What did you do in KSP1 today?

[CaturLifeLive]

I Launch Space Shuttle STS 7 Challenger with Palapa B1 Satellite payload, and put that satellite in GEO orbit. I do it like in real life, 6d in space for space shuttle and then land to earth, and put Palapa B1 (HS-376) satellite in to GEO orbit.

That satellite that I made also has the same size (length, width, height and mass) as in the real life.

 

Spoiler

I try to make it as close as possible like in real life because I want to study and understand the history of satellites from my country, Indonesia.

[Guest]

I flew the Manta to Laythe. 

I was actually planning to ditch the carrier prior to landing, but I did an oopsie and burned all my oxidant on the way, so Manta had no way to power her rotors. That means I had to fly the whole contraption all the way home. Fortunately there were no problems there, just overshot a bit -- about a hundred klicks -- but had enough in the tanks to fly home on the jets.

The carrier is a bit overengineered actually, she had almost 4000 m/s in the tanks when hitting LKO. I'm thinking of sending this set to Eve next, it ought to survive entry just by burning off everything it has left in the upper atmosphere. I might want to make a solar-powered Manta variant though, would be even lighter and well suited for Eve.

[vv3k70r]

Somehow first deep space hauler become a space port on Kerbins orbit:

Engineer Bill took selfie with his new mine on Mun. After disasembling the old one made of many docket linked vessels this one is one piece [this mine is mine!]:

Engines check:

Mun becoming dusty after industrie is settled, if You didnt get there as turist in early space age You will never more see it clean like oceans without plastic and oil:

Pilots and scientist leaving da Mun with few last unmaned vessels, science lab and mine. Mun become fuel station only.

Heading home with ore delivery (Moho window soon):

[Lewie]

@Apelsin those look great!!

Also...what mod adds that skybox? It's rather gorgeous! 

[jimmymcgoochie]

After several months in this career, a series of steep learning curves and a few conspicuous craters where designs didn't quite go to plan, I landed a Kerbal on the Moon. No, not the Mun, the actual Moon!

By complete coincidence, I landed on the Moon on the Fourth of July. The Fourth of July, 1960 that is:

Absolutely nothing went wrong whatsoever, nope, nothing at all, nothing like me forgetting to switch the scrubbers on so Diana here ended up with a suit CO2 level of 50% when she tried the first EVA, no, nothing like that...  

Edited February 23, 2021 by jimmymcgoochie

[Apelsin]

 

Was bored today, threw together a quick scale comparison of the 3 fission pulse powered interplanetary motherships I built so far in my modded career save. Numbered in order of construction/tech level.

And some additional in-game pics of these:

(1) - Orion ITV, sent a base and spaceplane to Duna

(2) Medusa ITV from this post:

(3) Verne ITV from my previous post in this thread

 

6 hours ago, Lewie said:

@Apelsin those look great!!

Also...what mod adds that skybox? It's rather gorgeous! 

Thx! That's Pood's calm nebula skybox, pretty sure it's on CKAN.

Edited February 24, 2021 by Apelsin

[Guest]

What's that you say!

A guide to easter eggs in KSP comes out friday you say!

[GuessingEveryDay]

1 hour ago, Lewie said:

Also...what mod adds that skybox? It's rather gorgeous! 

I believe that's the stock skybox.

[Cavscout74]

My second manned Mun mission returned home safely and I also completed the first orbital rescue of this career.  Not sure which of those missions this was from, but the orbital stage was nearly stationary north of the capsule during the beginning of reentry, so I got to watch the disintegration of the spent stage.  Here, just the engine & engine plate remains and it finally started decelerating faster than the pod

I also placed twin relays around Mun (I know you need at least 3, but 2 is almost as good when you have other relays to bounce off of) and got another pair headed for Minmus

 

 

Edited February 24, 2021 by Cavscout74

[kylelander]

Made a "perserverance recreation" (All Stock}

Centaur and the "Audacity" rover en route to duna

Arriving at mars duna after course correction

Atmospheric Entry

Parachute Deployment

Heat Shield Separation

Skycrane Sepration
Deceleration!

Audacity has landed, we are safe on duna

Edited February 24, 2021 by kylelander

[Guest]

That's very cool!

Funny thing with watching all the incredibly cool stuff that's going on in space right now – the Chinese probes on the Mun Moon, Perseverance, the other Duna Mars missions,  and so on and so forth – I keep getting this "Hey, I've built that!" reaction. Even if it's easymode, KSP really is amazingly lifelike!

[Le Lynx]

In my new video, i have land on the Mun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRNVIhSXAYg

[kerbonara]

Recently I decided to go back to KSP and check what's new after a long time so I started a new career with Nertea mods and TAC-LS. While exploring Kerbin SOI I decided to create a mobile surface base using the breaking ground robotics for the first time.

I used the labs to set up the lab in a way which allows it to move between the "transport configuration" and  the "static configuration".  It's not much but its honest work ...

[Guest]

I've been to vallhenge before. but with the terrain changes it feels so much more different …

[capi3101]

2 hours ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

I've been to vallhenge before. but with the terrain changes it feels so much more different …

A koan has the Buddha-nature if and only if it doesn't contain a Kraken.

(Curious how many of you out there will get the reference...).

[dprostock]

EVE Event

[Caerfinon]

Sadly... today consisted in 0.01% KSP content for me.

[Cavscout74]

7 hours ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

I've been to vallhenge before. but with the terrain changes it feels so much more different …

 

I haven't been out there since the changes, either.  That is quite a sight!!

3 hours ago, Caerfinon said:

Sadly... today consisted in 0.01% KSP content for me.

That is a sad day!!

 

Finally managed to get some KSP time added to my day:

My Minmus relays arrived & were put in place:

Followed by my Minmus unmanned sample return mission, which dodged some peaks in the highlands to a safe landing

Built a rescue version of my multi-purpose 2-seater for LKO - it strips out the extra life support, science gear, and anything else not needed for a short stay in LKO, and adds a swing-out light to assist with night-side rendezvous'     I can actually make the launcher smaller as well, because I still had the second stage with fuel remaining for the rescue

Tinkered with a small base design, and found a very nice view when I tested it, but got very annoyed with it moving around on the surface worse than I've ever seen in KSP (and that's really saying something)

Edited February 25, 2021 by Cavscout74
Finally got some >0.01% KSP into my day

[AFF]

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited February 25, 2021 by AFF

[Francois424]

I've been working on my new career game for a while now, which had very little mods. I mean I have the usual "KAC", and "Science Here and Now", but none of my usual parts mods. 
What is unique with this playthru is that I used a new mod called "Science Parameter Modifier" which allowed me to set at most, all science to 1x multiplier.  So even on Mun, Minmus, or in space (in planetary transfert trip) no science gives more than 1x.
So that means that a Gravioli report is always worth the same basic amount everywhere (except on Kerbin where regular vanilla rules apply).  Even with that, Kerbin, Mun, Minmus and space low/high around them was enough to unlock all 160xp nodes, with a few 300 ones, and 2x 500.

So what has happened in my game recently ?
After doing basic Kerbin science to unlock the basics, I started with Minmus :
 

Bob couldn't resist taking a picture on top of the large boulder near the landing site...

The Minmus rover, a stock monoprop ship, had more than enough TRW for not only biome hopping, but getting back into orbit as well !

Very shy of the usual 1-2k science (if not more), this is still a good mission, thanks to the Science restriction mod.

 

 

This paved the way to a Mün mission, or at the very least one with better parts and everything that I like to have for a Mün rover. 
It might not seem like it, but the Mün is one of the harder body to rove on and can be deceivably unforgiving, and you do not often notice it until you hit the ground at 20 horizontal + 25 vertical speed and everything explodes !

 

I opted for a "crane lander" style using those metallic struts and four of thethe Mk55 thuds.  There was a bit of a spinning issue with the lander, but everything went smoothly.

My 100% stock Mün rover for this version.  It had a few issues, like missing a generator for the night and the engines could not pivot 90 degrees, but it performed very well nonetheless !

The engines might not be able to pivot, but it had great hopping capabilities and thankfully two of it's engines gave well enough thrust for the job.  Very practical for the polar regions in this picture.

Jedediah took this amazing shot near the end of the mission in the final hop !

After a very interesting roving/hopping session on the Mün (roughly 12 hours of RL playtime), the crew made it to the return vehicle and made it hope safely.

This is the tech tree after the Mün mission science spending.  I still needed a bit more to be comfortable for an interplanetary mission, but this was a nice breakthru!

 

 

So in order to gather a bit of science, roughly about 1200 worth, I mostly went space high/low for Kerbin, Minmus, and Mün with all of the new experiments I had unlocked.
Unfortunately, this was still not enough... So I had to spend time designing something I thought could wait until Eve, or maybe Laythe.  But I had to bite the bullet and do it now.
I just could NOT get the stock propellers to work well.  After 8 painful and frustrating RL hours, I gave out on the idea and modded (very sinful, I know) a stock engine (J33 Wheesly) into a fully electric ducted fan. 
Extremely expensive on the electric charge, but well worth it.  The plane is quirky and has a tendency to flip, but is compact and I believe could fit into the larger protective shell for Eve re-entry later.

In order to tame the beast, notice the amount of ASAS and tail fins all over the thing.  Eventually it performed admirably and I scoured Kerbin for science. I am planning to reuse this plane on Eve, maybe Laythe if the solar influx problem can be fixed.

 

That provided just enough science (had 43xp left over) to prepare for the next target.  Now I took a few days off, and I was not sure of where I wanted to go.  Duna, Eve and Moho where all possible destinations.
Since I did not want to begin work on the interplanetary mothership until the entire tech tree was unlocked, I decided to not go on Moho.  Eve was more appealing thanks to my new plane... Then in RL something happened - we landed on Mars !
So the decision was made and I built myself a Duna rover and a return ship.  Now I always wanted to use those Martian parts from the Ares mod.  Thankfully I had put in a request for a modder's help back in KSP 1.8 , which someone answered... and by now the mod was fixed!  Thanks @bcink.
I built the thing, tho I didn't have all the parts from the new mod unlocked, so I would have to go (mostly) stock again.  I sent 2 missions to Duna...

The first to arrive (and thankfully so) by about 60 days, was the return vehicle with Valentina as pilot.  Notice the Martian lander legs and my favorite capsule of all time.  Also a drill on the right and a small converter on the left will mean a full tank when the time to leave comes, yay !

Then the Duna Rover arrived, here from Jeb's Point of view, we see the very nice cocpit view, with the deployed parachutes for the descent . . .

. . . However, the parachutes are never quite enough on Duna, so we flipped the engine into their 90° position and we slowed from 11m/s to about 3m/s just before touchdown.

Successfully landed in Duna's Midland Sea, and will be heading north-northwest until we reach the poles, stopping on biomes alongst the way.

About 50km on the journey, Bill noticed two strange rock outcroppings, and took a sample of both. Blueberries first, the the Duna rock itself where Bob took a picture.

After about 130km NNW from the landing site, the rover's computer issued this warning : "it's getting dark and my fuel tanks are low".
Sure enough, Agawise Kerman (the second engineer on the mission) checked it out and the sun was getting very low, meaning only half our panels were getting sunlight, and fuel was dipping below 30%
So we dropped only one of the drill, raised the radiator mast, and decided to take a nap until the sun disappeared on the horizon. We'll need the fuel for the generator to get thru the night.

 

More to come in the future, assuming the Kraken leaves me alone this time (it ended 2 of my other GrandTour tries).
Hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading !

Edited February 26, 2021 by Francois424

[Cavscout74]

What did I do in KSP today?  Failed launch abort tests.  Multiple times.   First time, I left the aeroshell set to clamshell and it proved too strong for the "Pea" pod to survive the abort, just scattered pieces

Ok, stuff happens, this is KSP.   This is exactly why I test the LES before sticking kerbals in the pod.  Test 2:  LES fired, shell broke up, pod decoupled but the pod stayed "sort-of" stuck to the base.  It seemed like a weak rubber band was connecting them.  The pod still has RCS (on top) and could maneuver slightly and still couldn't quite get free.

Ok, maybe the LES tower wasn't quite strong enough.  I don't know how, the tower I used can pull a Mk 2 pod plus service bay full of batteries, monoprop and life support supplies away at around 4 g's, so it should be able to pull this little pod even better.  But lets just scrap the tower and build a LES from sepratrons.  How about 6..... that gives just over 4 g's so lets try 8:

No change.  When I did finally rock the pod from from the base, it fell very slowly, bumping against the rocket body, again it felt like  a rubber band was trying to pull it back.

Ok, one last test, from the pad with the launch clamps holding the rocket in place to try to figure out what is going on

Lots of cursing followed.  Currently setting up a 1.10 JNSQ install in place of the 1.11 install to see if behavior is different.   My current guess is the Pea is draggier than previous versions and despite being capable of high g's, the LES can't accelerate over the higher drag when aborting at any significant velocity.  And I have used a very similar setup in previous versions that worked well, so that's the only reason I can think of to create this behavior

Edited February 26, 2021 by Cavscout74

[JadeOfMaar]

Spoiler

 

[theJesuit]

31 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

  Hide contents

 

Funkilicious

[18Watt]

Completed a circumnavigation of Pol, for the Elcano challenge.  I've now completed Moho, Kerbin, Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Dres , Laythe, and Pol.  Looks like Tylo will be next, but that is going to take a long time.

 

[vv3k70r]

On 2/24/2021 at 8:07 PM, kerbonara said:

I used the labs to set up the lab in a way which allows it to move between the "transport configuration" and  the "static configuration".

Its a demob mobile rocket launcher used as lab carrier only for delivery to the Minmus. Tell the thruth - You are arming feudals hiding on the dark side of Minmus! [because on dark side of da Mun somone else is hiding]

On 2/24/2021 at 8:21 PM, The Doodling Astronaut said:

I've been to vallhenge before. but with the terrain changes it feels so much more different …

This sphere on horizon looks like an insult against those stright angles and flat planes.

 

 

@AFF Your space plane looks awesome!