What did you do in KSP1 today?

[soulsource]

Just 17 tons? I'm wondering how you're planning to get it back to orbit. Will it have wheels so you can drive it to a mountain?

[Padishar]

Hehe, thanks. As soon as I manage to create the vertices with the correct edge angles (and get a faster machine ) I'll try putting the rest together. The cube will only be 700+ parts but the others get silly, the icosahedron will be around 1500 and the dodecahedron will be around 1800...

Well, now I can set the required pitch angles and have upgraded from a Core Duo T2600 laptop with a G3DMark of 47 to an i7-4770K and GTX560ti with a G3DMark of 3544, I've now rebuilt the tetrahedron using "correct" angles and a new ARM launcher and made a start on putting together the icosahedron...

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"Only" another 4 launches to rendezvous and 31 docking manoeuvres to go...

[Skigazzi]

Today I killed 143 kerbals...ya see...I made a space station, it seats 30+...I failed to get it into orbit 2 times...failed to get to space once..and after achieving orbit and finding it to be a useless ISS (no refueling etc), I recovered it, and put 16 wheels on it, and decided to take it to the moon.

328 parts, 36ish kerbals, lots of lag, and god knows what it weighed...needless to say on my attempt to establish orbit it dipped under 65,000, taking all the men to their graves (except the 3 immortals).

I also impacted the Mun 5 more times with smaller landing craft...by impacting, I mean IMPACTING.

I have landed once on the Mun so far, and can get there regularly, so Im coming along.

[KerbMav]

It is destined to be the first ship that I've landed on the surface of Eve and returned.

Better luck with it than with your Duna plane!

And yes, 17t sounds little, but someone managed to get it down to 14t.

Nothing inside the game for me, but been musing about my Explorer III design and maybe adding a smaller lander for the more difficult moons on my anomaly tour.

Also I fear for my first try to return from Eve that is due for monts now - but while FAR will reduce the drag a bit, KIDS will kill my engine power ... maybe I will go stock for Eve?

[Cirocco]

... KIDS will kill my engine power ... maybe I will go stock for Eve?

Slightly off-topic question: what's KIDS? Does it push the Isp of engines lower than the 1 atmo limit when ambient pressure rises beyond that? If so: go full aerospike for every stage except the top one. I managed a stock sea-level return lander with nothing but aerospikes (and the OP tiny engine for the uppermost stage, forgot the name) which came in at 160 tons and a smidge.

mind you the only reason I went full aerospike was because I assumed that the linear drop in Isp with pressure didn't have a lower limit and simply went on past 1 atmo

[KerbMav]

Kerbal Isp Difficulty Scaler

Instead of making the engines use more fuel in atmosphere - like the stock game does and which is unrealistic - KIDS adjusts the thrust of the engines accordingly while fuel usage is constant.

And yes, it can be set to adjust ISP to zero if the pressure gets high enough.

[corvustech]

I launched a successful rescue of Bill and Jeb. Jeb crashed my first lunar lander and Bill ran out of fuel saving him so the two have been in orbit for 5 years. After enough failed attempts with refueling probes I finally got a ship out there to Klaw and bring them home. Images and story to come. It was a great tutorial on how to klawdock.

[Concentric]

Just ran a quick Mun mission using maneuver nodes for docking only with my two-stage lander (see the link in my signature for the .craft file). In the mean time, the FourJade ship escaped Kerbin orbit and is now in Kerbol orbit on its way out to its mid-course correction for Jool.

Got orbit, deorbited the last lifter stage, did a twist-dock maneuver, burned at Munrise (immediately after the twist-dock, which was immediately after deorbiting the lifter, immediately after circularisation. So apparently, I timed things pretty perfectly for a mission I sent on a whim). Then got a free-return trajectory, burned into an elliptical retrograde equatorial orbit, transferred to the lander over the solar terminator, undocked and landed. Finally, put the ascent stage up into a circular retrograde equatorial orbit at the height of the orbital portion's periapse, adjusted the orbit to get an encounter in a few orbits time (here's where I needed the maneuver nodes), docked and transferred back. When I flung the lander can away, it was immediately time to burn to escape retrograde to Kerbin - more fortuitous timing. The return and landing was straightforward and direct.

Might try to do a Minmus mission without maneuver nodes, next. I'll probably send something that doesn't need to do any docking...

[Starwhip]

I discovered that 10% thrust with an ANT engine is necessary at Gilly.

[luizopiloto]

sent a new cubesat to route communications above KSC...

Cubesat's real mission? Well... It's a honeypot for ufos...

Edited June 3, 2014 by luizopiloto

[HafCoJoe]

Don't let it sink!

I built and tested a miniature enterprise shaped ion powered plane that can do multiple 30-40 m/s loops around the R&D bridge. No pics sorry but its really cute and awesome.

[Shna_na]

I scrapped the whole asteroid idea and launched a lander probe for Duna. It's currently in LKO, waiting for a Duna transder window. I plan to launch a few so that I've got plenty to go to various planets whenever their transfer window comes a cropper. Here it is so far:

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[Xacktar]

I started a new career mode. Off to a fantastic start!

[soulsource]

Well, it took me a while, but I finally filled all the tanks of the 2 Kiloton (yes, it has 1987 tons) Eve lander that I still had in LKO. Now I moved it to a high orbit, somewhere between the Mun and Minmus. I didn't go out farther, since I want to have a reasonable orbiting period in order not to miss the transfer window. Next, I'll send up some refuelling ships again. I didn't look up how much fuel exactly was used for getting into the higher orbit, but I guess it will take four refuelling flights with the tankers originally designed to bring fuel to Eve. Since doing an orbital rendezvous will take a few days at that a high orbit, I'll probably send them in parallel. Anyhow, I'll need several of them when the transfer window opens, since the lander will still burn quite a lot of fuel on its way to Eve and has to be refilled there, before any landing can be attempted.

Anyhow, getting the tankers to orbit will be fun. I'm meanwhile certain, that the biggest decoupler is not balanced properly, and my current lifter design has one of those in the central stack...

Edit: I just checked about launching from Eve and the landers weight: I'm meanwhile also convinced that 17 tons is possible, yet I'm afraid that such a craft needs to be launched off a mountain (or at least some reasonable hill). Anyhow, I'm now sure that my lander is way too big, also for a launch from sea level. Not that it'd get much farther than orbit (hopefully) in its current design, but with a little bit of optimization in the uppermost stages it might be possible to make it (much) lighter. Anyhow, it's on its way already...

Edited June 3, 2014 by soulsource

[BJ Quest]

While I started and new career game Bob took the new DV Cruiser out for a spin.

I guess I have to keep the keys locked up.

[ximrm]

Sent a larger probe to Eve,to find some kethane.After enough scanning, I didn't want to leave spacedebris and went for a landing.

It's not easy to find land with beauty mods installed.

The land was moving fast,turned out to be a cloud.

Finally.

Doesn't look like land.

Second approach...

Btw, is there a mod that replaces the water shaders?

[cantab]

Completed some station operations, bringing up three transfer stages (plus one broken one) and a science return capsule. And had a bit of a scare when after docking one of the transfer stages the whole station began swaying and bending alarmingly, SAS making it worse. I feared the kraken was assaulting my station, but brought it back under control by shifting some fuel around and changing the "control from here".

I guess that what happens when you have a load of weight hanging off a regular docking port. Definitely will use Seniors throughout on future stations.

[Robotengineer]

I made a mod!

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Technically just a mod extension, but an achievement and an improvement nonetheless. Will post a thread with a download when I get perms to use the KAS winch thing.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Robotengineer
KAS not Kethane.

[joekidd1992]

I built a rocket with an atomic engine and used it to go to the Mun.

[Duke23]

My current record for a fully fuelled ship is somewhere between 14000 and 15000 m/s dV remaining when in LKO, split across three LV-N powered stages. The reason I built that monster was that I totally overestimated the dV needed to go to a low orbit around Eve. I don't have a screenshot, but I can make one today in the evening, since the ship is on a test-flight to Minmus. Well, the design might come handy when I'm going to explore the outer part of the Kerbol system.

To be fair that had about half it's fuel left after circularizing, but it was still enough to make the transfer burn to Eve and one course correction before I dropped the outer stages. That's pretty much enough to get to anywhere you want and back right? Excluding landings. I'd like to see that monster of an Eve lander you were talking about (sorry if you posted it and I missed it). It took me a lot of head scratching to build a ship with that much DV, the challenge wasn't putting it together but getting it up into orbit. My previous "heavy lifters" were good for about 120 tons if you balanced and strutted it JUST right and I ended up getting 5000-8500 DV from LKO with a 50-150 ton ship which I thought was impressive at the time, but then again those were fully reusable... It's a process Also though I usually tend to sacrifice a little DV for power since I hate long burn times.

Today I found out you can deorbit a kerbal on an external command seat. Yeah I really didn't think that one through. There are no parachutes and no actual command module on that... So I slowed down as best I could and lithobraked with the bottom stage. I was going to do a full powered landing and set it down nice and easy, but something about the orientation of the command seat caused the navball to be off and I couldn't kill all my horizontal velocity before impact. The top stage and the Kerbal survived, but the Kerbal glitched out and was uncontrollable. Probably because the top stage kind of landed on his head.

Wait, should this go in the confessions thread?

Then I sent a two-part mission to my asteroid "colony" (a term which I use loosely for one hitchhiker container).

First I must explain that yesterday I sent a giant thrown together ship to Eve, landed on Gilly, and came back (this post). Well there was no method to get back to solid ground from that ship and I came in on a retrograde orbit (which my asteroid is also in) so I dropped the Kerbal off there with all the data and sent this up.

Part one -- Obviously, get the Kerbal with all my data back home.

Part two -- Leave an escape pod on the asteroid so anyone who happens to be there isn't stranded.

It could have gone better. I found out that KAS winches (or maybe asteroids?) don't like time warp, and that when you decouple parts of an assembly like that while winches are attached, things tend to get all bouncy and slam into other things, and cause everything to spin.

"Whatever that was BS, I don't even care anymore. Let's just get out of here."

Edited June 4, 2014 by Duke23

[problemecium]

Today I had another go at establishing a Mun Base. Thanks to recently unlocking the Kerbodyne parts, things were going rather well - I had the ship in orbit, on its way to the Mun... when I realized I had forgotten to include the rovers, which were half the point of the base.

So the rest of the day was spent developing a skycrane with which to deliver the rovers to the base after the fact, which, to avoid a bunch of repetitive missions, involved building a big wobbly contraption to hold multiple rovers as well as the skycrane, with resources to refuel said skycrane and return it to Kerbin once finished.

As far as THAT goes, things are still going as well as could be hoped.

P.S.: My self-capturing asteroid decided to come early and put itself on a boring flyby course. Given the low encounter velocity, I'm still debating whether to leave it or try and capture it myself.

Edited June 4, 2014 by parameciumkid

[Evil Ed]

Finished a science harvest run at Minmus. Brought back the lander+lab/nukeengine-unit to Kerbin and sent Jeb to the surface with all the science. Modified the lander and added two tiny RC-rovers. Sent the lander + refuel up to the lab and did a successful docking. Decoupled the tank and crashed it on Kerbin. Transferred to Duna and did a beautiful aerobrake. Triple checked fuel levels on the lander, parachute timings etc. and undocked. Maneuvered away from the lab using RCS and activated main engine to begin the descent. But wait? Somehow, while trying to fit the rovers, I managed to remove the engine from the lander!

Decided to brake with RCS and at least learn something about how the parachutes works on Duna and maybe even decouple the rovers before crashing on Duna surface. Managed to bring down the speed and entered Duna atmosphere. Didn't look good as it seemed like I was going to (crash) land at high ground but deployed the parachutes anyway. Also dropped the rovers that both got stuck under the landing gears but managed to wiggle the lander so the rovers could separate.

The descent speed didn't look that bad, around 10m/s, so with full RCS-burn I actually managed to get the lander to the surface and flipped over it was still in one piece with the door facing upwards. The rovers also fell down in good shape, just one broken wheel each which became Jebs first assignment to fix. Science gathered, rovers tested and crashed. Jeb is now waiting for yet another rescue mission. This will be a challenge as I must bring the rescue lander within walking distance of Jeb, and will probably have to try different approaches before successful.

Unfortunately for Jeb Star Citizen - Arena Commander just got released - so I guess he will have to wait for a couple of days...

Edited June 4, 2014 by Evil Ed

[soulsource]

To be fair that had about half it's fuel left after circularizing, but it was still enough to make the transfer burn to Eve and one course correction before I dropped the outer stages. That's pretty much enough to get to anywhere you want and back right? Excluding landings. I'd like to see that monster of an Eve lander you were talking about (sorry if you posted it and I missed it). It took me a lot of head scratching to build a ship with that much DV, the challenge wasn't putting it together but getting it up into orbit. My previous "heavy lifters" were good for about 120 tons if you balanced and strutted it JUST right and I ended up getting 5000-8500 DV from LKO with a 50-150 ton ship which I thought was impressive at the time, but then again those were fully reusable... It's a process Also though I usually tend to sacrifice a little DV for power since I hate long burn times.

The long burn times are actually the biggest issue of my 1400 dV ship. In order to keep it as light as possible it ended up with a very small thrust to weight ratio, pushing the burn times in the dozens of minutes range... As I'm not at home right now, I don't have the screenshot here (and sadly forgot to upload it yesterday). Nevertheless, I can again post a link to the screenshots of the Eve lander. As said, the ship had to be launched with just enough fuel to get it to LKO, where I refueled it compeltely. Now it's in a high orbit around Kerbin, about 100 m/s below escape velocity and will be refueled again to bring as much fuel as possible to Eve, to keep the number of required interplanetary refuelling missions reasonable.

[Zad Fnark]

I made my first landing on Gilly. A whole different experience that was.

I was lucky in that I entered Eve's SOI pretty much right on Gilly's plane of orbit. Some light aerobraking did most of the rest.

Landing there was slow and painful. I seemed to fall at < 15 m/s, so I accelerated towards the ground to speed things up. Once down, the whole ship wanted to float away. Each step walked seemed like a launch for orbit. It was nice getting around 1,400 science out of it.

ZF-

[Special Agent Sigvan]

Kill 9000000000 kerbals.

Colony mission gone horribly wrong.