What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

Getting to ready to see if I can remember how to fly one of these things...


KWV Ender Wiggin departing the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyard on her maiden voyage. She's a new design with some elements with which I'm not entirely familiar. So far so good, but we'll see how well she warps soon.

Guess I'm running out of excuses to not go to Eve in my current save...

EDIT: I did. I guess flying an Alcubierre Drive ship is a lot like riding a bicycle, just a lot harder to put old Pokemon cards in the spokes...

Edited September 25 by capi3101

[stephensmat]

It took half a dozen launches, but I got my proper 'Shipyard Station' into Minmus Orbit.

With the Global Construction mod, I plan to use this station for most of my 'next wave'. There's plenty of Docking Ports to expand the Station for the Late Game, and I have several autonomous Drill/Converter landers harvesting Minmus for Ore/Metal/Fuel. Far easier than trucking them up from Kerbin.

[Qwotty]

We two decided to think ambitiously in Science mode — utilizing that gamemode does not place weight limits or require budgeting — and started building an engine cluster for a gargantuan spaceship. That's right: what is in the GIF below is merely just an engine cluster being tested, and is, in essence, designed to be used as a huge rocket engine for even huge spacecraft to use multiple of them. 

[PT]

Continuing from last time...

One of Sunshines reached its target, and after short cargo inspection some science has been done.

Afterwards another one failed to capture on Blas. Aerocapture on low solar orbit does not work so well, inflatable shield seems unfit for shedding ~9km/s.

Two Sunshine corvettes reached their targets, Moho and Jot. One started overheating before reaching its target and had to be redirected, then failed to capture and now is returning to Kerbin. Fourth one is still underway to Helvica. Could be worse.

While Sunshines were bouncing around below Moho, all three Kerbin moons received a space station core. Fledgling Watchtowers are now being visited by bunch of tourist on board of first city-class passenger liner, Hanoi. Soon it will dip below Moho orbit to visit some scorching hot gas giants.

In meantime I tried to design some semi-plane for Eve and Laythe, got reminded why I do not do planes in KSP, built simple air-dropped rocket instead.

[NHunter]

The week has been rather busy, so my progress amounts to moving the cargo ship carrying the spaceplane (and the exploration crew onboard of it) to Tau's orbit. Will do the landing next time.

One more look at Janus:

...And now - time for Tau

[N_Danger]

A trip to Duna was arranged for Jeb, Val and Bob

Th e crew settles in for a long coat to the course correction after the transfer burn

Once the crew arrives at Duna there is much aero braking.

 

The crew  rendezvous with a prepositioned lander.

 

Perhaps I should have put more parachutes on.

But a landing is made and Val and Bob pose for the camera

Time to go

Rendezvous with Jeb.

Arrival at Kerbin

Final activities before entry.

And many happy landings were had.

 

[PT]

Continuing from last time...

Duna! Modulus III hauled Eclipse Nullam to Duna, which then established itself in Ike polar orbit to ensure constant coverage of (half of) Duna.

In meantime, Wakizashi took the crew down to Ike for some exercise.

Due to krakenization of Duna lander there was not much else to do, so after transplanting spare antenna to Wakizashi it was left in Ike orbit for future reuse.

... with all the cargo expended its bays were purged and escape craft was moved around to improve CoM.

Afterwards I did crash-course on Porkchop graph and managed to put Duna, Eve, and Moho, missions return burns right next to each other.

With 50 days left until next big thing, it was time for some Kerbin SOI fundraising.

Full of spinning blinking lights, Kerbin orbital casino/hotel was built and on comet tail of Argon it inserted itself in contracted high orbit. Quite an eyeful on OLED screen.
Now it needs asteroid hunters to bring there four rocks.

With new found ability to read capture burn dV out of porkchop graphs, two more Watchtower stations were sent to Moho and Jot. Just with varying amount of extra Argon, solar panels, and radiators. And then third one was sent to Eve as I somehow misread Gilly for Moho...
All together it took about a dozen rounds of skribble.

‪‫‭

Afterwards I remembered that Hanoi was still docked at Phybi's Watchtower, its gaggle of tourist now left for Jot tour while enjoying swimming in zero-g and fresh veggies grown onboard. No one told them what happens with all the daily mystery goo.

And now fourth Sunshine  is slowly decelerating for capture at Helvica. Aerocapture plans were ditched after last attempt at doing it at 10k+ km/s.

[RoninFrog]

I finished a working Orion drive in Stock KSP (+breaking ground).  It doesn't require any cheats, but the craft file for the engine is pretty heavily edited.

The shock absorbing system is ironically almost identical to shocks on a car.  The spiraling struts are essentially a giant spring, and the double-rotor configuration in the middle serves as a shock dampener and keeps the engine straight.  It isn't strictly required for some crafts, but just slapping the firework "nuke" canister straight to a craft hull causes significantly higher G-forces as well as distorting/detatching parts.  This exact engine is rated for a 100 ton vessel, so the G-forces could be lower.  25 G's is technically survivable, but it is comparable to a moderate car crash according to my online research.  At the 100 ton vessel limit, the craft only experiences 7.8 G's, which IMO is very feasible for a manned mission.

The craft itself has 27 8-"nuke" canisters, and since each detonation gives the craft about 100 m/s of dV, then this craft has about 20,000 dV with about 400 m/s of chemical propellant for fine-tuning trajectories.  Plenty of dV for an interstellar journey.

The Orion drive tests start at 2:05:

 

 

Edited September 29 by RoninFrog

[NHunter]

Did Tau landing.

I really should've tested the spaceplane in a safe environment of sandbox mode before attempting landing out Tau: just because it can fly on Rhode or Janus doesn't mean it can do so on Tau. As it turns out, Tau's atmosphere is a bit too thin for my spaceplane to fly as it needs to move at over 400 m/s to remain airborne. No way I'm attempting a landing at such speeds...

So, after a dip into atmosphere and collecting some science, I had to return the spaceplane to space and re-dock it with the cargo carrier. There, I transferred crew over to the "traditional" lander and made another attempt to put Kerbal feet on the surface of Tau.

As for the landing target, a certain very interesting spiral-like mountain formation near the equator was picked. With a bit of maneuvering, I even managed to land inside the 'canyon' near the "eye" of the formation.

As it turns out, Tau's atmosphere is so thin that Kerbals even refuse to remove their helmets. No wonder the spaceplane had trouble flying... Still, doesn't stop giant mushrooms from growing...

Also, a look at Janus the Rhode's twin stars.

Edited September 29 by NHunter

[PT]

Continuing from last time...

Baguette class has been revived! First of its series is now burning out of Kerbin. Constructed similarly to Modulus its center life support section can be repurposed as space station module. In its spacious cargo bay is assortment of parts and supplies, alongside two aerobraking modules....

.. for a Grand Tour lander docked on ventral slot. With first auerobraking module already mounted, Baguette is heading for Eve first

In meantime Hanoi reached Jot...

... and took its gaggle of tourist on precariously low orbit around Subon, captured asteroid with annoyingly small SOI,  Normally such fake moons are easy on dV, but this particular pebble sits very deep in gas giant gravity well so transfers are costly to its retrograde orbit and minuscule SOI do not leave much time for capture burns.

[OhJebus]

Today I made a minecraft villager with mods and sent him to space, got on starboard of KSP discord tho

 

[RoninFrog]

Tiny Perseverance and Ingenuity replica sent to Eve.  Saw a Matt Lowne video where he made a sort of replica and I wanted to make my own.  IIRC he said something about how the Perseverance would have to be "biblically massive" to have the Ingenuity  deploy from the undercarriage.

The only parts that were unrecovered/unused were two donut tanks and a spark engine (+heatshield and decouplers).

Flight:

Spoiler

Deployment:

 

[PT]

Continuing from last time...

Somewhere retrograde between orbits of Duna and Dres...

... last Sunshine managed to capture itself around Helvica. While it ran out of Xenon to fully complete its mission it still managed to put some of its cargo on target...

...including one sacrifice to a gas giant.

Eclipse Liberandum corvette was thus launched to slowly gather pilots of failed Sunshine missions. While crew accommodations are rather spartan by the standard of space fleet, it should still be an improvement over being stranded in tiny Sunshine.

Through advances in fission science, there was enough dV in mission budget to carry pair of Xenon drop tanks to hopefully finish satellite seeding in Helvica SOI.,

In meantime another Watchtower reached Gilly. Apparently contracted sub-6km orbit is possible on equator, although Dudford might need a change of spacesuit.

And Boulderdash got launched to hunt for some asteroids to complete orbital casino contract. Loaded with a pair of rock spotter sats and a hedgehog of propulsion drones to make rock hauling less strenuous.

[RoninFrog]

Practiced my landing precision.  My goal was to land at the KSC from Duna through an Ike assist.  It's pretty to calculate Kerbin's rotational position given that one Kerbin day is, well, one day in the T- clock.  I lined up a 15km Ike assist to an exact 36km reentry (by using timewarp for fine adjustments).

Now to see how I did. 

Spoiler

Here's my Ike flyby:

Seeing triple zeroes is so satisfying.

Unfortunately I was calculating based on where my Pe was and not where I would likely land, so I overshot by a bit:

But I did end up splashing down pretty close.

I also had an "incident" with my lander while I was at Duna:

[GarrisonChisholm]

 

Yes, everything is fine; why do you ask?

[stephensmat]

What did I do today? I discovered that I was coming around Jool in the wrong direction for gravity assists. I thought I was decelerating my craft, but I ended up boosting it. After that I spent a few minutes hitting myself over the head.

Word of advice, go into settings and dial up the number of conics that are visible. You see the future more clearly.

Edited October 3 by stephensmat

[Kerbalsaurus]

7 hours ago, stephensmat said:

What did I do today? I discovered that I was coming around Jool in the wrong direction for gravity assists. I thought I was decelerating my craft, but I ended up boosting it. After that I spent a few minutes hitting myself over the head.

Word of advice, go into settings and dial up the number of conics that are visible. You see the future more clearly.

Don't think of it as a failure, think of it as a... new mission objective. Where was your spacecraft headed too that needed a gravity assist though?

[Martian Emigrant]

Hi all Kerbonauts.

 

Yesterday I sent a mixed-species  crew to Duna for upgrades.

 

ME

 

Edited October 3 by Martian Emigrant

[PT]

Continuing from last time...

I tried to use landing gear, forgetting that KSP physics engine can easily be classified as a crime against humanity, and thus I had to take a mental break from virtual rocketry.

Halfway between Moho and Kerbol, Hanoi liner docked at local Watchotwer to pickup a pilot of half-failed Sunshine mission. Xenon tanker is now one more thing on space fleet TODO list.

While Hanoi was burning out for Kerbin, Baguette, with same engine but ten times the mass, burned five times to circularize around Eve...

.. and Eveline departed for first stop on Grand Tour deorbiting on grossly underpowered ions...

... and after interesting aerobraking and triggering multiple landing gear and physics engine bugs  invoking Kraken several times it managed to land.

There was, however, one minor oversight which will have to be fixed on subsequent versions of Evelyn landers...

Tho with some fine tuning of landing gear it was become possible to reembark after flag planting... however Gilrim had to sprint a bit to catch lander as it was slowly bugging away sliding under the grace of Kraken.

Maintaining stability on ascent was troublesome, mounting radiators for aesthetics had interesting effects on lift.

And then, after visiting a rock that was as much annoying but in opposite, it was time to randomly select next target.

[NHunter]

Continuing my exploration of Janus system...

On the way to rendezvous with the crewed mothership in Tau's orbit, the lander crew flew over one of the massive storms that still form in the moon's rather tenuous atmosphere. It looked bad enough from space that the brave trio was happy that their landing took place far away from it.

Home Mothership sweet home mothership.

Once docked, a course for Eterna was plotted and the ship was set to execute those maneuvers.

And a few days later, it arrived at Eterna and got parked in a nice 75km orbit above the icy moon's surface.

The next step is to land and to, well, step on Eterna's surface.

[Puggonaut]

Testing this

 

[N_Danger]

A relay sat was launched towards Lindor 

Capture burn. After which the vehicle journeys  out to a high AP for an inclination change

And on station ready for the exploration satellites to follow.

 

[NHunter]

Did an Eterna landing. This moon looks so cool (pun intended)

Ended up picking a landing spot on the shores.

Ended up touching down in a rather inclined spot with 5.1 deg slope, but it's fine. Did the usual round of collecting science and kerbal selfies.

And as I was returning to orbit, I got treated with a cool sight of Janus rising:

[N_Danger]

Launched a probe to Jool

And 60 game days later, launched a probe to Lindor

[capi3101]

Did a double-rendezvous yesterday; those are always fun. My second ship about took a radiator or two off of one of my space stations...

KTV Sisko conducting docking maneuvers with space station Kerbinport as seen through the port's docking camera, with KTV Dax (upper center) waiting her turn to do the same. An Auk II and an Auk XIa await passengers are also docked at the station.

On the plus side, once I got everybody docked up and all the Kerbin-bound passengers on their planes, and once I got those planes safely down to the ground (minus the ventral pair of engines on the Auk XIa), I got eight contracts cleared all at the same time, which is always a nice feeling. Plus I don't have as many pesky tourists to deal with at the moment.