What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Martian Emigrant]

Today my fearless crew docked with a class E asteroid on a collision course with Kerbin.

 

 

Before Grabbing it they had over 3000 m/s (I think. I didn't really paid attention) left. Now they have 135 m/s.

To save Kerbin but mostly to fulfill a contract the periapsis was raised to 45 km to aerobrake the asteroid.

 

 

Success!

 

Now the crew will raise the periapsis again to clear the atmosphere and go home.

The B-Team will get going to get that thing to the Mun. There is a contract to fulfill here.

 

ME

 

 

[N_Danger]

I sent my first interplanetary probe on this playthrough to Duna.

Spoiler

Booster separation..

 

..followed shortly thereafter by faring separation.

The second stage finishes putting the probe to orbit.

We spot a good omen in the sky after the Trans Duna injection burn.

 

 

We settle into cruise mode with our lucky comet still in sight.

And the probe arrives at Duna to collect some science. 

 

[IncompetentSpacer]

7 hours ago, Lisias said:

I buzzed the tower!!! 

Seeing the pilot image, I can imagine Jebediah thinking, "They did not see that one coming!"

[dudnees]

For ages I was working on building a tall, portable, folding tower to install on The Mun, with spectacular lack of success.

But this became an entertaining diversion:

 

 

[Lisias]

Don't ask, I'm not sure how this happened neither....

Quote

Bill: _ Jeb?
Jeb: _ Humm?
Bill: _ What happened, Jeb?
Jeb: _ Dunno...
Bill: _ Where we are?
Jeb: _ Not sure...
Bill: _ That huge explosion was the VAB?
Jeb: _ Maybe...
Bob: _ AGAIN ???
Bill: _ Do you think they will deduct it from our salaries?
Bob: _ AGAIN ???
Jeb: _ Do you still have one?

And this is how Jebediah, William and Robert spent the rest of the day while Gene and Gus tried to find a way to recover the capsule from the edge of the Astronaut Complex building without killing them - so they could kill them propperly later...

Again.

 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

32 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Jebediah, William and Robert

I never thought about the full names lol

[Ben J. Kerman]

I attempted to make a Liebherr LTM 11200-9.1 replica (The world's largest mobile crane) . As you might be able to guess from my signature, I call it the Kiebherr KTM 11200-9.1. Yesterday I made a LRT rough terrain crane (KRT 1090-2.1) in KSP. Check out my YouTube channel -I am Ben Huntington- to see other cranes I made. Not all cranes and trucks I have made in KSP are on that channel (Not even close), but I will be adding more in the future and it shows you some of what I make.

  

[Ben J. Kerman]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Gene and Gus tried to find a way to recover the capsule from the edge of the Astronaut Complex building without killing them

Use a crane to get them down! I make my cranes using Kerbal Attachment System, the Breaking Ground DLC, and for some I use the structural panels from Making History. If I can ever get it downloaded, I will use Kerbal Foundries to make lattice boom crawler cranes, telescopic crawler cranes, crawler excavators, and other things with tracks. Click here to view thread. 

[theonegalen]

New transport / small airliner!





B O A T 

Now if I can just stop the boat from flipping into the air when it goes too fast and hits a wave just right...

[Apelsin]

Part two of my first manned mission to Sarnus and Tekto from OPM in my main career save. See here for the first part.

In orbit & descent:

Spoiler

Upon arriving to Tekto first order of buisness was to intercept and repair 3 relay satelites deployed on my prior (uncrewed) mission from ~10 years ago.  I forgot to add the antennae back then 

Thanks to the 1.11 update's EVA construction this could now finally be fixed by one of my engineers. I'm surethe radiation from those engines is nothing to worry about 

The process was repeated two more times, and the relay network was now up and running. Did some orbital science as well - love how the engineer looks like he just realized that part was supposed to stay attatched to his ship 

With the orbital stuff done it was now time for four crew members to board the Puffin nuclear SSTO and head on down to the surface:

View from the crew cabin during the descent:

After a relatively gentle atmospheric entry it was time to find a suitable first landing site:

Touching down and planting the first flag:

Tekto exploration 1/2:

Spoiler

The landing ocurred uphill close to an anomaly spotted during the last mission's orbital scan. To get closer a takeoff wasn't necessary, and the Puffin rolled down the slope past the mountain range in the background:

*Queue spooky Kubrik music* - apparently this green monolith had already been visited, so no new techtree node got unlocked.

Group photo:

Now heading north past the (methane?) sea coast

A landing on the beach was attempted, but due to highly skilled pilotingᵀᴹ the plane ended up floating in the sea. Jeb took the opportunity to go for a swim

Approaching the north pole - heightmapping weirdness here resulted in a neat terrain feature, sort of the opposite of the Mohole.  Should it be called "Tektopeak"?

I attempted a "landing" on it's side, using the plane's stupidly high TWR in the moon's low gravity. No luck - it kept flipping over.

No worries though, there was a backup plan. After landig close to the rocky base of the peak I got an amusingly relevant EVA repport message:

So, the backup plan: the low gravity of Tekto actually allows kerbals to (slowly) fly up via the EVA jetpack. Jeb began his attempt to fly up to the top and triumphantly plant a flag:

The top was in sight, but the fuel was quickly running out

He managed to grab on to the side of the slope and begin climbing (via me spamming F), but the slope was too steep. Soon enough he was tumbling down, looking a little too okay with the precarious situation. 

Thankfully I did equip him with a parachute, so he returned to the base safely and in style

A flag at the base of the peak had to suffice for now

Tekto exploration 2/2:

Spoiler

Cruising south. The Pr. Eeloo engine from NFA is rediculously powerfull for Tekto's small mass and thick atmosphere. Even at 1/6th of the throttle the plane kept accelerating out of the atmosphere, so the nose had to keep getting pitched down. At full throttle and low altitude the thing would literally tear itself to shreds due to the violent heating and high Gs.

Approaching this expedition's final destination - the south pole. This is by far the coolest landscape in the Stock+OPM system imo. Looks like something you'd see in a vapourwave render:

Flying at low altitude here feels more like swimming in soup, a very unique experience. The Puffin had a stall speed of under 18m/s despite its puny wings, and gliding downward without applying throttle would take ages.

After the data from this biome was collected, it was time to head back up to orbit:

Approaching the Manta mothership and transferring crew:

Return:

Spoiler

The Puffin was gonna stay on Tekto for future reuse, so it was once again deployed down. This time it was uncrewed and accompanied by an LH2 refinery that would allow it to refuel in the future:

Meanwhile in orbit, the Manta shed the extra weight of the leftover payload section and began the homeward burn. The mass reduction increased its dV from 50 to over 70k. 

Burn completed, the return voyage ended up taking 278 days alltogether. A high efficiency Hohmann transfer would take 5+ years, but these late techtree fission engines from FFT let me not worry about that.

After completing the breaking burn with 30k dV remaining, the crew were returned home by the newest generation transport SSTO, the Lark. This is the first OPT tech spaceplane in my career save, and definely not the last. Really like how it turned out, bith aesthetically and specs-wise: crew capacity of 19 and 2k dV in orbit.       Home sweet home

The Manta was decomissionned until further notice and sent to minmus orbit to join the 3 other retired ships (you can see pics of those and a comparison here)

^The bright white dot under the front of the Manta is the Orion. I'm planning to park all retired ships here, so there'll be a whole constellation of these dots

The mission yielded over 8k science, but to keep things interesting I will only research one of the five remaining tech tree nodes - mid-level fusion. The extra science will eventually be used to buy antimatter. For each subsequent node I'll prbably do separate big missions like this one. I'm currently thinking of ideas for these and would't mind suggestions 

Relevant mod list:

Spoiler

Parts:  all up-to-date Nertea mods (SSPXr, NFT, FFT, etc), mkII expansion, OPT.

Visual: Pood's calm nebula skybox, Planetshine, DOE, Waterfall, TextureReplacer, TU recolor depot

Other: OPM, TrackingStationEvolved, PersistentThrust, SystemHeat

 

Edited March 28, 2021 by Apelsin

[Guest]

With three modules in, two more to go before crew can fly. 

But while the next modules prepare for flight. The crew on ground has already gotten prepared for flight training. With their new suits and mission "Comet Crew 1" has started! The first Comet Crew has gone with this patch

But yes the suits look kinda cool

[Caerfinon]

6 hours ago, theonegalen said:

New transport / small airliner!

The tail logo is the best!

[Lisias]

What? Buzzing the tower?

Spoiler

 

Scrap that... 

THIS is buzzing the tower!!!

Additional screenshots (they survived the stunt!!!), craft file and quicksave on my site.

Fly (un)safe!!!

[hendrack]

Rovers.

 

 

[loch.ness]

Got a Skylab inspired station up in a ~250km orbit.  Double checked my visuals after it was launched and noticed that small things are off - the solar wings are a bit low down and somehow are both too big and too small at the same time.  Airlock should have been rotated 90 degrees so that I could get the right profile.

That said, I'm still happy with it because this is still a functional base for this sandbox game.  The Telescope has a Scansat resource scanner and the lab has an alitemetry scanner.  They are in an equatorial orbit now meaning I'll likely need to deorbit this one and put Skylab back up in an Polar orbit (I accidentally launched it with Val onboard).

 

With the giant relay dish, some local comuitrons, and the whole thing being a single launch station - I'm hoping to get one of these (unmanned) on its way to the moon, Venus and Mars.  I'll want to see how the power generation is at mars as I'm not sure it has enough solar to run things there.  I know that I'll need a much more robust station when I send something out to Jupiter and Saturn's moons - but right now this is a prototype for the station I'll be sending to lunar orbit to help coordinate the colonies there - and the station and colonies there are prototypes for similar expansions on Mars later on.

[NHunter]

Finally got around to deploying the stage 1 of Drozhe outpost -- it's pretty much just EL for the base proper, though given the slow speed at which it processes ore into rocket parts and then assembles them into stuff, it will be quite awhile before I have a more permanent stage 2 outpost up and running.

[Cavscout74]

Got a few things done in my soon-to-be-abandoned JSNQ career, including the first space station around Kerbin, a better Mun impactor for the passive seismometer (56% of total science in one hit compared to 0.5% last time) and the first crew launched in a Mk1-3, heading for the station.  

Skylab-1 in orbit.  It features a full set of scientific instruments, a small (1.875m) lab plus quarters for 3, and both a standard and junior size clamp-o-tron for docking.    I should have found a better place for the dish antennas - they clip with the solar panels.  That will probably be the engineer's first job when the crew arrives.

Mun Heavy Impactor heading for its target....

Impact was about 2400m from Mun Outpost Alpha, with a velocity over 1000 m/s

Girroc MPV-1 entering orbit.  Launch was poorly timed, so it will be just over 8 hours before the crew performs their first maneuver to rendezvous with the station

Oh, and a reworked design to be able to use the Pomegranate pod on Mun returns - uses a 1.875m heatshield for the initial reentry, then will stage the pod away after going through the worst of the heating.  Currently passing its Ap, just past Mun's orbit, and starting back for its reentry test.

I also cheated a new Mun Outpost Alpha into position (and destroyed the old one) to fix the problem of it losing all its surface attached parts

[jimmymcgoochie]

Flew a complicated mission to the Moon, involving an engine ignition failure (it only has 3 to begin with and it's my landing engine so kinda important), an autonomous rover showing up to carry one of the crew to the top of a nearby crater wall for a contract, an attempt to make Breaking Ground deployable science and the 1.11 EVA experiment kit work in RO/RP-1 (the latter doesn't work at all, the BG stuff all deploys and starts up fine but has no signal due to Real Antennas). Finally left the surface, flew into orbit nice and efficiently, got cheap plane change and intercept burns, rendezvoused, docked, transferred crew from lander to orbiter/SM, all is good. Then I tried to be fancy, and sent the engineer out on EVA to grab the fuel cells from the lander and bolt them to the service module and 

HUGE EXPLOSIONS!

I should probably have saved before trying that... Fortunately, there's a save from before I did the intercept burn with the node set, so it took only a few minutes to get back to where it was before, but I think I'll leave those fuel cells be and just head for home without them.

[AMA PR0]

My new but developing space program successfully launched and orbited its very first satellite in LKO.

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

Made my first prop powered plane, the Kookaburra STOL for science gathering:

It flies pretty well, and the STOL capabilities are great, but the blown control surfaces are subject to lots of flutter, and the turboshaft engines are absurdly inefficient. Still, I really wanted to finish deploying science sites around the planet as well as gathering up the stray science from the new USI parts. The solution was to re-engine the base airframe as the Jet Kookaburra:

Spoiler

In its final turbofan powered form, it has a 3 crew capacity, all the sciences, and enough cargo space for at least 3 full deployed science sites (4 if you start stashing parts under the seats and in the overhead bins of the crew cabin). It also has hardpoints under the wings for drop tanks or even micro cargo rovers for placing science sites in otherwise inaccessible locations.

Spoiler

 

Thanks to the efforts of Jeb, Milford and Leafal, I now have deployed science sites in about half of all available biomes including both poles. During the next lag in orbital contracts I will load "Ol' Kook" up with drop tanks and cover the rest of them.

Spoiler

 

Edited March 29, 2021 by Kerbals_of_Steel

[N_Danger]

Today I was clearing out the the contacts coming due and sent a satellite to the Mun

And one to polar orbit. Shown here raising the AP until it is eccentric enough

 

 

Edited March 29, 2021 by N_Danger
Grammar is hard

[OnlyLightMatters]

[hendrack]

Never advanced enough in career bothered with nuclear reactors in KSP until now.

Komrade Bill is inspecting a test reactor: "3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible."

Edited March 29, 2021 by hendrack

[Kerminator K-100]

On 3/27/2021 at 8:17 PM, Spaceman.Spiff said:

I never thought about the full names lol

I was going to put that one time but thought people would think it was too weird. 

[Maria Sirona]

Didn't play KSP today, but yesterday i sent the KSS Awesomeness to the Mun!