What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Astrionix]

I made my first spaceplane, a recreation of the X-20 Dyna-Soar. I know there's the WBI Moroz mod, but I just wanted to try doing it with stock parts. Landing was tricky, as it was my first time, and took a couple of quicksave reloads, but I eventually did it, a few kilometers from the KSC. I'll try to make a video about it soon.

[Goaty1208]

8 hours ago, Kerbals_of_Steel said:

 

I've got a long ways before I reach my goal of a 1000 kerbal colony, but now it's self sufficient and even has surplus capacity to help support further expansions. Next step is to add some form of off-planet manufacturing so I don't have to ship in new components all the way from the KSC...

What mods did you use? Are you using 1.10.1?

[Eleutherophile]

My rocket capsized on the Mun and threatened to slide down a crater and explode. Luckily, I had a buggy with Vernor engines stowed. I promptly decoupled the rover, got good old Jebediah to EVA onto the rover, and used the rover's rocket engines (Yes, I put rocket engines onto rovers: 2 Twitchs to be exact) to  wedge the rover under the nose of the rocket just before it was about to slide over the crater rim. After turning the  Vernors to maximum thrust, I used RCS translation to lift up the ship and get it upright. After deploying habitation modules, doing science, etc, I got back to the ship and, with dangerously low fuel levels, lifted off. When I got into Mun orbit, I noticed a problem - I had no electric charge and no monopropellant. I effectively had no control over the ship. I used short bursts of my gimballing engines to correct my attitude, and eventually got myself a Kerbin atmosphere collision. Reentry, I decoupled everything and let the heat shield do its thing. That touchdown felt amazing, but nobody came to congratulate me :( No ticker tape parade or anything. Oh well!

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, Eleutherophile said:

My rocket capsized on the Mun and threatened to slide down a crater and explode. Luckily, I had a buggy with Vernor engines stowed. I promptly decoupled the rover, got good old Jebediah to EVA onto the rover, and used the rover's rocket engines (Yes, I put rocket engines onto rovers: 2 Twitchs to be exact) to  wedge the rover under the nose of the rocket just before it was about to slide over the crater rim. After turning the  Vernors to maximum thrust, I used RCS translation to lift up the ship and get it upright. After deploying habitation modules, doing science, etc, I got back to the ship and, with dangerously low fuel levels, lifted off. When I got into Mun orbit, I noticed a problem - I had no electric charge and no monopropellant. I effectively had no control over the ship. I used short bursts of my gimballing engines to correct my attitude, and eventually got myself a Kerbin atmosphere collision. Reentry, I decoupled everything and let the heat shield do its thing. That touchdown felt amazing, but nobody came to congratulate me No ticker tape parade or anything. Oh well!

Nice job! You should definitely put that in this thread:

 

Edited November 9, 2020 by RealKerbal3x
Random white space

[Zamolxes77]

I became obsessed with early SSTO's and spaceplanes. Here is a spaceplane made with tier 3 parts (tier 4 on wiki), the ones with basic Aviation:

It uses basic wheels which explode at 1200 Kelvin. Solution, you have to enter atmosphere inverted, wheels "up" so to speak, so you break with the top of your plane instead of the bottom. Is balanced very well, very easy to fly and land. Despite my best efforts, front wheel explodes even when inverted, so I added 2 radiators attached to front cockpit and slided back, to help with cockpit heat dissipation during reentry. It seems to do the trick. While it can land with 1/4 of  the  fuel  for orbital engine,  more is not recommended, basic wheels are very, very weak so they might explode. Make sure you empty the Terrier engine tank to 1/4 or less,  before attempting a landing.

Once in LKO, you have 1100 dV, which is enough for a Mun flyby, or easily perform 2 rescues and take your kerbals sightseeing. Unfortunately it cannot dock as that tech is not discovered yet.

The booster is quite expensive (~30K), as the plane weighs more than 7 tons, and booster is designed to be a remote piloted SSTO itself, using Reliant engines:

On the upside, is easy to recover and fly, despite not having SAS. I added 3 inline reaction wheels and plenty of batteries and a Sputnik probe for remote pilot control. Lands on chutes, if deorbited correctly is easy to land in KSC vicinity, for 95% + recovery price.

Has 9 tail fins on the bottom to offset CoL of the Spaceplane closer to booster CoM, to prevent instability during launch. If piloted correctly during launch, is quite easy to get into orbit.

If you don't need that much dV in orbit, tank can be easily swapped for a FT-L200 tank, dropping plane weight to 5 tons, which significantly simplifies the booster:

Edited November 12, 2020 by Zamolxes77
Images

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

6 hours ago, Goaty1208 said:

What mods did you use? Are you using 1.10.1?

Most of what you see is from one or another of RoverDude's "Umbra Space Industry" mods, especially the MKS colonization mod. The life support domes are from USI-LS, the spacebus is a Karibou rover, the yellow crane on it and the other yellow objects are from the Konstruction mod.

The other parts mod I have is the one used to build this lander:

The little inflatable dome off the side is a USI part, but the rest comes from @SuicidalInsanity 's "Project Orion" mod. Originally I had just wanted to make a flying saucer for my little green beings  to invade this new world:

 

But they ruined the effect by making their entrance in the most Kerbal fashion possible:

Other mods are basically just the usual suspects, KIS/KAS, Kerbal Alarm clock, Mechjeb, ect. I'm on the most recent 1.10 build, the only tweak needed is to delete a minor part CFG file in the MKS mod.

[Goaty1208]

1 hour ago, Kerbals_of_Steel said:

Most of what you see is from one or another of RoverDude's "Umbra Space Industry" mods, especially the MKS colonization mod. The life support domes are from USI-LS, the spacebus is a Karibou rover, the yellow crane on it and the other yellow objects are from the Konstruction mod.

The other parts mod I have is the one used to build this lander:

The little inflatable dome off the side is a USI part, but the rest comes from @SuicidalInsanity 's "Project Orion" mod. Originally I had just wanted to make a flying saucer for my little green beings  to invade this new world:

 

But they ruined the effect by making their entrance in the most Kerbal fashion possible:

Other mods are basically just the usual suspects, KIS/KAS, Kerbal Alarm clock, Mechjeb, ect. I'm on the most recent 1.10 build, the only tweak needed is to delete a minor part CFG file in the MKS mod.

Ok. I tried MKS but it didn't work for my pc, so I mixed planet base and EL

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

13 minutes ago, Goaty1208 said:

Ok. I tried MKS but it didn't work for my pc, so I mixed planet base and EL

If you want to give it another shot, after you've got everything in the Game Data folder, just do a search for "Light_Globe.cfg" and rename the cfg extension to something else. That's all it took to get MKS working for me. There is supposedly a big update coming for MKS Soon^TM but that will get you by until then

[PaperAviator]

I managed to get to the mun (for the first time!) in this very normal looking rocket;

 

I only started taking screenshots when I got an encounter with the mun and realized this mission had a chance of succeeding

 

Keeping the craft slow and getting to the bright side:

Spoiler

Landing tumble, flag planting, takeoff (the special landing legs for my special piloting skills were the most heavily tested part of this mission):

Spoiler

I managed to get the vertical speed down but it was still drifting to the side leading to a cartwheel and the loss of two out of three solar panels (there were originally only supposed to be two but one just showed up(??) on the craft somehow)

Going back home:

Spoiler

everything related to delta v was more or less a shot in the dark

[Goaty1208]

1 hour ago, Kerbals_of_Steel said:

If you want to give it another shot, after you've got everything in the Game Data folder, just do a search for "Light_Globe.cfg" and rename the cfg extension to something else. That's all it took to get MKS working for me. There is supposedly a big update coming for MKS Soon^TM but that will get you by until then

Oh, Light_Globe.cfg was what didn't load, thanks! Still I prefer this new mod I have anyways.

45 minutes ago, PaperAviator said:

I managed to get to the mun (for the first time!) in this very normal looking rocket;

 

I only started taking screenshots when I got an encounter with the mun and realized this mission had a chance of succeeding

 

Keeping the craft slow and getting to the bright side:

  Reveal hidden contents

Landing tumble, flag planting, takeoff (the special landing legs for my special piloting skills were the most heavily tested part of this mission):

  Reveal hidden contents

I managed to get the vertical speed down but it was still drifting to the side leading to a cartwheel and the loss of two out of three solar panels (there were originally only supposed to be two but one just showed up(??) on the craft somehow)

Going back home:

  Reveal hidden contents

everything related to delta v was more or less a shot in the dark

Cool! In what mode?

[PaperAviator]

1 hour ago, Goaty1208 said:

Cool! In what mode?

Sandbox mode 

 

[Altaille]

I discovered something today. If you have multiple asteroids connected together (same ship) and are drilling, your drill does not necessary take ressources from the rock it is "physically" into. It looks like it can decide to extract ore from a rock connected to the other end of the station. Problem is when your drill refuse to work because one of the small decoration asteroid is empty   Decoration asteroid might looks like a strange idea, but some mod contracts require to do stations with multiple rocks.

I'd be curious to know if someone else have experienced this.

 

 

[Zosma Procyon]

I've arrived at a design for a twin boom flying Eve base that I both really like and flies very well.

My first prototypes were all cooler looking swept wing designs, but the wing sweep put the center of lift/pressure way behind the center of mass. As a result the maneuvering characteristics weren't good. In fact they could barely climb in Kerbin's atmosphere, and the "water" liftoff velocity on Eve was almost 40 m/s. This wing design, along with two full fuel tanks at the end of the tail booms, put the centers in pretty much a perfect position. You might also notice that the wing design I arrived at is pretty similar to that wing of my muse for this aircraft, the P-38 Lightning. Kelly Johnson knew his stuff. This is still a prototype, and the launch version will not look this clean. I have to add accoutrements (first time I think I have ever written the word "accoutrements") and accessories make it easier for the crew to operate on Eve.

Because Eve's atmosphere is annoying thick, and this aircraft has to launch from Kerbin inside a fairing with a maximum radius of 9m, the wings had to fold. Early on I had a "lightbulb moment" when I realized the wings didn't have to fold as flat as possible. The first set of hinges have a minimum angle of 20 degrees. And even with the cool tail fins, this airplane is only 15.6 meters across at its widest point. So while I still have to use the largest size fairing, it can be measurably more narrow.

Here it is during a test flight on Eve. I love the "Set Position" cheat. It takes the guesswork out of designing vehicles that have to function in alien environments.

And here it is from underneath.

Update: I'm adding another cargo bay section.

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by Zosma Procyon

[Goaty1208]

3 hours ago, PaperAviator said:

Sandbox mode 

 

Oh, so it is the first first time. Congrats!!

[wisdomsavingthrow]

 

Worked on my (Re)stock-alike SLS, which I've found works perfectly in my 1.7x scale Kerbol system - it can put an Orion-alike capsule onto a Munar trajectory, just like the real thing.

[Zamolxes77]

It took me another 8 hours, but I finally made a plane SSTO using Juno's and a Reliant. It's gonna take a bit to tweak it for tier 3 parts (I want to see if I can use basic wheels). Takes 2 passengers into orbit, unfortunately, despite my best efforts, only has enough dV to come back down once in LKO:

Maybe if I tweak burning points and amount of Fuel/Oxidizer will get more useful dV up in orbit.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Zamolxes77
Images

[eatU4myT]

I tried to build a high altitude supersonic plane to get round Kerbin quickly to complete a contract on the other side of the planet from KSC.  I'm not good with planes.  I over-engineered it to the point where it was going about Mach 4 at about 20k altitude, with absolutely no control authority, and then exploded and burned.  But that got me thinking... I've never tried making a spaceplane...

I thought I'd start with a mk3, to avoid the burning-up issue.

There were several iterations (although it only took two to get to orbit)

Of course I then realised that I had successfully made a plane that could just barely make it to orbit with nothing in the cargo hold... 

After a few more attempts it can now carry a full Jumbo 64 in the hold

I read about the radial-out trick for re-entry somewhere on the forum, it certainly looks good!

Did I mention I'm not good with planes?  It took a lot of crashing lithobraking before I got the stall speed low enough that it didn't hit the ground going too fast to survive, or stall out a few hundred meters up and then just drop like a brick.

But, finally, I have a mk3 spaceplane that can carry 4 Kerbals and a Jumbo 64 (or various other cargo/crew cabin combinations) to LKO and back, and a stall speed of 65m/s which is enough to let me wobble back to the runway.

It has about 500m/s left once it gets to LKO, so it can't do a lot else yet, though I guess if it refuels from the fuel it carries up then it can almost certainly do a Mun trip to take Kerbals to a station there - not that I have a station there, obviously...  One thing at a time!

Edited November 10, 2020 by eatU4myT
words are hard

[Zamolxes77]

8 minutes ago, eatU4myT said:

But, finally, I have a mk3 spaceplane that can carry 4 Kerbals and a Jumbo 64 (or various other cargo/crew cabin combinations) to LKO and back, and a stall speed of 65m/s which is enough to let me wobble back to the runway.

Next stop, a mk3 plane SSTO that goes from KSC all the way to land on the Mun ! With room for 3,000 ore to bring it back for contracts !

 

 

[Guest]

Been working on it, can you tell it's purpose yet?

[Apocalyptapig]

I'm designing an SSTO rn. My second, actually - I'm planning on calling it the "Falkon." Used some feedback from my first SSTO, like the overkill engines, to make this one better.

[Popestar]

It's not so much about what I did today as it is what I have to do tomorrow.

I've landed on the Mun once, and I have this contract to land a tourist there.  So I build a bigger ship to hold a pilot and a tourist so I can fly there and back...and I crash landed.  Multiple times.  I realize that I have to go back to the tutorial and replay it so I can figure out what I'm doing wrong in the landing.  My guess is that due to increased weight I need to start with a higher Pe and give myself more time to slow down.  But, back to the tutorial first to make sure I'm doing things right before increasing Pe just to make sure.

[eatU4myT]

3 hours ago, Popestar said:

...bigger ship... ... increased weight...

Check that the new bigger heavier ship still has a TWR >1, or no amount of extra time is going to help!

[Zamolxes77]

5 hours ago, eatU4myT said:

Check that the new bigger heavier ship still has a TWR >1, or no amount of extra time is going to help!

Incorrect. That only matters on Kerbin or other planets that have atmosphere.  Or you might want to explain how people are landing and taking off Mun with nuclear engines and TWR of 0.25 ?

[Delay]

11 minutes ago, Zamolxes77 said:

Or you might want to explain how people are landing and taking off Mun with nuclear engines and TWR of 0.25 ?

Remember that weight, unlike mass, is a function of (local) gravity, and the Mun's gravity is considerably less than Kerbin's. So you have the same thrust with a different weight and thus a higher TWR - perhaps one larger than 1.

[jimmymcgoochie]

15 minutes ago, Zamolxes77 said:

Incorrect. That only matters on Kerbin or other planets that have atmosphere.  Or you might want to explain how people are landing and taking off Mun with nuclear engines and TWR of 0.25 ?

Actually, correct- the local TWR has to be above 1 or you won’t be able to overcome gravity. The biggest difference is that local  TWR varies with the local gravity, so a TWR of 0.5 around Kerbin translates to a TWR of ~3 at the Mun due to the Mun/s much lower gravity which reduces the ‘weight’ side.

I think you’re confusing the difference in TWR caused by gravity with that caused by atmospheric pressure, which reduces ISP and therefore the thrust of the engine; vacuum optimised engines like the Terrier and NERV are really inefficient at sea level and produce a small fraction of their total thrust.

 

TWR is thrust/weight, and weight is mass*gravity. Reduce the gravity and you reduce the weight even though mass stays the same (and hence acceleration in m/s/s stays the same too), which increases the ratio of thrust to weight; conversely reducing the thrust (e.g. because of reduced ISP in atmosphere) will directly reduce your TWR regardless of gravity or mass- it doesn’t matter if you’re on Laythe, Kerbin or Eve, though Eve has both the highest atmospheric pressure and the highest gravity so it’s doubly difficult to make a rocket work there.

Edited November 11, 2020 by jimmymcgoochie