What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Kimera Industries]

4 hours ago, PT said:

more kash

Does anyone else call kerbal money  kerbucks? It made the most sense to me when I started my first career world, and I still call them that, even though it's officially "funds."

Edited August 22 by Kimera Industries
New page, no new money for me

[capi3101]

Used to. These days I call them "spesos"; just like the sound of that one better...

[Kimera Industries]

18 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

I call them "spesos"; just like the sound of that one better...

Ooh, that's a way better play on words. I like it.

[Qwotty]

The day that I wrote this, I did fun and nominal rocket launching with stock 2.5-meter Rockomax and 3.75-meter Kerbodyne parts that entered its payload into stable orbit around Kerbin.
Previous posts were made on HP Laptop Model 15-dy4013dx, that of which could only run Kerbal Space Program so well, and things like graphical improvement mods would make the game lag.
This post though however was made on the "CyberpowerPC Gamer Master Gaming PC" that was gifted to us that can run Kerbal Space program much better by far to the point of it being impressive.
Its AMD Ryzen 5 7600 and GeForce RTX 4060, in combination with the curved Sceptre F24 monitor that was picked to go with it, makes for much more aesthetic and immersive KSP gameplay. 

The S2-33 "Clydesdale" SRB stage got the rocket well above the KSC by the time that their fuel tanks had been depleted of resources and the solid fuel had stopped burning.
They can be seen pictured below being thrown from the liquid fuel engine part of the liftoff stage that utilizes the S3 KS-25x4 "Mammoth" Liquid Fuel Engine for its thrust power.


The liftoff from the launchpad up into the atmosphere and beyond was smooth, and like rocket launches as seen on TV, which is indeed what you want to see when playing KSP. 
As you can see, the rocket narrows down slightly before the payload fairing, which is a common design similar to the way the Falcon 9 and Saturn V rockets taper between stages, hence optimizing the rocket's mass distribution.
During the rocket launching off the ground to go up and out of the atmosphere section of the launch mission, the only issue was negligible slight wobbling in the upper stages, that of which had inconsequential effects on the launch profile.

The 2.5-meter parts and 3.75 parts together in the lower stages, which were necessary, provided more than enough delta-V to lift the payload, an entire spaceship, up to orbital altitudes.
It was safe to jettison the payload fairing coverage without jeopardizing the mission by the time that the stage that utilized the RE-M3 "Mainsail" Liquid Fuel Engine made it up high, and before it even fired for the orbital burn to boot.
Rocketships that utilize "super heavy-lift launch vehicles" are not only fun to build and look like the huge towering launch vehicles that have previously been used by space agencies to lift said "super heavy" payloads up into orbit, but also are the thing that makes lifting those payloads into orbit possible in the first place.
And that is why we are such fans of these epically powerful majestic giants.

The interplanetary spaceship payload made into stable circular orbit at ~200,000 meters (200 kilometers), which is, according to our calculations, something like 124.274238 miles.
The rocket design was well-done enough that the stage used to attain an orbit with a periapsis greater than 70 kilometers had 1969 delta-V left over — almost 2000 dV, and also in addition enough to left Kerbin's sphere of influence.

That is what I did the day that this written, and what comes afterwards is going to be the fun part, because due to the ship having docking ports and designing specifically done with interplanetary missions in mind, it can venture out around the Kerbol System efficiently, as well as indefinitely if refueled with resources from ore mining operations. The point of the build and the subsequent respective launch was to build something like a reasonably small-scale mothership smaller than what you might anticipate upon hearing that word. I (said that I) shall document the adventures in KSP1 — on the then-new gaming computer capable of pulling off looking visually immersive at high settings whilst not creating dilly-dally as far as the smoothness of the gameplay that we did not have before that of which is worthy of calling a major upgrade that takes playing Kerbal Space Program to a whole other level compared to before — and show you readers the narrative of their space travels from both this type of objective perspective as well as the perspective of the Kerbonauts themselves. 

Until then, I hope that you have equally as smooth and wonderful space travels, and that this site does not have to go anywhere, so that we can all keep posting about our Kerbal Space Program adventures like this, on this particular website.
Jebspeed to you other fellow KSP players in the meantime.

Edited August 28 by Qwotty

[PT]

Continuing from last time...

Contracts forced me to place new station around Minmus test new cruiser design by flinging it around Minmus before departing for Eve.

Its just slightly tweaked Astarte design, third in its line, with improved cargo capacity and thrust (and some weird parts required by contracts). Initially intended for some moon hopping around Jool, it is now loaded with various satellites for Eve and Gilly as plethora of contracts have appeared for them.

Remaining cargo consist of two beefy spysat, two infrared space telescopes, a pair of combined moonar lander + surface science  station + return capsule, a gaggle of cheap and simple relay sats filling empty docking ports to drop around, and a last minute experimental Eve surface probe.

During test flight it struggled to shake out a contracted micro probe for which someone forgot to add monoprop tanks. Debris deorbiter test was successful, however current design barely has enough dV to drop down from LKO so one will have to be hauled from Minmus by some mothership. Decision is still pending whether Astarte III will return to LKO before first interplanetary voyage or if it will leave deorbiter to be hauled back by another ship.

In meantime first of early interplanetary probes reached its target, but it lacked dV for capture at Moho nor it has enough range to transmit what little data it could gather. At the very least it should unlock some profitable contracts for new body. Hopefully relay sats dropped by Astarte III will manage to get some early probes back online.
Kerbal Starfleet Program is rather expensive and by picking a lot of long-term interplanetary contracts I got locked out of space for Kerbin SOI passenger contracts, so now I'm stuck on 2nd tier of research lab. Gotta get to EVE asap to get through that backlog.

Edited August 23 by PT

[Qwotty]

What did we do today (as of writing this) in Kerbal Space Program? (The classic first Kerbal Space Program, that is.) Spotted something... "quite interesting", to say the least. More on that later.
Before that, the day before, we learned from what happened following the previous post. And that is what will be discussed a bit below, before discussing what happened after.

It seems that, as of writing this, we indeed show a lot of potential outside of modding Kerbal Space Program when it comes to playing the game proper, mods or no mods, but clearly still need to learn interplanetary and interstellar travel rocketry designs and such. Let this serve as proof of that. What you see here above is the giant fuel tank that we tried to add to our interplanetary ship being lifted into orbit. Choosing the smallest docking port possible was not the smartest design choice, but it ended up connecting. The same way that you could walk around with a huge bag of bricks slung over your shoulders, we tried to basically do that with our spaceship, not thinking about that part.





Besides being able to connect to the interplanetary spaceship and provide a bunch more fuel, it did not do much but add huge amounts of weight and bend worryingly at the docking port connection. 
It helped at first, but that for a brief moment until something or another caused a collision, which caused this big blast that destroyed most of the payload that had been brought to the ship due to it.

Thankful that the Kerbals were still even alive, we took that sort of cone thing seen in the lower picture fueled with the precious little bit of Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer that it had left and burned prograde.

Then, we took that spaceship to to Duna and did this:



Anyway, though...
As for "what we did in Kerbal Space Program today" (as in the day that this was written on)...

After that the day that the abovedescribed stuff happened, we decided to try creating a command pod using payload fairings, that of which is pictured below.
That was way less chaotic and went way more according to plan than the interplanetary mission that spanned from the post before to this in terms of comparison.



It flew into the air quite nicely on top of the RT-5 "Flea" Solid Fuel Booster that it was attached to, and functioned as any other command pod would, meaning this idea is indeed a keeper.
Especially considering that, with this, you can design interiors that can function like KSP IVA, and can ditch the walls around the command seat inside to deploy parachutes as shown above. 


You see, this was around the last moment that Jeb was up there before we started spotting something that is about the silliest thing that somebody could see in Kerbal Space Program.
Something that was not something that you would anticipate seeing at all unless told about it.
Something quite unusual.
It was this thing:

If there is one thing that were not anticipating to see in Kerbal Space Program upon approaching sea level during a regular routine water landing, it is that thing right there.
But there it was, staring back at us, its ginormous silliness palpable. 

I guess that the ocean decided that it wanted to do what the IVA camera screens in the bottom right corner in KSP do too.
Regardless... talk about a "Kraken", eh?

Jebediah Kerman eventually landed in the water, in a reflection of his own face. Kerbal Space Program? More like Kerbal Face Program! Like... what in the world?! Truly epic stuff.

||

That is what we did together in Kerbal Space Program the day that was written.
We hope that you truly enjoyed the read and find our find as funny as we do.

Edited August 24 by Qwotty

[ColdJ]

Today I think I finally finished getting my 4 vehicles (so far) externally finished.

[Royale37]

I made a nuclear ICBM in RSS

[PT]

Continuing from last time...

I've left deorbiter pod at Minmus refueling station to await for transport, then Astarte III visited fuel depot at the edge of Kerbin SOI and promptly left to drop space telescope on contracted orbit between Kerbin and Eve. Once that's done it will then head to Eve to complete half a dozen contracts.

While refueling two RCS tanker drones were shifted from fuel depot to Astarte III to fix minor design mistake, then onboard engineer transplanted some RCS nozzles to fix yet another oversight.

With maneuver nodes wait time now in hundreds of days I shifted attention to my older crafts. Starting with test of new tech on Mun base commissioned by Mr. Straker.

In order to scrounge kash for Duna mission some upgrades to electric systems were necessary so a pair of engineering tug crafts were dispatched to both Astarte I and II and promptly equipped old cruisers with nuclear reactors.

Once old cruisers could maintain their onboard research lab without parasiting electricity from fuel depo, Astarte II departed to do some Kerbin SOI contracts, as apparently not only my spaceprogram forgets to add enough batteries, and to haul deorbiter pod back to LKO.

 

After securing some funding and validating feasibility of nuclear powered starships a new class was devised to protect precious cargo from harsh radiation around Moho. Designed to be faster on helm than Astarte's, it sacrifices cargo capacity to maintain 10k+ dV and for safety of cargo. Additionally it will serve as further testbed for nuclear reactors, in preparation for missions to darkness of outer planets.

First design failed to met aesthetic requirements, thus Baguette II is now burning for Moho.

Featuring huge illuminated cargo hold, three nuclear reactors safely tucked in a sponson under watchful eye of scientists, impressive RCS, small garden, and some conveniently placed external docking ports.

In meantime Astarte III got close enough to Eve to serve as a relay between some old probes and Kerbin, so I got to risk a drone trying to guestimate what counts as a low orbit of annoyingly shaped rock.


Annoyingly, a lot less than shape of that rock but still not pleasant, survey contracts for those old probes turned out to spawn before I unlocked all the parts they required, thus Astarte III will have to finish up some experiments before rewards come in.

[Krazy1]

Today everyone survived. That is all.

Spoiler

 

[NHunter]

Real life has put some limits on how much I could play these last couple of weeks, and there wasn't much interesting happening in the game anyway. Well...

The crewed mission has departed from Dynasty and embarked on the 130 days flight to Janus.

Meanwhile, the cargo ship hauling the Janus SSTO has entered the Janus system (60 in-game days  after the previous screenshot).

[PT]

Continuing from last time...

Nothing fascinating.
I took my obsolete Kerbin SOI passenger ship on last trip, then tested its deorbiting capabilities.


Afterwards I tinkered with vertical launch SSTO<->LKO rocket to save some kash when returning crew to surface. Then I remembered that whenever answer is SSTO the question was horribly wrong.
So instead I just sent 8 cheap and too simple to fail 4-kerb droppods to my LKO fleet base and went on to work on stuff that actually matters, and as a bonus I do not need organize descent pod every time a starship brings back some stowaway.

Passengers still require ascent rocket, obviously, which for simplicity can also provide descent pod, but by laughing at SSTO time wasters you can just slap Twin Boar below pod and call it a successful mission.

Behold! The I-have-better-things-to-do surface<->LKO taxi. Technically it is an SSTO, there is nothing about returning in single piece in that abbreviation ';..;' !

Afterwards as a capitalist pig I am technically not lied to my customers stating that new test craft is a fastest ship in the fleet,  as it all depends on frame of reference ';..;' ! But as long as silly civies are willing to pay extra to coast through void in aerodynamic vessel its all fine. And thus Expresso passenger yacht was born.

And now back to waiting for interplanetary maneuvers while scrounging for kash in Kerbin SOI.

[Royale37]

PT, for the Baguette, what parts mod is the cockpit and cargo bay from? Also is the mod compatible with CTT?

 

[Royale37]

So today in KSP1, I landed my second manned mission to the Mun (on this save) with 3 Kerbals. (The first landing was just Jeb grabbing some extra science.) Here is the craft I used, called new Possibilities I.

It's not pretty, but It'll get the crew where they need to go. I wasn't able to do an Apollo style mission due to my craft being too heavy for the launchpad, but this is fine. 

There are 2 purposes for the mission:

1. Gain new science on the Mun.

2. Find out what happened to the unmanned New Possibilities lander after it lost communication with the KSC.

Here is New Possibilities I going into LKO:

Lifting off the launchpad at KSC.

Jeb:"Hey, I can see my house from up here!"

Getting ready to stage.

Staging!

Adjusting orbit.

Munar Insertion burn.

Mun landing point - we didn't have enough supplies to land at the previous lander's landing zone.

Landing

Touchdown!

Jeb and Val take a photo (bill stayed on the ship)

Return and reentry tomorrow!

[PT]

6 hours ago, Royale37 said:

PT, for the Baguette, what parts mod is the cockpit and cargo bay from? Also is the mod compatible with CTT?

 

Airplane parts are Mark IV parts from https://spacedock.info/mod/809/Mark IV Spaceplane System with mix of parts from other Nertea's mods, and a sprinkle of DMagic science parts.

Fuel section is from some non-stock big rockets, also Near Future stuff I believe, as MkIV tanks have heck lot of more dry mass than rocket parts (but can hold fuel and monoprop in single part, which is convenient).

All of Nertea stuff has its place in Community Tech Tree, as they share author if I am not mistaken.

[Qwotty]

Built a comfy tiny boat using entirely stock parts that uses one Juno engine to push the Rover variant Mk2 Lander Can repurposed to serve as the captain's quarters along the top of the water. I love how it has that bouncing effect where the boat repeatedly leaves and returns to the water that is often seen with high-speed boats or in choppy water conditions. The cockpit IVA even provides quite the appropriate view for such a ship. And this time is it not a spaceship. It is a ten-part design that utilizes Mk0 Liquid Fuel Fuselages for maximum adorable smallness. 

It's a sight to behold that proves that, in the world of Kerbal Space Program, size isn't everything, and a little ingenuity goes a long way. Docking at the intersection of simplicity and genius, this tiny boat is a floating tribute to the can-do spirit of people like me who look at the parts in the SPH and VAB and see not just components, but possibilities. So, hats off to this diminutive vessel that shows that, if you truly want built a boat in a game that is about space travel, you can. It may not be able to take you past Jool, but it can take you to spots where your Kerbals can do deep-sea fishing for fishies. So, there is that.

It is the perfect vessel for Kerbals who want to experience the thrill of bouncing across the water like a stone skipping across a pond, and the repurposed Rover variant Mk2 Lander Can seems like it would have enough space for stashing emergency snacks for long voyages out at sea. It may not be the best for use as a fishing vessel without ladders though, as evidenced by the photos below. Hope you all like my cool boat I created too.

[Qwotty]

5 hours ago, Royale37 said:

It's not pretty

I disagree there 

[Royale37]

 

7 hours ago, PT said:

Airplane parts are Mark IV parts from https://spacedock.info/mod/809/Mark IV Spaceplane System with mix of parts from other Nertea's mods, and a sprinkle of DMagic science parts.

Fuel section is from some non-stock big rockets, also Near Future stuff I believe, as MkIV tanks have heck lot of more dry mass than rocket parts (but can hold fuel and monoprop in single part, which is convenient).

All of Nertea stuff has its place in Community Tech Tree, as they share author if I am not mistaken.

Thanks - I will grab this right away!

[Royale37]

Continuing from last time. . .

Before leaving the Mun, Bob wants to anyalyze some rocks.

He then climbs back into the ship.

Goodbye, Mun!

Staging

Hot re-entry!

Parachuting down.

Home safe and sound! In total, we earned 277 science!

[PT]

Continuing from last time...

I enabled some graphic options, took some passengers on a trip in previously deployed ships, and learned that overpowered RCS on a small craft and MechJeb results in no monoprop after three maneuver nodes.
With some new cool parts unlocked I made a horrible mistake of enabling reputation->discount policy at 60%, saved some kash on part license purchase but now I am out of reputation so new missions are rather lousy.
To fix reputation and finances at same time I deployed a rather modest space tug, Jumper. As its intended to bounce between LKO and moons it hod hefty ~0.7 initial TWR with cargo.

Nose section is a dual purpose craft. Mun lander, speced at two landings with extra cargo with no refuel, and a space tug on itself.  Tail section is thus a redockable, autonomous, transfer stage.

Current load-out is:
- stack of generic relay/survey sats to fix holes in comnet after decommissioning early probes, and to score some basic satellite contracts.
- Three Hawking's Garden, a stack of science stuff intended to be replaced as tech tree progresses. Two are surface deployment variants intended to descent with Jumper nose section in "reverse skycrane" position.
- Fondler repair craft loaded with some spare batteries, solars, and RCS. Just in case some repair contract happens, or design mistake occurs. Always having an Engineer on spaceship was best decision I made on this career save.
- Trio of Tinkerer research labs. Decision has been made to switch from laboratories as core module to a cargo submodule, which will prevent spaceship from being stuck in orbit until laboratory finishes processing. Tinkerer modules are self sufficient space station cores, which simplifies design of its host spaceship. Sporting built-in nuclear reactor and up-to-date comsystems, it can serve as an all-in-one upgrade to existing hulls.

After quick visit to old fleet base where old Astarte's are docked to nab three scientist, which happened at 1 physics tick per 3 seconds,  Jumper burned out to higher parking orbit where it recombined while Willorf yelled something about lions.

Two spare Tinkerer  got left in parking orbit for later use, conveniently docked together to avoid orbital drift. First lander-variant of Hawking's Garden shifted to "reverse-skycrane" spot.

Rest of virgin cruise of Jumper  was almost uneventful.

After first contract satellite was dropped, a distress signal was picked up and Fondler  was quickly dispatched. There was, however, a critical flaw in design. With no drone core on board it slowly tumbled away, but Corrick easily managed to catch up and mount spare drone core which was loaded up just in case of events like this.

Afterwards nose section departed to land on Minmus, then promptly returned as scientists distracted by new toys forgot to embark. Thus surface science will have to wait for tomorrow.
 

[Martian Emigrant]

On 8/22/2024 at 5:38 PM, Kimera Industries said:

Does anyone else call kerbal money  kerbucks? It made the most sense to me when I started my first career world, and I still call them that, even though it's officially "funds."

Hi.

 

I think it is meant to be   \Funds   but I refer to them as roots (It looks vaguely like a square root symbol).

 

ME

[Krazy1]

On 8/26/2024 at 9:05 AM, Royale37 said:

Adjusting orbit.

Nice pics. Just remember to turn the lights on so we can see the ship. 

Yesterday I did a fast flyby and seismic impact on Ike (JNSQ). I had a relay satellite with the booster still attached, which was quite useful for the impact. Achieved a "personal best" of 57 GJ.  You can see the energy in KSP.log or Alt-F12 console in game: 

Seismic Event Detected on Ike - Impact of 57779313693.4181J. Total Mass 5.491298. Initial Velocity 4587.369. 

Pics:

Spoiler

I made a video of the Ike flyby but I suppose it's nothing you haven't seen before.

Now I have a contract to impact Duna and that will be much harder due to the atmosphere.

Edited August 28 by Krazy1

[Qwotty]

The day that this was written, I spent time creating a launch vehicle for a payload that I thought would work perfectly. Or at least correctly.
It did not.


This is the said rocket in question. Inside the payload fairing is yet more payload fairing.
The Kerbals must have been like: "I heard you like payload fairings... so we put a payload fairing in your payload fairing!".
What happened the day that this was written goes to show that if your design is not up to par, then you are essentially launching metallic space-garbage into orbit up in outer space.

Pretty rocket, right? Yeah, well... that can be said for a lot of rockets that did not even make it far from the launchpad too, though.
This rocket is sort of like that but made it to space at least.
Lesson learned indeed.

And look at how the MechJeb case lights up the inside of the payload fairing with its green light.
Quite pretty. So pretty, in fact, that I felt like I had to take a screenshot and share it.
It says a lot if that part was amongst the highlights. 

Everything about this launch and the spaceship payload that it was carrying seemed to be perfectly nominal, you know? That was until I realized that the Xenon engine did not have a way to counteract its own thrust coming from the side instead from the bottom where it usually does. I love to do small minimalist builds that are as tiny as possible, so, in doing that, I accidentally neglected to put on both RCS and SAS. Meaning that, when it came time to test the long-distance interplanetary space probe, it did this: 

No joyous journey to Jool for me that day it seemed.
More like spinning around in space on an escape trajectory without any way to do anything other than stop the spinning or make the ship spin even friggin' more. 
At least this serves as evidence that I can build ships this cool, even if they are occasionally built with design errors like this sometimes.
Perhaps putting the engine on the side of the spaceship was not the smartest design choice.
The conversation between mission control and Valentina probably went something like this:

Quote

"KSC, we have a problem. Over. [*QUINDAR BEEP*]"
"Valentina, we read. What is it? Over. [*QUINDAR BEEP*]"
"The spaceship is spinning me right 'round, baby, right 'round. Over. [*QUINDAR BEEP*]"
"Like a record, baby, right? Over. [*QUINDAR BEEP*]"
"'Like a record, baby' indeed. 'Right 'round, 'round, 'round'. Over. [*QUINDAR BEEP*]"

If the engine had been placed to face  instead of the sideways direction that it was in the prevented it from staying in place to burn at  points, things would have worked out.
But, as you can see above, they did not — the design choice to put a tiny-sized Xenon-powered engine in a 1.25m-sized service bay looked so cool that it made me skip past implementing RCS and SAS.
With no way to provide enough stabilization to create a state of equilibrium, the spaceship was up out there rotating like the wheel of a racecar. 

Edited August 29 by Qwotty

[Royale37]

15 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

Nice pics. Just remember to turn the lights on so we can see the ship. 

Yesterday I did a fast flyby and seismic impact on Ike (JNSQ). I had a relay satellite with the booster still attached, which was quite useful for the impact. Achieved a "personal best" of 57 GJ.  You can see the energy in KSP.log or Alt-F12 console in game: 

Seismic Event Detected on Ike - Impact of 57779313693.4181J. Total Mass 5.491298. Initial Velocity 4587.369. 

Pics:

  Reveal hidden contents

I made a video of the Ike flyby but I suppose it's nothing you haven't seen before.

Now I have a contract to impact Duna and that will be much harder due to the atmosphere.

Thanks for the suggestion  Didn't realize bc I have my brightness turned up so I could see the ship.

[NHunter]

Nothing really exciting happened today, just moving various satellites and probes to their positions around the Janus system:

- The mapping satellite for Janus itself (printscreen is before it was set on its final orbit). Given the huge size of the gas giant planet, the orbit needed to do SCANSat mapping looks tiny and so damn close to the edge of its atmosphere. Even if it's over 1000km altitude.

And the communication relays...

Also got another mapping satellite to Lond

 

Edited August 28 by NHunter