What did you do in KSP1 today?

[MythicalHeFF]

I discovered that the 5 meter structural tubes make for quite good interior spaces.

 

[Angelo Kerman]

I built some gravimetric generator nacelles to enable Scout to haul asteroids:

It can just barely move JNSQ Type A asteroids around, so I needed more powerful generators:

Now she can haul the mail.

[Kimera Industries]

Finally fulfiled the basic goal of Wrong Red Moon:

It feels great to finally get this Minmus landing, but much more is to come! Follow for surface bases, stations, and more!

[N_Danger]

Off to the last unharvested biome on Ceti

Spoiler

After starting the trans Ceti burn on the second stage. We take a break to detach the lander and dock to it.

We then finish the burn up.

It looked a lot flatter on the map.

After some adjustments, we find a flat spot.

Landed at the Pole.

Bob gets science done.

Spoiler

Time to go

Docking in the dark

Bob grabs the science.

 

 The crew de-orbited the lander to get impact science before leaving for Gael

We have explosions on reentry. Always a good omen.

And nothing like good chutes all around.

 

[Kimera Industries]

21 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:

Finally fulfiled the basic goal of Wrong Red Moon:

It feels great to finally get this Minmus landing, but much more is to come! Follow for surface bases, stations, and more!

I discovered in the making of the above post that my loosely N1-inspired rocket is horrendously laggy and has terrible TWR. On top of that, the lander barely had enough fuel for a rendezvous and would need upgrades to carry a small rover later on as planned. I spent most of my time the other day upgrading it, here's how:

1. Replaced all the T-45 engines with Vectors. The improved efficiency and thrust means less is required, improving on parts count.

2. Removed small, radial fuel tanks. The N1's stages are diagonal on the sides, and I filled up the space with"baguette" tanks. Removing them decreased the total Dv, but the efficiency of the Vectors made up for it. It also reduced parts count and weight.

3. Lengthened the vacuum stage. The upper stage does all the hard work of getting to Minmus and isn't very long to begin with. I extended it, improving the total weight it can carry and giving me a larger margin of error for everything. 

4. Improved lander design. The hatch for the lander is actually 90 degrees away from the ladder. I avoided this in my post by making it look like they had climbed out by setting them on the ladder with their EVA packs. This was an easy-to-fix, simple oversight.

5. Changed the fuel tanks from the small spheres to the baguettes, rearranged the antenna, and removed the lights- they took up valuable radial space I would need for the rover. To countereffect the weight of the rover on one side, storage boxes with surface science will be on the other side and both will be ditched before takeoff.

Hopefully, the next mission will go much faster for me and be a lot easier as well. 

[MythicalHeFF]

Completed construction of the HEFF-3500, a ship I plan to use for a grand tour of the Alternis Kerbol mod for an upcoming Youtube series. (this will include Tylo, but the lander is going to be launched and sent there separately). It's a new and improved version of the HEFF-1000, the ship I originally made to celebrate 1,000 subscribers, and wanted to use, but scrapped due to the cargo bay being too unstable (piston doors are way more Kraken baity than hinge doors). It's inspired a bit by Gargantua, a ship from a series by ShadowZone from years ago.

Total mass: around 990 t

Total part count: 1,208

HEFF-3500 on the surface of Minmus in a landing test. The wide cargo bay makes it impossible to use regular landing legs, so I instead used extra-large landing gears mounted on pistons, which seemed to work pretty well.

Cargo bay opened in orbit before an engine test. Inside, there are two landers: the Kangaroo (top), which will be used for all landings besides Eve and Laythe, and Leonardo, the Eve lander (bottom), which makes use of propellers to make the Eve ascent easier than it otherwise would be. Behind Leonardo are also two 1.875m fuel tanks, which will be attached to the Kangaroo for its Eeloo descent: landing on Eeloo in Alternis Kerbol is almost as hard as landing on Tylo in stock KSP.

More on Kangaroo:

Spoiler

Kangaroo with Eeloo attachments

If you're wondering why it's called Kangaroo, it's because it's got a small rover in its "pouch", Willy, whose name is a reference to the mini jeep from "Will it Make it to Moab?" 

The floor beneath it can slide out, and the rover can then safely be placed on the ground by piston. I went into the whole design process of this lander with the intent of it being a heavy lander, capable of carrying at least 5 kerbals to the surface of any small-to-medium sized body and back, which is why it's a little bulky and excessive-looking for a lander.

There were also earlier iterations of the Eeloo attachment system, such as this one that had to be scrapped due to stuff just wobbling around way too much when it's mounted on a part attached to a piston.

As for Laythe, we have another lander/SSTO, the Maverick, which will be launched separately from the HEFF-3500, carrying the crew to LKO and docking with the main ship. After it has landed and returned from Laythe, it will then return to Kerbin on its own, hence the name Maverick.

I also did quite a bit more interior design/finer detailing on this ship than I did on its predecessor, which I quite like:

Spoiler

Crew lounge:

Meeting room:

Escape pod bay (all are numbered 1-10). My favorite part is the "PANIC IS MANDATORY" sign right next to the "DON'T PANIC" signs..

National flags of the four constituent countries of the KSP (at least in the lore I'm trying to make because one of the characters is a veteran and fought in a war): the Bogey Republic, Heffland, Swisherland, and the Krag Federation.

The original ship, the HEFF-1000:

Spoiler

The original HEFF-1000. Notice the much bulkier frame and the cargo bay having piston doors instead of hinge doors (as well as just being much uglier in my opinion). 

Having piston doors resulted in this happening about 15 seconds after launch:

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by MythicalHeFF

[space_otter]

Started a new JNSQ career save. I have kerbalism and Kerbal Construction Time installed. So far everything is going well. I decided to have BDB, but I deleted a lot of the early rockets and instead kept only the Saturn and Gemini program other with some extra parts (e.g. the antenna parts). I have changed some of the scatterer and EVE configs for JNSQ to make it compatible with 0.83 (Not perfect, Lindor looks funny). I started by launching a small sounding rocket, the SR-1:

I then attempted a more advanced sounding rocket to see if I could make it into space and I launched all the way to 200km before returning. This rocket was called the SR-2. After performing two launches of this rocket, I don't think I will use this again although you never know.

I am now ready to launch my first orbital rocket, although I need the Level 2 VAB for my design and I don't have the funds to upgrade. This will mean either a) Wait until I research the next stage of the tech tree to see if I can throw together a better rocket; or b) Start my crew exploration program, for which I feel pretty confident that I have all the tech researched.

[Angelo Kerman]

I finished some new Slim suits based on an old mission report...

[dok_377]

I just finished my big Minmus science collection mission. Here's some screenshots:

The station with the lander in orbit of Minmus, mission beginning. 


The same station after 9 landings were completed.  You can see the lack of SC-9001's on the station. This is because the lander was leaving them on the surface as beacons after each landing. 


The map of SC-9001 modules on the surface.


Some screenshots of the transfer stage with the return module going back to Kerbin. 




The upper part of the return module was jettisoned, exposing the return capsule. 


The return capsule with the remainder of the return module. 


It gets jettisoned just before entry.


The capsule was recovered with 105 experiments, which netted a whopping 3482 science points. 


All 9 landing in a collage. 

[Pipcard]

The Raijin Jupiter mission ]ands on Ganymede in December 2057 before returning to Earth in 2060.

[Hotel26]

I always find Map View image posts, such as this below, rather inscrutable to read, so I'll simply point out the salient points, after a narrative.

JB14a Jool Beep is a small pod of 3x RA-2 relays that has arrived in the Jolian system in an unfortunate 174-degree inclination.  I played a little with gravity assists but playing chicken running at high-speed in reverse is pretty scary (and futile).

After adjusting inclination to a bold 180 degrees, I lucked into a low perijo with an apojo matching the lugubrious Pol.  Moving backward so slowly at Pol's alittude that it's inclination in the Pol SoI would be 'easterly'.  Yay.

What the orbital speed will be at peripol will be announced by Mission Control whenever we get there.  (And, of course, my mathematical intuition is warning me that I may be interpreting the "polarity" of the Focus View schematic wrongly.)  OK, so actually, you can skip the details in the image!   

 

 

With my luck holding up, an Atlas III miner showed up shortly after and this vehicle just happened to have a perijo close to Pol's altitude and that got me thinking about establishing a mining station at Pol to assist with a) rescue of distressed  orphan flights and b) Minmus-style departures(?  almost certainly a very bad idea).  Call it an outpost then rather than a station.

                                                                                          

And this has all stimulated some review of my harmonic GEO (Gilly-Eve Orbit) plan to have successive fuel depots periodically visit the vicinity of Gilly for fuel transfer/distribution to LEO.

But it has now dawned on me that direct transfer to Gilly from LEO has very much the same (easy) solution equivalent to MKO: the Minmus-Kerbin loop for rendez-vous.  A number of rows of my mental Tetris puzzle thus just collapsed in on themselves.  Nice.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Hotel26

[Krazy1]

Completed a contract today to make 4 tourists  pass out. The real challenge was that it had to be "sub-orbital" so airplanes wouldn't work. 

They got their money's worth...  passed out twice!

Spoiler

Ascent started at 3 Gees... peaked above 8. That was just a warm up. 

Drop tanks dropped. Flipped around to do the "railgun burn" retrograde. 

At this point the Mammoth actually laughed and said, "I squish like grape"

Started at 10 Gees and peaked at 18. 1900 dV in 15 seconds. Goodnight. 

The pilot Gwenfry has an 11.7 Gee rating... not enough

The cherry on top was the main chute deploying late which caused it to hit the water at 13 m/s

Earned Gwenfry a 14G ribbon. Jeb is jealous. 

@Hotel26 Bop is retrograde for stability with Principia so the situation is similar to yours when going to/from Bop from another moon. I did a Jool 5 and starting from an inner moon, I pushed AP (JP?) way way way out, then flipped inclination about 180 deg. at AP, then aligned PE (JE?) with Bop. That transfer took a whole Kerbin year but saved dV.

Edited November 26, 2023 by Krazy1

[space_otter]

A great many things happened in my career save today.

Unfortunately, It was extremely hard to design an orbit-capable rocket with the level 1 VAB and launchpad. Luckily, I managed to design a launch vehicle and this is the result:

Just about fitting the specs of the launch site, the vehicle is 18m tall and weighs 17t. Performance is alright, with up to 2500 m/s of ΔV left in orbit (This is JNSQ by the way). The main problems are i) Tiny payload. the upper stage has just around 1.05 TWR, and I wouldn't like it if it went much below 1. Currently, the only payloads have been a Zebulon probe core. ii) Limited control. The craft is dependant on two RCS thruster blocks for attitude control, and I am not 100% confident that we will be able to use this in the long term. On the other hand, it costs only about 7000 funds and it takes like 3 days to build.

Just before MECO. The 64k clouds for spectra look good with JNSQ.

Upper stage. Tanks are 0.9m dia. The engine is a 'pug' from ReStock. The little stripy ball is the payload.

After its first orbit, Satelite 1 peers down at the space centre (Just visible under the clouds - Can you spot it?) On it's second orbit, the spacecraft would run out of battery and die.

An identical rocket launched to polar orbit.

 

Explorer I (The same type of vehicle but with two solar panels) glows blood-red as it experiences the first geosynchronus sunset.

Almost directly above harvester's massif, a comm station.

Explorer 1 (After it had established geostationary orbit, it still had 1500 m/s left so what better to do than crash into the Mun) descends towards the Mun

The tiny probe had no chance against the 1000 m/s impact.

These early missions have been great for my career save, I now have some decent tech for more extravagant missions. High on the agenda is the need to design a new, more powerful launch vehicle that can still be built quickly. My aeroplane program will start as well.

[MythicalHeFF]

I began to realize how much I've slept on mods all these years... especially Kerbal Konstructs!

[Hotel26]

9 hours ago, MythicalHeFF said:

Kerbal Konstructs

Hearty congratulations!!

Spoiler

And don't kick yourself.  It took me 7 years to get KK to work.  And I never would have, either, if it hadn't been for @Caerfinon's great documentation. 

                                                                                                                     

But that is not why I am here today...  I am here today to announce:

Our very first landing on Pol!

We had over 3 km/s dV remaining after Jool capture, but there was Pol, orbiting right there mighty purty and, being oil men, we looked at each other in Mission Control, exclaimed "Let's Do It!" and high-fived.

And Here We Be!!!  Dang.  ...14.08% Brent crude...  Light & sweet!  (628,000 kallons to be refined before lift-off!)  Champagne time!

(This is nearly 9 years after I was introduced to KSP: Dec 2014...)

Edited November 27, 2023 by Hotel26

[SpaceFrog]

I finished making my EVE SSTO. I have never been so exhilarated since I started playing KSP. 

Download link if anyone needs it

https://kerbalx.com/DLQ3987/EVE-SSTO-Akatsuki-with-tutorial

[RevanX_LSR]

Made new rings for an LSR planet!

more photos here: 

 

[MythicalHeFF]

I decided to turn the Maverick, the SSTO lander for my upcoming grand tour mission, into a space shuttle instead, because, let's face it, that's cooler. (and also it may or may not have just barely failed to reach orbit over and over again and I really didn't feel like making it heavier to accomplish its goal).

In the test flight that this screenshot was taken, I used the RAPIER engines during ascent, but I later removed the need for this by increasing the angle of the outer Vector engine on the bottom of the main tank.

I then painted the main tank orange to give it more of a Space Shuttle look, and added some custom flags again.

Including our.. sponsors!

 

 

[Caerfinon]

On 11/26/2023 at 7:44 PM, MythicalHeFF said:

I began to realize how much I've slept on mods all these years... especially Kerbal Konstructs!

Nice set up you have there. 

[king of nowhere]

after too many afternoons spent doing gravity assists to lower my orbit, I managed to reach the inner gememma system, in the whirligig world planetary pack. the sights were worth the wait.

First the planet gannovar. somewhat bigger than duna and with a dense atmosphere. I came in at 5 km/s of intercept speed, and I had to use repeated flybys to turn my trajectory around and convert those 5 km/s coming from outside the system to 5 km/s going inward. the planet is just big enough that I could eventually do it, but just small enough that it must have taken a couple dozen flybys.

But after a long time using gannovar, I finally lowered my trajectory enough to reach lowel. And wow, look at it! lowel is also slightly bigger than duna, with enough atmosphere to fly.

lowel has a moon called ollym, or maybe it would be better to call it a binary system. ollym is slightly smaller than duna, but still bigger than vall. it has a very thin atmosphere. it appears to be dominated by volcanoes. I was hoping to be able to aerobrake on ollym, but I had 3 km/s of intercept speed, which coupled with the 1.2 km/s of escape speed of ollym means I still come in way too fast. Boundless, my mothership, can at most take 3.5 km/s on an atmospheric pass. so, more gravity assists followed.

all those planets orbit the red dwarf star gememma, here seen up close through a cupola. The dot is the dwarf planet ammenon, which I will also have to reach eventually. As it takes 30 km/s for the two-way trip and I plan to do it without ions and without staging, I expect it will involve even more gravity assists than I just had. it will take me at least another couple of months to get there.

the red glow of gememma reflecting on the oceans of lowel during an ollymrise. it's transfixing.

more of the transfixing red glow over water. Ollym has those straight canals, I'm looking forward to land my spaceplane there and run some science.

and here we have a lowelrise while aerobraking on ollym. I finally lost enough speed that I was able to get captured.

now that I put the mothership in a stable orbit, I will start refueling, then send the landers around.

 

[Krazy1]

Very nice @SpaceFrog Welcome to the forum. 
Any chance there's a video coming? 

[kurgut]

On 11/26/2023 at 5:00 AM, Pipcard said:

The Raijin Jupiter mission ]ands on Ganymede in December 2057 before returning to Earth in 2060.

Outstanding work !  Congrats !

Today, I finished the fourth part of the IVA tutorial serie, which is about landing on the Moon, only from the cockpit view !

Fully manual, from the start of powered descent to touchdown !

It's definitely one the most demanding/tricky task to be done in IVA, especially with those old instruments, but is also very rewarding and satisfying

This in RSS/RO, but of course applies to stock too : ) Or to others modded IVAs, like the ASET lander can for instance.

Any questions/feedback welcome
Also please be gentle on my kerbglish, there's a quite a bunch of langage quirks I was lazy to edit in with tiny rubber patches, but hopefully it's still understandable haha : P
This uses the new RSS-reborn textures/configs btw, which are absolutly beautiful, outstanding work by BallisticFox ! (found on his patreon)

 

Cheers

Edited November 30, 2023 by kurgut

[SpaceFrog]

7 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

Very nice @SpaceFrog Welcome to the forum. 
Any chance there's a video coming? 

Thanks you! I'm not that great making videos. But if people struggle to use my craft, I will be releasing a video to show how it's done! :-)

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

I made a neat little planet orbiting in the Dini system!
Bestraald, the 1st planet, a planet bathed in the radiation from the highly active red dwarf each time it passes close. Similar to Mercury, where it having a large iron core results in higher surface gravity than usual.
Bestraald is 250km with 0.4g surface gravity, it has no rings or moons, and orbits faster than Moho despite its SMA being 3 million km greater than Moho's. it is in a 4:3 resonance with another planet slightly further out.

That blue gas giant with asteroid rings, Caeruleum, is the third planet.

Landed at the edge of one of the largest craters in the northern hemisphere

The binary suns from the surface.

Bestraald from orbit.

Due to the orbits of its parents stars, sometimes, Anatarchi (the red dwarf) rises over an hour before Iremia (the bright star), giving the landscape a temporary eerie glow, before being blinded by 27kW/m^2 of sunlight.

and yes eclipses look pretty decent here.

[QF9E]

I test-flew an old SSTO that I made for a low part count challenge back in August. The challenge asks for a minimalist plane to fly from KSC to the Island Runway and back, and it turns out that - unknown to me until today - my SSTO can do so while reaching Low Kerbin Orbit on both legs of the journey. Here's my completely accidental SSTO2:

Craft file here: https://kerbalx.com/QF9E/Low-part-count-SSTO