What did you do in KSP1 today?

[N_Danger]

I sent Jeb up to get high orbit science.

Then I used the science collected to launch some probes.

I sent one around Kerbin..

and then did a Mun fly by..

ending up in solar orbit. Much science was collected.

 

 

[harrisjosh2711]

Made a jet inspired by the Grumman X-29 and played around awhile. I spent forever barking up the wrong tree trying to get my crane arm on my Duna lander working perfect. I'm pretty inexperienced with the robotic parts so it was worth the time. Oh!!!! And I found out you can take a screen shot while paused!!!! WHAT!!! 

Edited October 5, 2020 by harrisjosh2711

[Maj Solo]

sent a HUGE Ore tank to the science ship I have around Minmus.

Too little Lq+Ox onboard to push it there.

Used HyperEdit mod to give it more fuel. I could have refueled the thing in orbit but takes too much time and I don'tr have time.

So using HyperEdit I refueld it in 4 seconds.

Edited October 5, 2020 by Maj Solo

[Grogs]

I launched a new Munar lander with a high capacity and enough dV (~4,000) to easily reach the poles from an equatorial orbit.

 

The lander docked at Kerbin Station to complete a contract to upgrade the station.

 

Meanwhile, the lifter stage returned to KSC. It landed on the sloped berm around the launchpad, but thanks to the landing legs remained upright for a full recovery.

 

The lander then headed towards the Mun, refueled at Munar Station, and headed down towards the south pole to look for an anomaly that had been spotted by satellites. There was no sign of the anomaly and the first landing site was just a little bit hilly with a 30 degree slope.

 

Heading back up, I still couldn't find the anomaly, but was rather intrigued by the terrain around the south pole.

 

The ship put down nearby and the crew did a proper flag planting ceremony to honor the occasion.

 

One brave kerbal decided to go visit the dragon spine location. Flying near the south pole is challenging because the kerbal's point of view is constantly shifting near the poles.

 

Here's the view from above as the lander took off and flew above the pole

 

And finally, a nice Kerbinrise with the Kerbafrica and Kerbrea land masses clearly visible.

[N_Danger]

I sent a probe to Minmus,

I am starting to get the hang of doing gravity turns with the rescaled Kerbin in JNSQ.

On orbit around Minmus collecting the science.

 

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey all.

Today built a Firefly replica.

 

Here is the FireTrap.

 

Not an exact copy but it does convey the idea of a Firefly class cargo ship . It of course works only with infinite fuel and I teleported it to 3000m before firing the engines.

 

ME

Edited October 5, 2020 by Martian Emigrant

[kedrednael]

I put a seismograph on the surface of Eve and returned the crew.
This mission consisted of three launches: the plane that can take of from Eve when it stages, but it can't get into orbit on Kerbin without staging, so it required a cool pusher plane. The Eve plane is fully manned by Valentina, Bob and Bill. While the pusher plane is piloted by jebediah.

Then another launch to refuel the Eve plane and another add the return capsule and the heatshield. The return capsule was manned by jebediah, however there was no place for him to Eve so he had to hitch a ride on the reusable rocket booster back home! Thankfully the engineers installed a ladder for Jebediah to hold on to until things get too hot. The booster had a lot of Dv left to decelerate.

Jeb had to let go around 30 km to minimize toastiness.

The propellors don't overheat when they slowly rotate to get out of the plasma stream :P. Reentry capsule is still attached at this entry.

Spoiler

Keeping the craft from flipping before reentry heating was low enough was really hard!

 

While ascending to the max altitude with the propellers I discovered some things: Decreasing the RPM from 460 to 400 enabled the plane to speed up and ascent further!
The propellers don't need all the torque applied to them to keep their RPM, but the electric charge is determined more by torque. So decreasing torque didn't decrease RPM, but it did decrease electric charge use, so there was no more electricity shortage!
 

The ascent to Eve orbit starts by igniting the vector engine and pointing the plane up as much as possible, then detaching the wings. The wings collided violently with each other behind the plane.

Spoiler

1st stage done

The 2nd stage of the Eve plane docked to the return capsule and everyone returned safely to Kerbin  ! Fuel tank and engine can be seen burning up.

[Popestar]

I finally got my first plane into the air.  Took far more patience and trial/error than i thought it would, but it happened. And the crash was spectaular; rolled too much when turning to line up with the runway, and boom!

I also tried for a polar orbit, but my rocket keeps yawing east for some reason.  And when i finally got my maneuver set up...my space bar died.  Sigh.  Have to tear apart my laptop and figure out why the keyboard failed.

[Fraktal]

Did my first munar landing in my new Marathon (90% less science from every experiment) session.

Took a rather unusual design choice this time in the form of using three small fuel tanks clipped into each other instead of radially mounting two of them. Was concerned it would cause a lot of drag but I didn't see any difference.

Minor hitch happened when it turned out that my four landing legs were a big too high up and the lander clonked down on its engine bell, but luckily I was already descending too slow to cause any damage. A bigger hitch happened when I tried to transmit surface sample data and the lander's batteries completely ran out before the transmission completed, revealing that I also forgot to set the command pod's internal battery as reserve power. With no power to run the reaction wheels, I decided to chance the trip home using engine gimbal thrust only and not only pulled it off on first try, I actually landed in Kerbin's badlands completely by accident, which is out of range for my current science planes and thus provided me with a couple extra points of science.

Currently got 63 science. First unlock will be the OKTO core, second unlock will be the small docking port, the two of which I'm intent on using to set up a permanent geostationary relay station over the KSC which I can expand/upgrade with additional and bigger antennas over time (I'm playing with DSN off and CommNet Constellations loaded). I might also put up a shorter-range secondary relay 120° prograde from the KSC to cover the far side of the planet, which should only leave a small blind spot close to the surface retrograde from the KSC, which is acceptable (as the secondary relay's position is so that unmanned craft finalizing LKO don't lose connection from going beyond the horizon).

Second landing targeted the canyon on the far side and nailed it so well I had just enough fuel to visit a second nearby biome and walk away with 72 science in one flight and about 27 m/s left after executing the return burn to Kerbin. Ended up coming in a bit hotter than I planned to, burning off all 40 ablator on the heatshield way before I got past the heat.

3 hours ago, Popestar said:

I finally got my first plane into the air.  Took far more patience and trial/error than i thought it would, but it happened. And the crash was spectaular; rolled too much when turning to line up with the runway, and boom!

That's why you shouldn't try landing on the runway. The grass around the KSC is perfectly level and wide open, land there and taxi onto the runway instead.

If you find you're rolling to the side on the runway itself after touching down, place your landing wheels further away from the plane's fuselage.

3 hours ago, Popestar said:

I also tried for a polar orbit, but my rocket keeps yawing east for some reason.

Kerbin is rotating eastward, which is giving all rockets a slight nudge that way. Add a few degrees westward into your trajectory to compensate.

Edited October 6, 2020 by Fraktal

[Guest]

I wanted to wait until after I got music with it, it's now there.

SET FIRE TO THE SUN!

 

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey all.

 

Today Jeb and Bill took the FireTrap to the Mun and didn't crash.

 

That can't happen? Can it?

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

Made more progress improving the logistics on my main Mun base:

Bill unloading his new engineers scooter, still has that new rover smell...

And the main event:

The new Scorpion MK I crane arrived with "some assembly required" in order to fit in the dropship, so Bill recruited Jedford to come out and help with the heavy lifting:

And a test lift with the fertilizer tanks:

It vastly improves my ability to lift big things and haul them over reasonable distances, which is quite handy since the suborbital supply run between the main base and the North Rim has been very busy lately, and I still suck at suborbital hops...

 

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, Martian Emigrant said:

Jeb (to Bill): "Did the gorram buffer panel just fall off of my ship for no apparent reason?"

Bill: "Looks like."

[Adstri]

I remade the Jool System!

ALBUM BELOW (sort of image heavy :P)

Spoiler

 

[Kerminator K-100]

Downloaded Kerbalism and started a new mission report thread!

 

[Popestar]

In my effort to earn science points, I sent Jeb up to orbit.  Ap was ~285k, with a Pe of ~ 265k.  Sent him around the planet a couple of times, did an EVA, and got me some science.  Just enough to unlock the next Electronics thing on the tech tree.  I now sit at 0.1 Science.

I also attempted a flight in a space plane.  Well, it won't go into space, but it was built in the space plane hangar.  I upgraded my runway and took off...only to crash horribly upon attempting to land.  Poor Valentina.

[Lewie]

Launched my first interplanetary craft in my career save today. Just had to do a flyby of Eve, and return some data. Very easy. After getting the gravity assist from Eve, My ap was just over Duna’s orbital line. I had a contract for a Duna and Ike relay sat...but I forgot to put relay dishes on it! I kept kicking myself on that...could’ve made quite a few funds if O just put on 1,800 funds worth of relays dishes on it. I would’ve reverted to do that, but of course after you make a quick save, you can’t revert your flight. Dang, that is annoying. You know what...I’m going to take that to Suggestions and development. 

As for the probe, I put it into an orbit between Duna and Dres. In my head cannon, it is now a deep-space probe, meant to take pictures of all the planets and kerbol, to perhaps gain new knowledge about the mysterious planets that kerbalkind has yet to conquer.

In other news, I have successfully developed a completely reusable rocket! (Minus fairings, of course) it only costs 25,000-30,000 funds, depending on payload. After many...MANY failed attempts, I managed to land the booster back at the ksc. (Had to use mech jeb a few times, just to get an understanding of when to de-orbit and what-not), but yeah. Fun times for all!

[Fraktal]

Did a few more Mun landings today, including one unmanned land-and-return probe. An improved probe has been designed but not tested yet, capable of returning to Kerbin within barely more than a single ton (probe is 400 kg, fuel is 610 kg, propulsion is two Ants). Currently can't decide whether I should attempt using the tiny heatshield or strap on the small one and have the landing legs retract behind it to survive reentry. I'm not keeping the engines or the tanks, but I don't have tiny decouplers/separators yet so I'm forced to drop them with radial decouplers, which sharply decrease available delta-V.

I'm also trying to give it another shot to build a Mun lander using the KV-3 pod (I initially wanted the Mk2 pod, but decided to keep that one back for a Duna trip instead), but the sucker is really heavy and none of my current boosters can put enough delta-V under it.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Fraktal

[harrisjosh2711]

Built the booster for my new lander. Flew around kerbin and did some carrier landings. Also built my first helicopter drone. Working on resizing the parts so i can build a true mini drone. Tested the new lander on a mission for minimus and mun landings with a kerbin return without refueling.

 

 

Does this count?

Lol this thing could still fly.

[Martian Emigrant]

12 hours ago, capi3101 said:

Jeb (to Bill): "Did the gorram buffer panel just fall off of my ship for no apparent reason?"

Bill: "Looks like."

I had to go look at that bit again. Hi-Hi. still makes me laugh.

 

ME

[kerboknaut]

Four Kerbals set out nearly four years ago in Experiential Knowledge's latest engineering catastrophe/masterpiece, Interplanetary 1. This nuclear-powered interplanetary craft was designed to be able to refill itself as it came to various low-gravity ore-rich moons. It came equipped with a full ISRU unit and lander with drill and ore tank to return to orbit. Led by Kommander Valentina, Kerboknauts Bob and Bill piled into the craft and Clauski the back-up pilot came for the extra experience. 

The brave adventurers escaped from Kerbin's orbit and set out for Duna. It was a fairly long trip there but they took turns playing cards in the passenger cabin, quizzing each other on their mission protocols, and dreaming of what life was like back home. 

The ship made it to Duna but not in the most efficient manner, and the tanks were running very low by the time it had settled into a low orbit of the single moon, Ike. Apparently the ship left with just enough fuel to make it to the destination, now it was time to prove the miner-lander could indeed refill it for the return trip.

Bill waited until it looked like there was a somewhat flat, sunlit crater below and decoupled the miner-lander. He left with about 1000 delta-V and needed to land and return to the interplanetary ship on a near-400 m/s trajectory. This seemed doable to Bill who, admittedly, had never actually done that sort of thing before. How hard could it be?

What Bill or the engineers back at the space station didn't factor in was that when the miner-lander filled up with ore, well, ore is heavy and that will require more fuel to get the craft to orbit than it would empty. Bill saw his delta-v indicator shrinking as the tank filled up and cut the drills after they were only about a third full. He had 400 m/s of delta-V left to get back to the station, travelling nearly 400 m/s about 10 km above his head. This was going to be tricky. 

He waited until he just saw the glimmer of Interplanetary 1's solar panels emerge over the rocky horizon and bottomed out the throttle. Without a pilot on board there was no stability assistance for the ascent. This, Bill knew, was how another engineer on the Mun never made it home, trying to steer a mining rig without the stability-assistance a pilot can provide. The miner-lander was nimble, however, and soon enough it was within range of the mothership for the Valentina to assist remotely. The main trouble was that Bill was entirely out of fuel, and he had undershot the mothership by about 25 km. He was on a trajectory headed back for Ike's rocky, unforgiving surface. It was looking pretty hopeless. Unless ...

Bill had an idea. He powered up the RCS thrusters and pointed the lander in the rough direction of Interplanetary 1. Maybe this was pointless, but it was the last thing left to try. 250 units of monopropellent, used sparingly, was barely enough to get back to the mothership with the 100 units of ore from the surface. Disaster, it seemed, was averted, and the ore could be processed for fuel for the return voyage. 

It quickly became apparent that 100 units of ore was not nearly enough to resupply even the miner-lander's fuel or monopropellent tanks, let alone Interplanetary 1's liquid fuel tanks. They were stranded, there was nothing left for them to do. 

When word of the situation reached Experiential Knowledge's space station mission command, they set to work immediately designing a rescue vessel. This craft would need to be able to deliver fuel for a return trip, be able to connect to Interplanetary 1, and be able to take all of that to low Ike orbit. No small feat. They redesigned the original craft with more fuel, and included some presents the stranded Kerboknauts might enjoy: an improved miner-lander with an integrated ISRU to top up the fuel tanks for the return trip, and a small probe with a surface scanner to assist in identifying the best craters for mining. 

The craft made it to the stranded ship on Ike and docked successfully, though the two interplanetary craft docked nose-to-nose with junior docking ports tested the limits of that docking port's performance. Valentina and Clauski commiserated that they were not warned at the academy that they would find themselves on the other side of the solar system piloting a ship that handled like a wet noodle, hoping the harmonic oscillations didn't rip them apart. 

Valentina took the opportunity to exercise her authority over the mission and immediately set a course for Kerbin, taking the improved (and unused) miner-lander, a nearly full tank of fuel, and all of the Kerbals who set out with her. The return voyage was un-eventful, though considerably more tense around the card-table than it was on the way out. 

Returning to Kerbin's orbit today, Interplanetary 1 nearly docked with a station in low Kerbin orbit but ran out of fuel a few kilometers away. A landing vehicle was sent to retrieve the Kerboknauts, the data they collected, and finish the docking process for the mothership. Clauski remained in orbit to look after Interplanetary 1, which he wasn't too thrilled about, but that's what you get when you are the only one without an orange shirt. 

Valentina presented the over 2,100 science data to the researchers at Experiential Knowledge's laboratories. They were somewhat disappointed. "Only one sample of Ike's surface?" was the response from the chief researcher. Yeah. Only one sample from THE SURFACE OF FREAKING IKE, thought Valentina. 

[jimmymcgoochie]

@kerboknaut you’ve fallen for the classic mistake of putting the ISRU on the orbiter, when it really should be included on the lander. Ore is really, really heavy but fuel/oxidiser and monopropellant are not, so it’s much more practical to include the ISRU on a lander and then put fuel tanks either on that drill/refinery vessel or build a dedicated fuel tanker to carry the produced fuel up to the orbiting ship.

The setup I last used for Duna/Ike had one large mining ship to land on Ike (I did land it on Duna itself, once, but then all the engines came off ) and do all the mining and fuel production, then a pair of fuel carriers which were equipped with wheels so they could land vaguely near the mining ship and then drive up to it. The fuel tanks were equipped with grabbing claws to ‘dock’ with the miner, avoiding the difficulties of actually docking properly with two vessels on the surface, and also allowing the crew of the mining ship to be rescued when it crashed made an attempted landing and crashed on Duna, by grabbing hold of a crewed lander ship and driving it over to the mining rig for the crew to board and blast off again.

[eatU4myT]

Various small issues have been identified from our Mun trip, but nothing show-stopping, in fact probably nothing that will be changed on this ship just improvements to make for if/when a sister-ship is launched.   Visiting Duna next!

I know I've already posted pictures of this ship, but I've just learned two things - firstly, that you can set a multiplier to the resolution of screenshots, and secondly that you can make the interior of the vessel visible in flight!  Revolutionary!

Also, because even saying it every day isn't enough - @Nertea, you are a god among men!

[jimmymcgoochie]

I discovered that in map or tracking station view, holding control and clicking one type of vessel hides every other type of vessel e.g. ctrl+click on probes hides everything but probes. Ctrl+click on probes again shows everything again. Is this a feature of tracking station evolved or stock behaviour?

[Grogs]

I made a couple of runs up to LKO with the Winterlance. First was to pick up a kerbal to complete her rescue contract, then another to take her back up so she could get experience landing on the moons.

 

Then Jeb and Bill launched the first manned portion of the Duna expedition.

 

This launch consists of an ISRU rover for refueling on Ike, a small station core, and a transfer stage that will become a fuel tanker once at Duna.

 

The ISRU rover combo docked at LKO station and then headed up to KEO station to take on a full load of fuel in preparation for the transit to Duna.

 

Unfortunately, I'm learning that Claws and space stations don't mix well. The docking at KEO station set off a series of oscillations that seemed destined to tear the station apart. A small time warp stopped the oscillations, but not without causing some damage. This is what a set of landing legs normally looks like on one of my fuel tankers:

 

But this is what they looked like after the kraken attack. I had five ships at KEO station and they all suffered this same type of offset. I'm going to use the ALT-F12 menu to recover the damaged ships and move replacements directly to the station, but it's still a pain.