What did you do in KSP1 today?

[GDJ]

Built and flew this little jet.
Flies nice.

[Aelfhe1m]

9 September 1958: First flight of the Sirocco orbital launch vehicle carrying the Venti 1 satellite. Unfortunately the second stage failed to ignite after a guidance program error resulted in an attempt to light it prematurely after insufficient ullage.

Spoiler

19 November 1958: The second Sirocco flight took advantage of lessons learned and a successful second stage ignition inserted the Venti 2 satellite into a 235 km x 5,382 km orbit.

Spoiler

25 January 1959: Third Sirocco launch placed the first solar powered Venti 3 satellite into orbit. Then on 1st April, Venti 4 was launched into a polar orbit.

Spoiler

 10 July 1959: Sylvain Roux piloted the maiden flight of the XA-201 Thunderbird rocketplane. Inefficiencies in the flight profile meant he just failed to reach the Karman Line, topping out at 97,667m altitude before gliding back to land at the cape. There was a period of concern when the spoilers sheared off when Sylvain deployed them a little early. Despite touching down a little faster than intended because of this, the drag chutes deployed correctly and brought the Thunderbird to a safe stop on the runway. A post-flight inspection determined that despite the total loss of both spoilers, the damage to the airframe was otherwise minimal and the plane was cleared to resume flight tests after relatively minor repairs.

Spoiler

30 July 1959: Later that month, Charlotte Cook took the Thunderbird for a second flight. A better flight profile allowed her to easily exceed the Karman Line, reaching a staggering 132.4 km peak altitude before returning for an incident free landing at the Cape.

Spoiler

25 October 1959: The seventh Sirocco launch placed a biological capsule into a 230 km orbit before successfully returning the data to Earth in a re-entry capsule.

Spoiler

15 November 1959: Reginald Morrison piloted the third flight of the Thunderbird. Collecting useful science on hypersonic flight during a sustained 1.6 km/s flight above 65 km altitude. Unfortunately, he overshot his approach and ran off the end of the runway. The plane did not suffer any significant damage however and Reginald emerged from his misadventure unscathed.

Spoiler

16 December 1959: A night launch from a Sirocco rocket placed the Simoon 1 probe into a 280 km parking orbit around Earth. 26 minutes later the GCRC booster fired launching the probe onto a trans-lunar trajectory. A minor error in timing the start of the burn unfortunately resulted in a slightly wider fly-past of The Moon than had initially been intended but some useful science was still transmitted back to Earth.

Spoiler

12 February 1960: Another night launch placed the Simoon 2, sister probe to the unsuccessful Simoon 1, into Earth orbit. The TLI burn went without a hitch this time, sending the probe to fly-past The Moon at less than 3,400 km before escaping Earth's gravity entirely. Mission controllers monitoring its trajectory estimate that it will return to Earth's near vicinity in just over 4 and a half years time.

Spoiler

 

[miklkit]

Exploring Duna now.  Heading out.

Another successful landing.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Dealt with repeated game crashes, some of which required a PC reboot, before I eventually had to copy+paste my entire save, delete the persistent file, rename an old save to persistent.exe and then it finally worked.

Worth it though.

In your face, Apollo 11.

[bobcook]

4 hours ago, miklkit said:

Another successful landing.

Might be a difficult return, but I'm sure you're up to it. 

[Neptunium_69]

Continued developing the Aurora 5(Warning, Very big).

[Cavscout74]

This is from the last few days, but my Duna crew returned to orbit, then on to an Ike landing before returning to Duna orbit and waiting the last few weeks for the return window

Spoiler

Driving out to drop off the crew at the Duna Lander

Landed on Ike next to the mobile mining rover.  Val piloted this landing, leaving Jeb in orbit with the crew vehicle

Returning to Ike orbit - from here, they transferred to the crew vehicle & headed back to the Duna station for the last few weeks before the return window.  They are currently en route back to Kerbin

My Eve crew also safely returned to Kerbin - although they only orbited Eve rather than landing, designed as a low cost & (relatively) low risk mission to bring funds & prestige to the space program.  Despite overshooting KSP by several hundred kilometers, there was plenty of fuel remaining in the Lightning II spaceplane to return to a safe landing.  Plenty as in <500 m/s on the dV readout with the Rapiers set to airbreathing mode & the NERV shut down.

My Moho crew also headed for home after their short trip to the surface.

And a large remote rover with scanning arm was parachuted onto Laythe safely.  "Large" may be a bit of an exaggeration, maybe "less small" would be more accurate. 

Finally, tested an electric aircraft for use on Duna and possibly Eve or Laythe.  Low stall speed (~20 m/s), can cruise on 2 of the 4 engines to reduce power drain, top speed in excess of 140 m/s, seats two plus has a set of scientific gear (temp, press, seismic, grav & atmo).  Wing solar panels plus a fuel cell keep the batteries charged.  All I need now is to remember to add a probe core somewhere - because i forgot about that till just now.

Spoiler

 

Also tested a launcher to take it to Duna - the upper stage has over 3000 m/s remaining in a 150km orbit, so plenty for the trip to Duna.  This was just a sandbox test & was reverted afterward - which is good because I would've been pretty ticked off if I got it to Duna in my career and discovered after staging the upper stage that I had no probe core on the plane

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Cavscout74

[Pipcard]

[JAXA+] 2031-10-03 - A DRTS-X satellite in areostationary orbit

2031-10-11 - The Kagutsuchi Mars Habitat Module lands in Kasei Valles

Edited June 7, 2022 by Pipcard

[Mazlem]

After reading about baking brownies with just sunlight, my kerbals decided to send a lab down there to investigate:

 

After dipping below 1Gm for some extra science, they circularized at 1.5Gm

[Cavscout74]

I got my Moho crew back home today and since the ship used for that mission was low on fuel, I went ahead and launched a hastily assembled fuel station.  Currently featuring 44000 units of liquid fuel, a few hundred units of monoprop and space for 5 kerbals plus 5 docking positions.  Probably was the heaviest launch I've made in a while.  A 5m first stage with 5 mainsails was only giving a 0.7 twr so 4 of the mainsails were swapped out with 8 vectors plus 4 Clydesdale SRB's and 4 Thumper SRB's.  The 2nd & 3rd stages used 4 then 2 Rhino's and I was left with a whole 70-some m/s dV remaining in a 200km orbit.

Filling the EV-1 Avalon after getting the station up.  Which took almost a quarter of the station's fuel and half it's monoprop.  It also made me realize I need to add a section with snacks, fertilizer & water to the station as the Avalon needs refills on those as well.

Spoiler

 

First pair of Clydesdale's being dropped

Waiting for the first customer. 

I also got my Pol lander & relay into position, but that actually required some cheating because, well, something happened.  On my Tylo fly-by, I was able to get close to a Pol intercept but I couldn't quite get a good inclination from it, so after clearing Tylo I set up another maneuver node.  I got to where the map showed an intercept, but it was hitting the edge of Pol's SoI and didn't want to get any closer.  I figured I'll do this maneuver, then setup a later one to fine tune to the approach - except a third node, no matter which way I pulled the direction sliders, didn't change the Pol Pe.  I knew something was up, but the map was still showing the intercept in like 5 days, so I set an alarm and went off to do other stuff for a few days.  Came back a few hours before the alarm and found the probe nowhere near Pol, and just a few days from exiting Jool's SoI.  At that point, I just cheated it into a Pol orbit and called it good.  Apparently some form of kraken woke up and noticed this probe.   I like this basic setup - the transfer stage stays in orbit with a good size relay antenna while the lander gets staged away to do it's thing.

[obnox twin]

I was testing a vehicle to put a telescope to spot asteriods around dres but the save I was using decided to not load/break

[Hotel26]

5 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

no matter which way I pulled the direction sliders, didn't change the Pol Pe

What KSP version are you in?

If you ever see this again, try an immediate quick save followed by a reload.  It may also be related to a problem in which you warp and see a target jump position.  (I have seen this in 1.11.2.)

[Cavscout74]

30 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

What KSP version are you in?

If you ever see this again, try an immediate quick save followed by a reload.  It may also be related to a problem in which you warp and see a target jump position.  (I have seen this in 1.11.2.)

Thanks for the tip.   It was in 1.8.1.  

Edited June 8, 2022 by Cavscout74

[planeticegaming]

Made my first manned orbital rocket on my Science playthrough

one of the SRB's didn't ignite on launch though, so that launch didn't go great, lucky for the LES otherwise Madrid Kerman wouldn't be able to do another launch a day after that 

 

 

Edited June 8, 2022 by planeticegaming

[Guest]

Went to the Moon in KSRSS. Screenshots:

[Ben J. Kerman]

A little marketing. Also I wanted to use the Scania font I found online. 

Yeah, It's not great, but I did all the editing with Paint 3D. I took a picture of each truck head-on, then used 'magic select' in Paint 3D to remove the background. The background in the picture I just took looking up at the night sky. I seem to have a nasty habit of always taking pictures in KSP at night. I guess technically I didn't do much in KSP.

I also did a little bit more to the KAN KGX

https://u.cubeupload.com/Bjh223/screenshot336.png

https://u.cubeupload.com/Bjh223/screenshot338.png

https://u.cubeupload.com/Bjh223/screenshot339.png

Edited June 8, 2022 by Ben J. Kerman
KGX photos

[Grimmas]

I asked Gene to hook me up with a mission, but he gave me a tape and said it will self-destruct in five seconds...

[Fenris]

Didn't even think to take screenshots, no loss though, they were really ugly rockets

I made my first rescue attempt in my new game. I had a couple of missions on Minmus that were going to pay out a lot all combined. So I made an oversized lander since I wanted to do a bunch of science as well. I made it even larger by adding a hitch hiker, I figured I'd grab all my Kerbals for a Minmus outing to grab some experience for them and I needed a scientist and engineer anyway for the portable science stuff. I wasn't worried, I've landed on Minmus hundreds of times, sometimes with bases that took oceans of fuel to get off of Kerbin.

So I get there, set my landing spot on one of the flats ...... and land with no problem. Everything is going great so far, no damage, remembered all my science stuff, and more delta v than needed to get home again. Anyone guess the problem yet? So I fiddle around with setting up the science stuff (kept getting Bill and Bob mixed up and had to redeploy several items), love that stuff. I think it is one of the coolest things in the game. I took a long break so it is all new to me. When I was done having fun I had Jeb jump back into the lander, I then took a look at the staging .... no parachutes lol.

Now, I'm not too hardcore, but I do play "whatever happens, happens", so no reverting the flight unless it's because of a bug. I initially thought I'd just do a rescue attempt and write off the mission as a loss, then I remembered that engineers can add parts to rockets on EVA. I thought I'd make a probe with the required parts for Bill to place on the lander. But my probes still suck and I was worried I'd be out of com range and the mission would fail. So I quickly made a rescue vehicle, threw some drogue and side mounted parachutes in the inventory and hired a new pilot and engineer for the mission. When approaching the target site with the rescue vehicle I realized how much I over rely on pilots being able to hold retrograde so all I have to do is fiddle with the throttle and maybe make some minor course corrections. So now I'm fiddling with the throttle and trying to maneuver the rocket at the same time. First touchdown is 400 meters away ... no good. Got the second one to 150 meters away, same on the third, forth and fifth lol, luckily I packed way too much delta v. So by now I'm a bit perturbed to say the least, so I launch up to about 10k, spin around so my nose is facing towards the lander that needs the chutes, and when my velocity is pretty low I go full throttle towards my landing spot. When the prograde marker shows I'm heading there I cut the engines, spin around, pray a bit, and execute a decent suicide burn and stick the landing ... sort of. I was too close to the lander and knocked off 3 solar panels and also couldn't help noticing that even though I was at a full stop I was rocking around slightly. My rescue vehicle was sitting on top of Val's head.

Anyway, adding on the missing chutes went easily enough, and for some reason I'd also packed some EVA repair kits in the initial lander so Bill was able to repair the solar panels. In the end, both crews made it home safely (even Val, though she complained about a splitting headache), so a successful, if sloppy rescue. My next self made mission is going to be to make a "tour bus" and take a bunch of Kerbals into orbit around Kerbin, the Mun, with an orbit and landing on Minmus as well, to get them enough experience to have some basic training. I'll remember the chutes this time ...... probably.

[Krazy1]

Just landed on Ike in the dark on a 20 deg. hill without real landing legs... using KER or I would have crashed for sure.  I slid down the hill for 30 sec. pulsing the RCS before it shopped. Kerbin in the background:

After fueling I'll top off the tanks in orbit at Ike Station before attempting to go directly to Moho. I'm not sure if I'll have enough dV to land because I'll take ore with me and the dV reading will be under 6 km/s but I'll need 7+ km/s to land. I may try to do some math but I'll wait until after I leave to see if I'll make it... "this is the way".

2 hours ago, Fenris said:

execute a decent suicide burn and stick the landing ... sort of.

Val might appreciate if you tried using the KER landing bullseye marker. On the other hand... she has a helmet.  Yeah, I remember doing a rescue mission for a rescue mission because I forgot parachutes. 

[Superluminal Gremlin]

1 hour ago, Krazy1 said:

KER landing bullseye marker.

where do you find this??

sounds interesting

oh and im just planning a new series with FFT, SSPX, Heat control and NFE. with visuals, of course.

and sigma with a 2.5x scale kerbin. jolly good fun

[Rutabaga22]

I caught a blood moon, I don't know if this is one of my visual mods, or an Easter egg, but I think this is cool!

[BadOaks]

I started up one of my old career saves after a long hiatus and made an Orion/Apollo analogue in preparation for a crewed Mun program. There's been no real flights yet, just KRASH simulations for development. This here was a test of the trans-munar injection stage which I thought looked pretty cool.

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by BadOaks

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

Played around with my mod, updated it a bunch, tried flying around the system, got slapped by a star like my ship was a baseball and got yeeted into intergalactic space...

overall a completely normal day in ksp

Edited June 10, 2022 by JcoolTheShipbuilder

[Fenris]

I discovered that I'm like some kind of docking expert or something . But seriously, closing in on 1,800 hours and I'd never docked before. I tried multiple times years ago with rage inducing results, usually including never getting close to the target, screaming by the target at a high rate of speed, or getting RCS controls mixed up and quitting out of frustration. So for years I just played without docking. This made for some interesting launches when I wanted a space station or large rocket lol. Maybe it was from watching a lot of YouTube videos on KSP or just a better understanding of the game, but I was quite surprised (and happy) to see that docking isn't really that hard.

So I'd accidentally accepted a mission to dock over Minmus and figured I might as well give this docking thing another go. I'd already had a cheap station in Minmus orbit (it was for a contract, so they got the least expensive one I could build), so I built  a small rocket with a docking port, some RCS thrusters, and way too much mono propellant to fulfill the contract.  I'm sure most here already know how to line up for a docking attempt and how to do it, so I wont go into details, but I was surprised at how easy it actually was. I won't say it was the most efficient docking procedure, and I probably used more monoprop than needed trying to keep the nose of the ship pixel perfect with the targeting reticle on the navball, but it went off without a hitch even if it was slow lol. I'm sure with more practice I'll see it is even easier than I made it. After that I sent another mission to rescue a Kerbal trapped in the Muns orbit without enough full to get home. It was actually easier than docking since ... well, since I didn't have to dock. I just got within 10 meters, killed the target relative velocity to 0, had the Kerbal EVA to the rescue ship, then had the engineer on the rescue ship add a cheap probe core and antenna (turns out the antenna wasn't needed). After everyone was safely aboard and before I had them go home, I switched rockets to the newly probe cored one and had it crash into the Mun getting rid of all evidence of a failed mission, I mean cleaning up space.

Now I'm flooded with ideas on stuff to do in KSP with this new fangled docking technology. I really feel like the simple act of docking has really opened up the game to me.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Fenris

[Lisias]

On 6/8/2022 at 7:16 PM, Grimmas said:

I asked Gene to hook me up with a mission, but he gave me a tape and said it will self-destruct in five seconds...

Sounds like an adventure! I will try it somed... oh, wait...