What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Hotel26]

11 hours ago, Dientus said:

I know you've got skillz in building.

Too kind!  I am revisiting Hexapen to attempt a massive drag reduction program, but check it out.  Also my VTOL hangar as these are all V/STOL.  And Boojum, which was a step on the way to swjr-swis' magnificent (but as yet, unpublished) Mujoob...

Don't be afraid of the JV-6 'Vito' part that Boojum employs: it's merely a config from Snark (and see the original post) and very easy and unobtrusive to install...

Edited July 24, 2021 by Hotel26

[Hotel26]

More Fun with STOL as Jerke Kerman (pronounced 'Her-kay' por favor) tests a new Hexapen variant.

 

(OK, look, I'll get bored with STOL too, soon enough, OK.)

Edited July 24, 2021 by Hotel26

[Caerfinon]

First Satellite (See? I do go to space... sometimes )

Lifter is a modified Arrow-1 by Raptor9 on KerbalX. This series of small lifters is very well made. 

Gravity turn courtesy of Throttle Controlled Avionics "To Orbit" function.

The mini package is delivered to orbit. (but somebody forget a battery so while it completed the contract goals, it is now essentially a rock. Oh well.)

 

[The Destroyer]

I put far, far too many aerobees on one rocket.

 

[Dientus]

2 hours ago, Caerfinon said:

First Satellite (See? I do go to space... sometimes )

My vision of you has been shattered!

[jimmymcgoochie]

Exploring the Snarkiverse- I’ve made it to probe landings on the Mun, something that is pretty challenging when the Mun orbits at 60 degrees inclination and in a very eccentric orbit to boot. I’ve also discovered that Waterfall works on just the integrated graphics (good!) and that using the KV-series pods with no fairing is a good way to not go to space (bad).

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

I just made the moon i said i was going to make around Culair.
this is Neptheis, a small moon, that is identical in size to Xaxt, but wildly different geography. while Xaxt is lots of craters, and is almost purely pqs mod generated, Neptheis, is the opposite, it was created only with heightmap and no pqs mods lol. it has two large craters, and a few smaller craters. it is the only moon around Culair, and it orbits far enough from its parent gas giant to not be tidally stretched, however, its orbit (with principia) may precess a bit, as it has some eccentricity and inclination., and it is orbiting the smaller of the binary gas giants, that is, if the entire system doesnt collapse in on itself if principia is added lmao. Neptheis has similar coloring to Xaxt, actually, its similar to Xaxt in several ways, size, color, mass, gravity, etc. its high elevations are yellow-ish, compared to Xaxt's grayish.

Neptheis and its parent gas giant, Culair (greenish giant on the right side), with Collait in the background with its new custom texture (i will use Gaseous Giganticus on it and the other gas giants)

Neptheis is tidally locked, and has an orbital period of just over a Kerbin day.

[JorgeCS]

Hi! It's been a long time I don't post anything... lately I'm finding more and more annoying having to rely on Imgur or any other image posting site to upload the images for the posts. Anyway...

I was working on replicas (sort of) lately. Again, yes. I made a quite flyable C.450 K.450 Koleoptere, and here you have it, working properly with FAR although the only way to achieve Mach>1 is descending:

https://kerbalx.com/myrddin/K450-Koleoptere

[Hotel26]

4 hours ago, JorgeCS said:

although the only way to achieve Mach>1 is descending

A fascinating aircraft.  I ran it in stock 1.11.2 (no FAR) and it clocked M2.22 @ 7km altitude.  Pretty thirsty like that, though.  (I guess you meant dry...)

Edited July 25, 2021 by Hotel26

[GoSlash27]

I just set a new personal best for KSP Caveman speedrunning: 2 days, 55 minutes.

Best,

-Slashy

[JorgeCS]

3 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

A fascinating aircraft.  I ran it in stock 1.11.2 (no FAR) and it clocked M2.22 @ 7km altitude.  Pretty thirsty like that, though.  (I guess you meant dry...)

Mmm... no, M1 descending with FAR and wet mode. I guess as the aerodynamics of this 'plane' are so weird, at least as I built it, FAR is more demanding. Without FAR, pure stock, I saw 805ms @ 13km stable, where the engine is less thirsty  (but still wet mode) 

Did you manage to land it vertically without FAR? So FAR xD I couldn't...

Edited July 25, 2021 by JorgeCS

[BuranAce]

I started my new mega station, the CSL (CASO Space Labratory). It is now able to hold crew, though its far from complete

It will carry between 3 and 8 kerbals regularly. A shuttle will be launched soon to bring up crew, this is just the start of something amazing!

I tried to dock, it failed. the docking port is too wide to fit in the cargo bay, an adaptor will be sent up soon. the shuttle will do its secondary task of launching a CubeSat and doing science before heading home empty handed.

Edited July 25, 2021 by BuranAce

[swjr-swis]

I sat down with a specific nr of things I wanted to do in KSP today, opened the forum, saw a help request... and ended up sending a Crater Crawler to Duna.

Sort of.

[swjr-swis]

10 hours ago, JorgeCS said:

I made a quite flyable C.450 K.450 Koleoptere, and here you have it, working properly with FAR although the only way to achieve Mach>1 is descending:

3 hours ago, JorgeCS said:

Without FAR, pure stock, I saw 805ms @ 13km stable, where the engine is less thirsty  (but still wet mode) 

Did you manage to land it vertically without FAR? So FAR xD I couldn't...

I've seen the aircraft this is based on a few times in the past and always wondered about its dynamics.

Downloaded your version; you got a good rendition of it, very nice. Saw much the same performance as what you and @Hotel26 exchanged. Couldn't land it vertically though.

 

So I tried my hand at it too, to get a feel for the aerodynamics of this type of craft and to see if I could get a landable version. Some of the drag/lift effects were as I expected, but it clearly needs a different approach than regular craft. Stock parts only allow so much, but I got pretty flyable results in the end. Supercruise at mach 1.9, wet mode mach 2.9. And I got it landed!

Negatives: it's not as maneuverable as I'd hoped, and roll stability is not so good. I wonder how the RL original fared on those points.

Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/SWiS-Coleopter-1

More pics: https://imgur.com/a/PmpP6K0

 

 

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

I created Ieros, the icy moon of Hados
Ieros is 497km in radius, with a surface gravity of 0.67g. This moon is pretty chilly, its entirely covered in ice, except for its four deep craters that actually have a little bit of lava in them. It has a thin atmosphere (it gets to high pressure near the lava, the craters are like 7-8km deep). The general lore is that after the impactor initially hit Hados, the debris from the impact went everywhere, most of it fell back into Hados, superheating its atmosphere and creating oceans of lava. However, Ieros wasnt entirely safe, some of the debris impacted the moon, punching holes through its icy crust, most of the impact craters quickly got covered in warm slush as it heated it, however, four were big enough to actually penetrate the ice fully, and create some lava flows. the largest crater on this moon is the south polar crater.. This moon is the largest and most distant of Hados, orbital period is 6 days.
All of the planets in the Estrela Dobre system are large, Oyst is more massive than Jool, Collait-Culair is about half the mass of Jool, Hados is 8 kerbin masses, and the 4th planet will be an ice world that is between the size of Hados and Petrichor (it makes sense for there to be an object in that gap, Hados is nearly twice Petrichor's size).

due to its inclination relative to Hados' rings, it does get some beautiful sights as it orbits

Hados from Ieros' leading hemisphere crater. Ieros had Termania's oceans in this pic, i am currently trying to make the game load the correct, nearly cooled lava textures instead of the templates oceans lol.

More pics from the crater lake! (yes the plane is floating in lava, the terrain is buggy af and its due to kopernicus and squad being glitchy at 0.17ly lol
Sunset on Ieros

well this one is closer to sunset

Sunrise, in this pic, the stars are nearly aligned with the view, so they appear to merge... well... they are KIND OF merging but not merging as they are contact binary lol

Hados gets a little less light than Duna gets, it is about twice as far from the system barycenter as Collait&Culair, and is much too far from the stars for liquid water. Hados and Leros is basically fire and ice, tho Leros fits that better, there is fire and ice on the same world, however, the same is not true for Hados, that planet has no water or ice on its surface lol.

[Hotel26]

5 hours ago, JorgeCS said:

Did you manage to land it vertically without FAR? So FAR xD I couldn't...

Yes.  Approach the target with good speed to adopt a zoom into the vertical.  SAS Radial Out.  If you attempt to side thrust too aggressively once in the hover you will lose the vertical.  I go into a bit of a free fall because the Panther is virtually instant-on and coz TWR.  You can fall at 90 m/s OK^[1]; then use boost for a suicide burn to finish the landing quickly.  It's easily maneuverable in the hover for a spot landing.  The trick is simply going vertical initially -- you need enough kinetic energy to zoom steeply/long enough that you have canceled your horizontal component.

[1] that descent speed might have been after my Kerbals cut the annular ring away using oxy-acetylene.  After that surgery, it's super-fast.    I really like your landing arrangement though.  I've built a series of vertical landers and none had such a nice arrangement.  I'm about to augment the wings, though, so that the pilot can board without a ladder.  I'll show you the result when done.  (Hint: it won't look like a coleoptere.  The first thing I did was try to put some AoI into that ring.  Would probably need to have the control surfaces flat as well, rather than beautifully curved.)

I know this screenshot is "off-topic" but it's a super-fast plane (M2.1 @ sea-level (dry) and M2.89 boosted) and my kerbals love it!

(To be clear, I did land your original.  I'll make a vid if you can't duplicate the technique.)

Edited July 25, 2021 by Hotel26

[Angelo Kerman]

I worked out my navigation lights for when I have to dock in the dark:

[Hotel26]

Thank you, @JorgeCS.  Sometimes you see a post in KerbalX that makes you say, "hey!!"  Your K.450 Koleoptere was one of those.

And you know that "mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery"...

I had actually worked recently on a couple of attempts at a vertical lander for personal transport.  Your landing arrangement is perfect for it!

So, here is Torque Wrench II:

 

[ColdJ]

Today I went powered paragliding.

[BuranAce]

I finally took it up to add the Adaptors to the CSL

It will now allow 2 shuttles to be docked to the station at  once! more to come!

[JorgeCS]

3 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

Thank you, @JorgeCS.  Sometimes you see a post in KerbalX that makes you say, "hey!!"  Your K.450 Koleoptere was one of those.

And you know that "mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery"...

I had actually worked recently on a couple of attempts at a vertical lander for personal transport.  Your landing arrangement is perfect for it!

So, here is Torque Wrench II:

 

Wow thanks!!  and hell yeah, the Wrench works very good, I really like the arrangement of the cockpit/airbrake hehehe! and I see you have the same problem I have, reaching 2km height when preparing to land... but I guess that can be improved  NO! Not challenging you at all  

I want to submit Soon(tm) another replica... but it's been difficult to make it work properly as the wings of the original have a bit of a weird shape... to be continued...  

[BuranAce]

I know I have already posted, but here I am posting again .

Now that I have sent up the adaptors to fit in the cargo bay, i sent up the first crew to the CSL

Standing by for launch

'

Cannuck has achieved orbit without problem

Getting ready to dock

Finally docked! the crew will stay up there for about a year conducting science.

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

My invasion of Duna is about to commence in earnest. To begin, a pair of full featured landers with micro-rovers are being put on the poles both for science and to act as ground based relays:

4  parachutes aren't quite enough to slow it down for landing, so there are airbags tucked under the heatshield:

Time to deploy the fairing/rover ramp and get this popsicle stand open for business:

All sorts of interesting things for the rovers to look for:

Despite not yet having an actual relay sat on station yet, still have an excellent Ki-Fi link back to KSC, though it is the bendiest of "bent-pipe" data streams. The North Pole rover has been put on standby for the moment, but the South Pole rover landed close enough to the edge of the icepack that the decision has been made to try the ~40km trek to the border, for science and glory!!!

 

KoS

[panzer1b]

Made a 3rd version of my AKS "Skytower", with even more size compared to the old one, and with the new legs, its actually suprisingly stableish (given the thing weighs 400 tons)...

Its an absolute PITA to land this thing (6 of the shuttle engines and 9 vernors and it still barely moves at all and if you ever exceed like 5 degrees off level it will flip and explode) and its just to bloody heavy its not even funny, but hey, its there, and i can always teleport it to ground if im lazy (that feature is amazing as it saves so much time setting up cities)...

Its also the first iteration of this that im 100% happy with the upper level, i managed to give it a more sloped styling rather then the abrupt cap of the older versions with just some fuel tank sticking out and antennas.

But yeah screenshots like this truly make this game shine, even if the building has absolutely no purpose besides cinematics (its already 400 parts, and the planned variant with a internal hangar bay will likey exceed 600)...

[Guest]

Space Selfie from Gemini

 

Finally a post from me in this thread from what I did TODAY lol 

Edited June 3, 2022 by JebNotFound