work)

Try again, take moar pictures... and add moar boosters

[problemecium]

Went to bed before posting about it but yesterday, I finished and did a shake-down run of a science supply chain to easily harvest the rest of the science from Mun. It consists of a low-orbiting Munar station; a reusable lander that can detach from the station, land, collect data, then bring itself back up, re-dock, transfer science (via Kerbal) to the station, refuel, and repeat; and the key element, a "Science Shlepper" craft with a bunch of extra command pods allowing it to bring large amounts of data back to Kerbin for maximum credit.

I'm gonna find out if it's possible to clear the tech tree without leaving Kerbin's SOI (except maybe a little bit for "high over the Sun" data).