What did you do in KSP1 today?

[jimmymcgoochie]

A long and arduous trip from Eve to Moho. Despite leaving with a mildly preposterous 33km/s of delta-V I still ran out during the final rendezvous around Eve and had to send out a rescue mission to bring the wayward lander back to the mothership. With barely a day's worth of oxygen left too!

[Fulgora]

A few month ago (about half a year actually) I posted a screenshot of me launching two space shuttles at once - so let me follow that up with a video of launching **spoiler alert** three shuttles at once to orbit

I believe that this is the first launch to orbit with three separate crafts at once - if anyone of the gurus around here could point me to something that proves this is not a worlds-first in KSP please let me know. Not knowing whether I truly achieved a worlds-first in KSP or not is killing me inside

 

Anyways - without further ado, my shameless crosspost from the STS Shuttle Challenge thread:

 

I hope you like it - it took quite some time in terms of engineering, execution and post production.

 

Onto the next mission, see ya'll in 2022 i guess (going by my production speed recently)

[N_Danger]

I unlocked a SCAN sat module that will scan for anomalies so using a new medium lift vehicle I put a satellite up around Kerbin, Mun and Minmus to find them.

And then I had taken a contract to land on Edna and I had a satellite around Dak. It wasn't designed to land but what the heck I sent it over.

2 km AGL

100 meters

10 meters. ~1 m/s decent rate

Touchdown! We are balanced by SAS and the two solar panels touching the surface.

And now back to orbit.

 

[TheSaint]

I decided that if I'm going to use large-scale spaceplanes I should be constructing large-scale space stations.

[Caerfinon]

The Ground Game...

Sometimes you just have to drive to where the science is...

 

[king of nowhere]

I completed my next large mothership (5000 tons, 800 parts, not including launcher and smaller ships) and i tested its launch. And it almost worked the first time!

Considering how much time it takes to load this monstruosity, the less tests, the better.

18 mammoths, 36 clydesdales

at booster separation the clydesdales start colliding with each other and exploding, but this happens behind the ship, which continues unschated

now with 18 mammoths and 60 nervs. For vacuum operations there are 54 wolfhounds, giving enough thrust to land on Mun and other smaller bodies, but not enough to orbit kerbin.

now in vacuum, let's point the ship to a side and get rid of nose cones.

turns out, i did not point the ship away from prograde enough, and now the nose cones are still in my path as i accelerate again

the ship is broken. the test, however, is successful.

 

I told the game to revert to the VAB, and in the time it took to write this post, it's still loading...

[Philae_Rosetta2021]

I was trying to make a small kerbalized version of the delta 4 heavy, nicknamed the Kelta 4 light. 5 seconds after lift-off, the ship veered too far north and tipped over. The resulting explosions tore off the lower stages, leaving a payload fairing with a remote guidance unit inside plus a clamp-o-tron docking port. I released the fairing, with my craft facing head down about to smash into the ground at over 60m/s. Then, as it landed the clamp-o-tron absorbed the shock of impact and the remote guidance unit plus 1000 units of electric charge battery bank were saved. So now I know what to do i that ever happens again!

BTW The clamp-o-tron didn't survive the landing 

[Single stage to ocean]

I discovered that the 1.25 meter probe core generates so much lift you can land at 20m/s by using it like a wing. 

[purpleivan]

After my post today to the "KSP Loading...: Getting ready to celebrate" thread, I was reminiscing about the Kerbin-Sorta Circumnavigation trip I made a couple of years ago.

So, only one thing for it... do it again!

Well... not quite. I'll be doing it by jet powered plane instead of jet powered boat (which will make it a lot quicker to complete) and as a twist, I'll do it in reverse. So roughly West to East, instead of East to West, but of course as I'll be following the coastline, that's a very rough description of the direction I'll be travelling in.

As for the craft for the voyage, it will be this... the Flashback.

Nothing unusual about this plane I hear you say. No rover on the back or chairs and table on the wings... well that's correct, it's a pretty vanilla craft.

However it will be flying along thousands of kilometres of coastline, requiring at a few fuel stops along the way. But I guess I'll sort out that problem when I first run low on fuel, most likely with a reappearance of the Juice Goose and perhaps a surprise or two falling from orbit.

All this and more (well... maybe just this) in a thread coming soon.

Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation Rewind.

[efimnn118]

Do a station

[efimnn118]

I'm make a space station

[efimnn118]

Thanks for this

[Vanamonde]

46 minutes ago, efimnn118 said:

I'm make a space station

Well, let's see it.

[MinimalMinmus]

I built the Space Casino from Tourism+

 

 

In case you're wondering the asteroids are class A, B, C and E. Oh, and the class A is a magic boulder, it took me 30 tries...

 

Now I can farm money with 2.5 million profit a flight. Time to explore!

 

If you're curious I made a detailed "tour" of the station on Reddit, here's the post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/nz18a5/i_have_completed_the_tourism_space_casino/

Edited June 13, 2021 by MinimalMinmus

[Gamera Obscura]

I was trying to dock two probes around the Mun. After using the main engines to get them less than 100m away, I went to use RCS but thought it wasn't working because the probes were no longer in the network (on the dark side of the Mun, and relatively early on in this playthrough). In hindsight, I think I just forgot the proper keybinding for the direction I was trying to go. Anyway, I had activated RCS on both crafts and had them keep pointing at each other's docking ports. I was just going to wait until they got to other side of the Mun so they'd get network access again. However, their orbits ended up getting them close enough to each other that they docked entirely on their own. It was pretty fun sitting back and watching that happen because it was the first time I tried docking anything in about 3 years. 

[N_Danger]

I had a launch window open up for Duna and I need to practice multiple launches in the same window. I also need to scan and map out Duna and Ike for future missions. In addition both carry a better relay antenna. 

First to launch is the Ike mission.

Trans Duna burn.

The next day we launch the Duna mission.

 The Ike mission arrives first and conducts a burn in Duna's SOI for capture at Ike.

Collecting high orbit science over Ike.

Capture burn.

And on station.

4 days later the Duna Mission arrives.

And on station passing over Duna's south pole.

 

 

[Caerfinon]

Hinterland Adventure Tour

Flying a charter to the Uberdam River Region... In a Helicopter no less!

Reached the spot for the fishing trip with daylight to burn

Let's set this bird down and see if we can't get some trout for supper

Now finish the trip with a flight to Uberdam Airfield and tell tall tales about the one that got away at the local.

Flight made in a modified Sextus AP     available on KerbalX

[Lisias]

5 hours ago, purpleivan said:

 

Nothing unusual about this plane I hear you say. No rover on the back or chairs and table on the wings... well that's correct, it's a pretty vanilla craft.

Shove a nose cone on the trailing end of the lateral fuel tanks. This plane is pretty powerful (excelent trust/weight ratio!), you will wave a bit of drag and get better performance by "terminating" the tanks' endings. Hit F-12 and see for yourself.

 

5 hours ago, purpleivan said:

Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation Rewind.

I'm reworking my older design to see what I can get with them on a 2.5X Kerbin!

[jimmymcgoochie]

A pretty uninteresting trip from Eve to Jool, parking up in a nice high orbit (similar altitude to Bop but less eccentric) to visit the five moons in due course. First up will be Tylo in just 10 days, and in a position where it’s right at the edge of Jool’s outer radiation belt too so minimal exposure for whoever I send down there.

[Cavscout74]

My biggest event today was inserting the first satellite into Moho orbit in JNSQ, followed by the Duna fleet's course corrections, placing a new larger polar relay into Kerbin orbit and launching a combo relay & lander to Edna under nuclear power.  Then I noticed a Jool window fast approaching & decided enough is enough.  I started work on some probes for Jool & its moons - mostly tinkered with a Jool Diver design, and flew a test mission to see if the basic design works.

First deceleration burn approaching Moho:

Spoiler

Jettisoning the transfer stage - it's done its job, and the probe can enter an elliptical orbit using only 700 of its 1300 m/s dV

Orbital insertion

 

The new relay features a 1.2T relay antenna

Edna relay/lander pre-dawn launch - the sun poked over the horizon as it gained altitude

Spoiler

Another night side departure, first the upper stage chemical rocket:

Then the NERV takes over for the rest of the trip:

Jooldiver test:  The drop capsule consists of two 1.875m structural tubes with heat shields on both ends.  Once they are no longer needed, the upper tube is blown off and the descent probe deploys a drogue chute, then blows off the bottom tube & heatshield.  A monoprop fuel cell and 3000 ec battery should provide enough power to transmit all science collected on the way to crush depth

The suborbital shot worked as intended, nothing collided with anything important during staging, so this basic design is a go. 

I cheated the descent probe to a landing on shore to get a good view of it - probe core, NF long battery, as much science as I could fit, several antennas, MP fuel cell & a drogue chute.  Ugly but it works.   Edit:  Looking at this pic again, I think I could neaten it up using Universal Storage's 4-slot core - it could hold most of the science experiments & a monoprop tank, leaving the rest of the core looking neater. 

 

Edited June 14, 2021 by Cavscout74

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I've been continuing work on the approach/landing guidance for my eventual full shuttle EDL script.  It now has proper distance-to-runway calculation (including the curved path instead of just crow-flies distance), better glideslope and speed controls, and an improved user-interface with all sorts of useful numbers to feast the eyes on. 

Sometimes the touchdown is buttery smooth.  Other times... not so much, it touches the runway and then bounces back in the air (see previous post).  I think the occasional hop after touchdown is just a bug I have to live with, maybe related to a different bug that happens sometimes in which things submerge in the runway.  

 

I decided to start logging data to a .txt file to help get a better idea of what's going on, and it's helped quite a bit.   

Some parts of the script seem to be working perfectly.  For example, two PID controllers (well, 4 including kOS's cooked steering ones) work in tandem to control the pitch of the vehicle.   I have a particular target glideslope I want to approach the runway at.  I multiply the resulting glide ratio (tan(glideslope)) by the distance to the runway to get a current desired altitude, and along with the actual current altitude that goes into the first PID controller which outputs a desired descent angle which will be a bit shallower if the vehicle is below the actual target glideslope line and steeper if it's above it.  This target descent angle and the actual current descent angle is put into a second PID which outputs a pitch angle command for the steering.   This system is working great, with the shuttle (blue) quickly locking onto the glideslope (red dashes) and staying there the whole way down.  The altitude error is less than two meters by the time it hits the landing flare, and I expect with better tuning I could make it be on the order of centimeters, but really who needs that?   

 

Other things are a much less than perfect.   In particular, the heading control seems to have a mind of its own.    The vehicle is supposed to fly from where it starts in more or less a straight line (red dashes) to a heading alignment circle (yellow dots), turn around it, and go straight in for the final approach.  However, instead of doing this, it makes this great big gradual curve (blue) basically all the way in to the final approach phase which seems to have no relation at all to the HACs. 

For now I guess this isn't really much of an issue.  It works, the shuttle reaches the runway just fine.  But things might get more interesting when I try bringing the shuttle in from higher altitudes/speeds and from positions requiring a turn angle greater than 90 degrees.   Having it accurately track to the HACs, while perhaps less graceful than the wide turns the script decided to do, would be useful for making simple energy/altitude calculations needed for interface with the eventual reentry guidance that will come before it.  Eg:  After entry, the script will need to quickly decide based on its energy (altitude and airspeed) and position which of the four HACs (two at each end of the runway) it should fly to, whether it should make more than one turn around the chosen HAC, etc. to land safely.  Straight lines and circles are easy.  Weird wide curves are not.

Anyways, hope I haven't bored you to death with the technical jargon. 

Edited June 14, 2021 by EpicSpaceTroll139
More detailed references to plots and fixed typos

[BadOaks]

Selene 8, sample return mission to Minmus' surface.

Ascent footage:

Edited June 14, 2021 by BadOaks

[Hotel26]

Call me old-fashioned but electric props don't cut the mustard for me.  That eery silence, apart from the whistling wind...  and I find myself heading for the EXIT door, strapping my chute on...  (I reckon it's the training from my service days, still kicking in.)

I published Alpine 2 this evening.  I loved the result: a black-and-white movie Grand Old Dame of the Skies relic but her climb performance is not great.

                                                                        

So I won't be the first Kerbal to have invented this:

The turbo-prop.  An R121 turboshaft on the front (super-quiet) and a Wheesley on the back (racket!: just what the doctor ordered!!).

Haven't tried this, but In cruise, the props can be feathered and then just enough electric power applied to keep them turning.  Conversely, the props can be driven with the Whistles on idle for some good ole down-home barn-stormin'.

 

Edited June 14, 2021 by Hotel26

[Dr. Kerbal]

I went to Eeloo with a Satun V (modified of course. The only thing modified is the service moduel and that just fillled to the brim with liqiud fuel and a nuke. The lander and stages are all very similar recreations of the Saturn V. I tried my best). Now all that is left is going home. But reentry speed from Eeloo to Kerbin for me is around 10,000 m/s. So I am going to have to slow down like a LOT! I will use a series of Jool and Kerbin and Eve gravity assists next. 

[djr5899]

I started a new sandbox game today.  There are members of this forum that have way more playing time than my 1300 hours in the game, and yet, I'd certainly submit my application to Guiness for the most numbers of KSP games started/saved/deleted.  Seems like my process...start a game, whether career or sandbox, hit some type of roadblock, and then just start over.  It's no wonder I've still never visited all the moons/planets in the game.

I restarted this time because my career save that I had been working on, which started out as a speed run to finish the tech tree, had what seemed to be an impossible error to overcome thanks to a bug in the game.  I stranded Bill and Bob Kerman on Duna.  They had fuel, but not enough to reach orbit.  They also had a good 2000 science points that was really important for my initial goal of completing the tech tree.  So, I built an unmanned craft to land on Duna, and, use a robot arm to connect docking ports, and transfer fuel to Bob & Bill's craft.  Seemed easy enough...

Unfortunately, KSP had other ideas in mind.  While I was able to dock the craft and transfer fuel, I was not able to properly undock.  When attempting to undock, the game throws an NRE, the robot arm pseudo-breaks, and the worst of all...the craft don't technically separate.  If I try to fly Bob & Bill's craft to orbit with their new fuel, the camera stays with the manned portion on the ground.  And, if I manage to change camera focus to Bob & Bill's craft, I'm quick to realize that even though their craft is the only one flying, KSP still thinks the craft are together, meaning I'm carrying more than twice the weight...and I still don't have enough Delta-V to reach orbit because of this.

So, anyways...that's been my last 10 hours of KSP...fighting this issue.  Moving onto a sandbox save and, in honor of the final release...I am making sure I FINALLY, after all these years, visit every planet/moon within this save.