What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

16 hours ago, qromodynmc said:

then i started playing with some tanks i made... <snip />

it was pretty fun today

My son's been trying to get me to do a "kerbal war" ala some videos he's been watching on YouTube...he'd eat that tank up, no question about it. If you decide to release the .craft file, I'd like to know about it.

Which mod do the treads come from?

[qromodynmc]

1 hour ago, capi3101 said:

My son's been trying to get me to do a "kerbal war" ala some videos he's been watching on YouTube...he'd eat that tank up, no question about it. If you decide to release the .craft file, I'd like to know about it.

Which mod do the treads come from?

i'll send it via message

[Hoddd9000]

Today I set up a base on the Mun in my JNSQ career save.

Launching on my new Hammurabi launch vehicle.

Fast forward to the deorbit burn...

The crew deploys the surface experiment equipment, and begins stocking up on supplies for the first 12-day night.

[magnemoe]

Return of Moho express after another Moho missions picking up two kerbals stranded at Moho and one in solar orbit, I forgot one of the capsules I had to return however. 

An fairly rutine mission only significant because Moho express is sister ship of Dress express or it seems it's something wrong with our bloody ships today (how many get that quote :))
I did an braking burn getting into Kerbin orbit but Ap was halfway to the Mun so I needed to aerobrake get into LKO and dock with station.
Pe at 50 km, then found I could get away with one more pass if I dropped Pe to 48, velocity was lower now after all.  

It flipped, managed to escape taking any damage but now know that Pe 50 is limit for class. 

Other news: Crew rotation and water delivery from Laythe. 

Well first I forgot to add crew to the plane before takeoff. Did not notice until high supersonic.
Even with two ton water onboard I was able to get Ap up to 60 Km while in air-breading mode and had to pull down to gain speed while keeping Ap at 60
 

[Cavscout74]

I didn't have much KSP time but I started rebuilding a mining base design in my current career, with a quick test at KSC before sticking it on top of a rocket to send to Minmus:

Complete ISRU plus quarters for 4 and a research lab.  Plus a folding refueling arm

Arm extended with a KIS socket & fuel hose

 

[Plane Crazy]

I made a reusable launch vehicle today, with fins that fold down into SpaceX style landing legs.

Unfortunately, it came down on a mountain. But everything survived!

[astrobond]

My new record in KSP Speed Tech Tree Run

4 Day, 2H, 40m to unlock all science... with moar boosters !!! lol

(Normal Career game mode, science from Kerbin, Mun and Minmus)

Fly safe with Valentina

[JebsCousin]

I started a new career save game since my previous would crash my computer due to a certain mod

[Plane Crazy]

Here's the latest result of my VTOL experiments:

[southernplain]

Today in ridiculously dangerous spacecraft design I flew this thing.

Officially known only as Test Article 37 around the agency, TA-37 grew out of a series of Air Force experiments with spaceplanes. Test Article 35 was the first subscale demonstrator of a highly classified spaceplane project that could carry a crew of two and military cargo to orbit on short notice if the capability was needed. Test Article 36 was a full scale aerodynamic demonstrator designed to test the flight characteristics of the design, which performed admirably. Shortly thereafter, the Air Force requested a suborbital demonstration from the Agency. Various proposals were floated to boost the spacecraft up for a suborbital flight. However, some bright engineer got the idea to strap TA-37, a twenty-five million dollar highly classified one-of-a-kind prototype, to the biggest SRM in the Agency's warehouse and let it brute force the spacecraft up into space. 

The brass was less than impressed with the general concept, which was essentially light-match, run-away. However, they were very impressed with the price tag and the very short timeline. Indeed, it was projected to take only ten days to mate the spacecraft and the booster, using entirely flight-proven hardware, and roll it out to the pad for only a measly ten million dollars added expense.

Contrary to popular belief in mission control, launch was completely nominal. The spacecraft flew admirably up to 125 km, boosted itself using the OMS and then reentered completely as planned. The spacecraft's handling on reentry could be tuned up but overall the mission was a huge success.

Clearly actually strapping astronauts to TA-37 was still insane but maybe, just maybe, it could work...

Some additional images:

Booster separation.

Reentry.

Coasting in for a landing. The brass was probably not OK with dropping TA-37 in some farmers field.

[hendrack]

So I've always been doing the soviet/russian inspired stuff in KSP, but its time for a bit of a change, and some tight docking.

 

[Clamp-o-Tron]

Tried 4 designs for vertical-launch, vertical-land cargo SSTOs. All sucked. I also found out that vector engines should never be left with 100% gimbal. Not even MechJeb can land an SSTO the size of a Saturn V. I think I'll just use lots of parachutes.

[JadeOfMaar]

Do not attempt to adjust or reset your KSP.

Today I took control of the vertical

And the horizontal

[Nightside]

More fun in the city.

 

 

More pix:

 

[Guest]

Back to my old shenanigans, after a longish break. 

One thing I've never pursued with my careers is aesthetics, although I have done that with planes. I've designed a whole bunch of kerbalised planes riffing off their real-life counterparts -- not even close to exact replicas, but with similar-enough proportions that the inspiration is usually pretty obvious.

I've never done that with spacecraft, largely because I've been pretty obsessive about stripping every unnecessary gram out. So this time I decided to change that. I have a particular aesthetic in mind and I'm looking at some reference photos, then riffing off them. I think the inspirations should be fairly obvious if you've looked at pictures of spacecraft. These are all fully functional and fun to fly. I want to see how far this will go.

I'm using Restock for parts, otherwise pure stock so far, although I do have KIS/KAS installed.

Skyward bound:

My first space station:

An expanded one, with a next-generation liaison craft on approach:

Hard at work on the Minmus surface:

A mission to the Mun:

 

 

[Plane Crazy]

I crashed a probe into Minmus to get some seismic data, and it somehow sent the nearby flag on an escape trajectory out of the Kerbol system.

[Cavscout74]

I got a crew back from an quick mission out of Kerbin's SoI to get their 3rd star, then nearly lost them coming down on the edge of the mountains:

Back at KSC, there was a nice dawn eclipse:

[Goaty1208]

I don't have a lot of time, so I'll be fast, and I'll give details another day. I watched @kspbandit's Duna tutorial, and... I've made it! I reached Duna and I returned back!!! Thanks kspbandit.

[KerikBalm]

While waiting for Kopernicus, I decided to take a crack at 2 stage reusable Eve shuttles using BG parts.

While I had done a tail sitting proof of concept, I previously had no way to reattach the orbiter and the carrier (and the orbiter lacked wings for reentry and wheels for landing. This time I made the carrier a horizontal takeoff and landing plane, and they can dock together horizontally on the surface (as I was doing for my recent candidate for a reusable kerbin cargo shuttle for 3x Kerbin, once kopernicus updates). Now the whole thing seems just about ready for transporting 1 kerbal too and from Orbit.

Power consumption far exceeded production, and at 11km, I had to power down the rotors and engage rockets (but pitch of the blades is still important to control, or the plane gets hard to control with all the drag up front, even if deployed to 90 degrees, they'd still act like giant fins up front, affecting stability=

Preping for decouple:

I couldn't build them already linked with the shielded docking ports, so I tested the oribter separately for the ability to make it through eve's atmo, and built them linked to save time when testing:

803 m/s left in the tank... not bad, definitely has room for orbital maneuvers... 

Well, need to switch back to the orbiter before it falls too far and gets deleted for being in the atmosphere.

Unloaded, it can cruise much higher, and the solar panels produce more power, and it can sustain flight:

Suuppper low touchdown speed:

and then lowering it to be in position for surface docking:

The orbiter would come back as a glider, and its the carrier that would have to move forward and back to dock. I think I could get better margins if I started from a higher altitude, and thus had more power reserves to climb higher. I suppose it should be able to fly to a higher elevation, land, wait to recharge, then takeoff again.

I also tried making an orbiter with similar dV margins and a mk3 cargobay with a full orange tank as payload... I think I'd need to make the entire shuttle system 20x larger, which results in impractical part counts. I might be able to reduce part count by using helo blades instead of so many fan blades... but... that brings its own problems.

 

 

[purpleivan]

This morning was all about boats... very speedy boats, for the Jetboat Speed Record challenge.

This design managed to get up to 354m/s and survive, while maintaining contact with the water, so remaining, you know... a boat.

A fraction faster (it hit high 355's when the fairing collapsed) and the boat stops being a boat and become flaming shrapnel.

But afterwards Jeb was his usual positive self.

[Hotel26]

1 hour ago, purpleivan said:

But afterwards Jeb was his usual positive self.

...you could even say that "Jeb was his usual buoyant self"... 

[Castille7]

2 hours ago, purpleivan said:

This morning was all about boats... very speedy boats, for the Jetboat Speed Record challenge.

Now that's Science! 

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

...you could even say that "Jeb was his usual buoyant self"... 

In this case Flame-buoyant?....lol

[Guest]

Here's EVERA-3, another spacecraft with a certain design inspiration that should be fairly obvious. Despite the looks, this is a probe, not a crewed craft: the Onion module houses the lander components.

These are full stock, except I'm using Restock models for cosmetics.

I have to say I'm enjoying this. Being free from the tyranny of efficiency is nice, it's cool to be able to put on a few bits and bobs just for role-play and cosmetic reasons -- the 2G relay serves no purpose in the kerbalverse, and I would have saved about 300 kg just by building the lander around a heat shield, but making this was much more fun.

From right to left: 

• EVERA-3 lander module. It's a pressure-reinforced hull that houses a probe core, battery, antenna, and scientific instruments, and carries a parachute for the descent.
• 3MV-2 link and orbiter module. This houses a 15G relay antenna, a smaller antenna for communicating with the lander, and its own probe core and set of scientific instruments. 
• "Khamsin" insertion module. This is just a fuel tank with an engine. 

She is now waiting in Munar orbit for a transfer window to Eve. The mission plan is:

1. Transfer to Eve.
2. Park in a relatively low-energy elliptical orbit.
3. Brake until Pe is in the atmosphere, then release EVERA-3, then boost back into safe orbit.
4. EVERA-3 descends through the Evian atmosphere, lands, performs its scientific mission, and transmits data back through 3MV-2.
5. Orbiter waits for a transfer window back to Kerbin, the performs the transfer.
6. Yet to be constructed shuttle recovers orbiter and brings her back to Kerbin.

Another view, showing the relay antenna.

Edited May 21, 2020 by Guest

[Retro Starship]

Sent Val to the dark side of Minmus to do some science and also bring two tourists to land on that cool small satellite as well. Notice her red hair was done just for this photograph. She is also a Star Trek follower and even got her space suit from a Trek convention. She really likes Spock as well as Nasa.

 

[Angelo Kerman]

I finished up the Mk-33 landing gear testing: