What did you do in KSP1 today?

[BadOaks]

My Mun lander came down in a spot with a neat view.

[Misguided Kerbal]

Today, long overdue, I finally got Kerbals to Duna! 

 

First, I launched a simple crew ferry to the already assembled exploration vehicle (EV-2 'Ares')

Then it docked.

And it became this:

And then we departed for Duna

And then we ditched the transfer stage, so it became this:

And so we left Kerbin

And we passed the Mun

And then we arrived at Duna, and slowed down:

Then we ditched the external fuel tanks:

And then we passed Ike:

"I like Ike", said Bob.

 

We circularized:

And we ended up in Low Duna Orbit.

Then Jeb went outside because that's the first thing you do when you get to somewhere.

Then the crew realized that they would be stuck in Orbit for a year.

 

And I realized this sounds much less impressive written down.

Ugh.

 

I also realized that I can't slip a shameless self plug in here without being ignored. So:

Please check it out.

Spoiler

 

[Miguelsgamingch]

Failure Project.

[Selective Genius]

Gene: Mort, can we have a spaceplane at home?

Mort: We have a spaceplane at home.

The spaceplane at home:

[N_Danger]

I made a thing to test a poodle splashed down at Kerbin.

 

I launched a satellite into Polar orbit.

And finally I sent some tourists on a sub orbital joyride.

 

 

[vv3k70r]

I found that I do not need any vernier or monoprop controls for docking - reaction wheels are enough:

And so save mass on subsequent vessels by doing this:

More acurate operation would be neccesary only for asembling vessels from "parts" when I send power pack, fuel and cargo separetly for a longer voyage.

[Maj Solo]

Completed the redirect class D asteroid out of the solarsystem. Started yesterday 1 hour full burn at x4 acceleration. Got tired. Continued today 1 hour burn at x4 acceleration. Got up to 12 800 m(s before the game showed I was on an escape trajectory. Then 40 minutes of hard breaking at x4 acceleration. And 90 day coast back to Kerbin.

For this I got 1,5 million.  Not worth it. I rather land ore on Kerbin 3 times.

It felt more like a "gotcha" mission. One have to be careful what contracts to pick,

[Fraktal]

Did a simple Mun landing-and-return just now to bag the new EVA science in 1.11 and by complete accident I ended up passing within 37.3 km of my space station in 200 km equatorial Kerbin orbit during the return trip.

[BadOaks]

I spent some time blundering around in the scatterer settings and generally made a mess of things, having to revert my changes a few times. Eventually I arrived at something that looks nice but is different enough that I can say I did something. 

I also worked on improving my flagship Astra rocket, which is perfect for chucking small satellites and landers around Kerbin's SOI. Since that's where most of my science is going to be coming from for the foreseeable future it's worth having a good looking launch vehicle. 

The core is a 1.8m stack of two long-burning hydrolox stages. Thrust is augmented with a pair of Thumper SRB's and the initial ascent is *very* vertical. By SRB burnout it's usually around 15 km altitude and ~60-70 degrees pitch. It then pitches over fairly rapidly as the sustainer engine burns for another minute and a half, with MECO happening around 60 km and 20 degrees pitch. In this configuration it's sending a pair of 800 kg relay satellites to the Mun with a total delta V of 7.9 km/s.

The upper stage uses Nertea's "Stromboli" hydrolox engine based on the sea-level optimized RL-10A5.  It'll look a lot better with the vac version once I get it. The tank butt is a ribbed procedural fairing adapter and I added some monoprop tanks as greebles (they actually serve the inset RCS thruster on the sides, so they're functional too!). I'm liking the look of it so far.

[KLazarus]

Today, I learned how to perform rescue missions in 1.11. I rendezvous with the stranded kerbal in a ship storing a jet-pack.

1. Made an encounter with <4km seperation.
2. Switched the navbal mode to target from orbit/surface.
3. At the encounter, burned target retrograde until my relative velocity was 0m/s.
4. Burned target prograde some delta-v.
5. Used rcs to keep my trajectory on the target.
6. Reduced target velocity to 0 m/s as I arrived within 10m of the target.
7. Switched to target using ']'
8. Eva'd the stranded kerbal.
9. Right clicked my space ship.
10. Selected the eva jet pack and dragged to my stranded kerbal.
11. Equipped the jetpack and rcs'd to my ship.
12. Returned the kerbal home; the one of very few I ever recover from catastrophic missions, so why pack parachutes!

All mission are catastrophic, so I will rinse and repeat.

Edited December 20, 2020 by KLazarus
small correction

[silks]

Roleplayed a Kerbal with tunnel vision and visited the Mun.

 

[quazarz]

I captured an asteroid for the first time. I expected it to be bigger... 

[eberkain]

I figured out how to make the props work underwater

Spoiler

 

Edited December 20, 2020 by eberkain

[Hotel26]

Juggernoob just published this interesting work at KerbalX: 5m Sphere

 

It's quite beautiful!!  It has a total fuel capacity of 7,500 kallons of LF.

I've been looking for spherical tanks ever since I first saw them long ago.  Maybe I saw them in this ancient mod: [0.23.5] Spherical and Toroidal Tank Pack

                                                                                                                                           

So, I decided to prototype a large one.  A Jumbo tank is 1.25m radius and 7.5m length giving a volume of 53m³.  Two 5m fairings can be used to construct a 9m radius sphere with volume: 3,054 m³.

The ratio is 53:3,054 so we can scale up the fuel capacity of 2880 LF / 3520 OX of a Jumbo tank to: 165,953 LF / 202832 OX, for a total of 368,785 kallons.
 

Arise, the Egg!:

     

     

I'm not going to publish this (KerbalX), because it's Juggernoob's idea, but please download his creation and, if you like, study the construction technique and make your own large Egg, if you want.

I'm hoping that Juggernoob will approve and upgrade the capacity of his original work!?

[Fair warning: this may turn out to be the fabled Kraken egg, for all I know, so far, so beware it doesn't hatch!!]

                                                                                                                                           

First dock.  From left-to-right: Zephry (lifter) + Mule (tug) on approach to Egg (spherical tank):

  

Visitors will dock with Mule to be supplied with fuel or to supply it.  The Mule may then efficiently de-orbit the suppliers, using its nukes, before returning to station.

 

Edited December 20, 2020 by Hotel26

[Goaty1208]

On 12/17/2020 at 9:23 PM, MR L A said:

are you seeing an issue with gear lights shining through (when not deployed) even when they're meant to be off?

Nope, but I have a flag planting bug

[Miguelsgamingch]

Testing out EVA Construction Feature

Spoiler

I Also Built A Mun Base, But I Dont have an image since i was busy.

 

Edited December 20, 2020 by Miguelsgamingch

[antipro]

 

[N_Danger]

I sent Jeb up into orbit for science and experience.

And I had the first launch of the Tango 3. (Don't tell the paying passengers that.)

One of them was named Billy-Bobmy Kerman.

And a balancing act  was preformed.

 

[pmborg]

Lets go for a walk on the Mun with KSP 1.11+Parallax:

 

Edited December 20, 2020 by pmborg

[Joker58th]

I started a 1.11 mostly stock career.  Here is a early career rover deployment I came up with I'm proud of.

 

 

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey all.

Today I sent a Kargo Kraken to the KSS.

 

Followed shortly by a Krew Kraken

 

ME

 

[quazarz]

I built my first surface outpost! Lots of room for expansion.

 

What it looked like on the launch pad. Four Clydesdales got it off the ground, two mammoths circularized orbit, and also tranferred to Mun, decoupling with enough dV to crash themselves into Mun surface.

This is how the three main components were stacked. I recently found out that you can build on top of a docking port and then "undock" and it acts like a decoupler. Very, very useful for stacking modules this way.

After the mammoth stage decoupled, I assembled the station and it flew the rest of the way to the Mun like this, using 8 "Cub" vernier engines for capturing and landing on Mun. (There was supposed to be 12 engines but there is a crossfeed issue getting out to the lateral ones. the 8 engines still gave TWR of 1.9 in Mun gravity though.) The docking port at the top center was strategically placed so that I would have a control point while this odd craft was in flight.

The station is powered by fuel cells and ISRU/drill module on the surface. The two asymmetrical sides were carefully balanced so that the station still has the COM in the geometrical center. Proud to say that this mission was a success on the first try, but there were a few things I forgot at the VAB, namely radiators, (and a solar panel, since apparently the contract system doesn't consider fuel cells to be power sources...?) which is why I sent the drone that can be seen to the right side in the first image.

[evileye.x]

On 12/20/2020 at 7:45 AM, eberkain said:

I figured out how to make the props work underwater

How?...

[evileye.x]

I build my first jet plane in my second JNSQ  playthrough. Valentina took that bird to visit Pyramids taking off Darude space center

Spoiler

On approach...

Spoiler

Valentina took too sharp turn, lost airspeed and stalled the plane. She managed to pull up right before ground contact, it saved her life ... For now.  Because both engines were lost, she had only 2 days worth of food (Kerbalism) and water to wait for the rescue. (NIBMY mod, recovery possible only 10 km within base).

Spoiler

Any landing you walk away from.... She is still happy to be alive.

Spoiler

Meanwhile, Bob and Bill are discussing rescue options.  Bob suggested to use his science utility vehicle, but Bill has a lot of concerns, how to modify this truck so it can handle water (Pyramids are on island about 65 km from Darude). He is not sure that it is possible in 2 days left without proper engineering and testing. They have prototype of EarlyBird jet here on Darude base, so Bill is thinking he can slap second cockpit and some additional wing to improve stall speed on it in 2 days (Kerbal Construction Time mod).

But... Jeb had "some incident" with Goo Canister (Bureaucracy mod) and forced to take 28 day training, so he is not available for a flight. SAS without a pilot is a technology yet to be researched (Kiwi tech tree mod), so chances for success a pretty damn slim. And if Bill fails, Valentina has no backup...

Spoiler

Flying like never before (and in fact, it is his first flight  ) Bill has successful touchdown just couple of hours before Val ran out of water.  

Spoiler

Joined team taxies the plane to Pyramids 2 km away  to fulfill the mission. Bill still doesn't believe he pulled it off with those hands.

Spoiler

 

Edited December 21, 2020 by evileye.x
referenced KCT

[eberkain]

4 hours ago, evileye.x said:

How?...

I have been posting about my underwater experiments here.