What did you do in KSP1 today?

[TrooperCooper]

I went to Gilly yesterday in my modded career with Bill...

Take off from the launchpad...

Approaching the tiny moon...

Planted the flag...

After take off, docked with a pre-positioned modular service station that provides lifesupport untill the return-window opens and also refills the fuel on Bills ship...

Coming home for christmas... with loads of science.

[Laie]

My most recent attempt at a transfer stage. Easy attachment of more tanks, engines, or more of the same: 2, 3, 4 of these can be safely stacked together. It didn't occur to me until after the fact that adding similar amounts of fuel&engines would do *nothing* to increase my delta-v.

Anyways, here's a small gallery from the test firings. At least it doesn't wobble.

http://ksp.schnobs.de/gallery/transfer_stage.html

(Btw, how could I properly embed such a non-imgur gallery?)

[Floppster]

Lost my first astronaut during a test of an automated one-man transfer/rescue craft.

[Floppster]

Nothing here, carry on.

Edited June 24, 2014 by Floppster
Double post

[Fizwalker]

I assembled my first permanently space-borne ship, whom I quite mundanely called the KSS Kerbin (Which will be a placeholder name until I come up with something better....)

Crew: Minimum of 3 (1 Commander, 2 in the Lab), Maximum 7

Total of 5 docking ports, 1 for crew and supply transfer, 4 for landers or other payloads.

Electrical power provided by 1 250MW Fission reactor (good for roughly 3 Kerbin Years), and solar panels.

Mission parameters: Designed to move between Kerbin, Mun and Minmus.

I'll be running it's shakedown cruise later this evening.

[Overfloater]

Today I have conducted a 2nd test flight to Duna, with a 40 ton dummy payload - it was successful.

I have developed the VIII-C variant of Astroliner, which has more fuel then the base version, and an aerospike on it's belly.

179 tons on liftoff, more then it's certified, so ascent was slow.

Managed to land safely on 1st try, just like on 1st test flight. On previous crafts it took at least 3 attempts!

When returning, I've encountered an old nuisance - plane starts disintegrating when approaching the space center. All the precautions I took when building didn't work!

So I traveled back in time with F9 and went to the abandoned airport island.

The runway there is very short, but the heavier my planes are, the better they are at short landings:

See? it's a very short runway.

---< Edit >---

Can you post the .craft?

Sure! Although that's only the base version - I'll publish the B & C variants when I get back to my other comp

Edited June 24, 2014 by Overfloater

[Robotengineer]

Today I have conducted a 2nd test flight to Duna, with a 40 ton dummy payload - it was successful.

I have developed the VIII-C variant of Astroliner, which has more fuel then the base version, and an aerospike on it's belly.

179 tons on liftoff, more then it's certified, so ascent was slow.

Managed to land safely on 1st try, just like on 1st test flight. On previous crafts it took at least 3 attempts!

When returning, I've encountered an old nuisance - plane starts disintegrating when approaching the space center. All the precautions I took when building didn't work!

So I traveled back in time with F9 and went to the abandoned airport island.

The runway there is very short, but the heavier my planes are, the better they are at short landings:

--snip--

See? it's a very short runway.

Can you post the .craft?

[Victus]

I created an FTL drive....but not with interstellar

[GiantTank]

I went to Duna.

Ike sucks.

[Victus]

I went to Duna.

Ike sucks.

I like Ike.. Duna is also my favourite place in Kerbal.

[GiantTank]

I like Ike.. Duna is also my favourite place in Kerbal.

Ike messes up so many orbits. Flings you onto escape paths. Flings you into Duna.

[Floppster]

Ike messes up so many orbits. Flings you onto escape paths. Flings you into Duna.

Timewarping into SOI changes are worse. I can deal with Ike having an obnoxiously large SOI and likes to destroy crafts, but when my simple Mun flyby made to put me in a lower orbit decides to send me off to Moho, I just lose it.

But back to the thread topic. Today (tonight, 2 am here) I wrote my first MM patch, learning loads in the progress. It contains editing, deleting, adding and a change in ISP which was problematic.

The best way to learn something really is by doing it

Edited June 25, 2014 by Floppster

[the_bT]

What do you do when you want to fly an electric plane on Eve and have FAR installed?

You make a plane that can fit into a 3.75m fairing, that's what.

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Once I realized that there was technically now law against asymmetric planes the whole thing got way easier.

Will it fly on eve? There is only one way to find out

I'm so not looking forward to rebuilding the whole thing with all hinges in the folded position .

But if I just stick it into a fairing like this and fold it on the launch pad (should work I think) I can't strut it properly. Which is the kerbal equivalent of doom in a can. (Or fairing in this case.)

[Overfloater]

I went to Duna.

Ike sucks.

Big time.

...edit: oops, I thought you said "it sucks"

[smysha]

Today I went to Duna.

Ike is OK.

Duna sucks.

I just wanted to have good parachuted landing...

"Bill/Bob/Jebediah Kermann exeeded G-force tolerance"

So, my whole Duna mission crew died.

F...k that planet. You can't aerobrake effective because of thin atmosphere and parachutes just sucks. In semi-deployed status they can't do anything. When fully deployed, they just tear lander apart. Or killing crew, with Deadly Reentry.

Sorry for grammar/spelling mistakes if I have them. I'm pretty much mad right now.

[problemecium]

Today I accomplished my second big milestone this week: for the first time since Career Mode became a thing, I've actually cleared the whole entire tech tree. Every last node! (not counting the "experimental" ones)

This was thanks in part to my discovery that EVA Kerbals and Mobile Labs can hold an infinite amount of Science data. By constructing my own command pod out of an external chair and some procedural fairings, I was able to grab about 1800 Science from my Minmus station and haul it all back to Kerbin in one trip. Perhaps a little cheaty? But the game allowed me to do it, so I did.

[Duke23]

I played around and visited the Mun arch today, brought a couple soccer balls up with me to see what happened... The one on the lander was supposed to decouple with the rest but it didn't. I crashed a rover as usual and then jetpacked up on top of the arch. Then I flew my lander over and put it on the arch as well (practicing with VTOL stuff on Kerbin really helped with the accuracy of that maneuver ) and realized I'm gonna have to go salvage an RTG off my crashed rover if I want to actually leave in that lander because my engines don't have alternators. I have videos of my exploits there, I'm working on throwing them together into something coherent.

Today I went to Duna.

Ike is OK.

Duna sucks.

I just wanted to have good parachuted landing...

"Bill/Bob/Jebediah Kermann exeeded G-force tolerance"

So, my whole Duna mission crew died.

F...k that planet. You can't aerobrake effective because of thin atmosphere and parachutes just sucks. In semi-deployed status they can't do anything. When fully deployed, they just tear lander apart. Or killing crew, with Deadly Reentry.

Sorry for grammar/spelling mistakes if I have them. I'm pretty much mad right now.

First Duna landing? First one is always white knuckle or catastrophic I think... I'm sure you'll nail it next time You have to come in absurdly low for a proper aerobrake, use lots of chutes, and most likely light up the engines to slow down just before touching down. Try timing the chutes to fully open at slightly different altitudes to reduce the chances of tearing anything apart, I've definitely had some unplanned disassemblies landing there. I've never done it with Deadly Reentry so I'm sure that drives the difficulty up quite a bit.

On the third launch attempt I managed to get the Peacock Mk3 SSTO with a lander docked to it up to LKO with plenty of fuel left. The first two attempts made it to orbit, but the remaining fuel was not enough to do anything useful with it. This one nevertheless had easily enough to go to Minmus.

The flight path to Minmus was planned to include a gravity assist at the Mun, yet the plotted course deviated a bit on every SOI change, so some small corrections were necessary. Entering Minmus orbit went smooth, as did undocking the lander, landing on Minmus, docking with the plane again and going on a return trajectory.

The landing worked more or less as well, nevertheless the still docked empty lander touched the ground and was destroyed. The science (and lander pilot) had been moved to the planes cockpit beforehand, so the loss was not critical and I still count the mission a full success.

Interesting design, I like the look of that. I did see your reply to me several days ago but I got distracted and couldn't find it again to properly reply. I've been meaning to give it a test flight myself, I did grab the file you posted. I'm trying to absorb some knowledge on what makes these types of craft work "properly" lol.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Duke23

[soulsource]

For the Peacock plane, the most important part is to get the vertical speed at high altitudes "just right". It cannot go much higher than 30000 m before the jet engines start to apply asymmetric force, yet the LV-N will use too much fuel due to drag if the apoapsis is not already above 35000 m before they are ignited. Also every m/s horizontal speed the craft has when switching engines helps greatly. My usual goal for the jet engine stage is an apoapsis above 35000 m, and speed wrt. the surface above 1650 m/s (better: above 1700 m/s). To get this, I usually go for a pitch angle of >45° right after launch (turbojets have a low Isp at low heights) and keep that until 18000 m, and then reduce it to slightly above 10°. Then I try to keep the pitch at this angle (which will change if you solely rely on SAS due to Kerbins curvature), until speed and apoapsis are OK. Afterwards I usually leave the SAS on, and only reduce thrust if intake air is getting low. Luckily, the Turbojet engines work with very little. With a bit of luck, you can keep the plane stable with just 0.03 or even less units. As soon as the jet engines start to really pull asymmetrically and reducing thrust does no longer help (at some point drag gets stronger than thrust), it's time to switch off the Turbojets, close the intakes (this is *very* important) and launch the LV-Ns. Also, the pitch angle should be increased in order to get to low drag heights asap, I usually use around 30°.

But back to topic: Yeterday evening I sent two additional tankers and a rover towards Eve. The rover is still unmanned, yet it has a cockpit that will hopefully be used by the future pilot of the Eve lander (which will start its transfer to Eve in 2 ingame days).

Since I stumbled across this: Is there a way to show ascending/descending nodes of non-closed orbits? I can get to Eves SOI with a single burn from LKO, yet the flight path is tilted and would require quite a bit inclination adjustment at Eve. Therefore I'd like to do a correction burn at the node, which the game does not show... If I miss Eves SOI, the AN/DN are shown... I'm now considering to misalign the transfer orbit on purpose, simply to get that info...

[Duke23]

I love how these spaceplanes are so picky with how they make orbit. Mine that I refer to as Valkyrie will start to flameout right around 24km no matter what I'm doing so that's when I toggle modes for the RAPIERs, cut the Turbojets, fire the NERVAs and pitch up to about 45 degrees. I try to have it moving at least 1400m/s by then unless I accidentally flameout early from not paying attention, but a little over 1500 is preferable (note: I may be referring to orbital speed instead of surface, I just let it switch when it decides to so it's one less thing I have to remember). Much more than that takes too long to be worth hanging around at that altitude. Once the apo is around 100km (a little earlier is fine but I'm impatient) I'll cut the RAPIERs and continue on NERVAs alone. Until recently I didn't even realize you could close intakes so I need to be testing that to see what kind of improvements I could get.

Ah, and my video is finally finished. These are my exploits at the Mun earlier which include: Unsuccessfully trying to grab a soccer ball (KAS config that I must have misplaced), crashing a rover, ramming a Kerbal's head into things, jetpacking to the Mun arch, and flying my lander to it. WARNING: Do not watch if you don't want to know where the arch is. I did go grab the RTG from my rover but that was after the video was already being uploaded. It's sped up 2x, and also muted because I was watching Netflix at the time.

[Vaporo]

I built a FAR boxplane.

Pictures aren't working for me right now, but I can say that it's actually horribly unstable. The only reason that it can fly in an even vaguely straight line is because of six reaction wheels on the inside and the fact that I had Mechjeb control the entire flight. Including the throttle.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Vaporo

[Bishop149]

I Finally unlocked "Basic Fusion" on the Interstellar tech tree, 3000 science is a lot for one node. . . but hey it's high tech stuff.

I need another 3000 for the next step . .

Gonna put a Fusion plant in orbit but assembing my Fisson plant from lots of bits was a pain in ass and even strutted up it wobbles quite a bit, so I'm gonna go for orbit in a single launch this time. Which means I need a much bigger lifter. . . current best is ~60 tons, thus far my new one has shown it can do 175 tons, aiming for 200 tons which the current design might make.

[ElFredo1998]

Today I finished my journey to Duna and Ike with the largest spacecraft I have ever built in Kerbins orbit. Now it is on its way back home to Kerbin. This will bring me every piece of science from Duna and Ike (about 4000+).

[Guz]

brought my Kerbonaut back home today

no docking / in a single launched flight from Kerbin:

landed on Laythe, Vall, Bob, Pol, Eeloo, Dres, Duna, Ike & the Mun and returned to Kerbin

full vid here:

http://youtu.be/jDXfQMvz-R8

[nli2work]

released my first addon part

Download here!

[michaelhester07]

The quest to build a Stanford Torus continued last night.

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highlights from last night:

Netherdyne engineers got tired of hearing about ore shipments exploding on launchpads on the mun so they built a new holographic assisted extraplanetary launchpad. It uses state of the art solid light holograms to secure the ship during construction. Launches no longer destroy or deflect the launchpad and larger ships are now possible to build (up to 20 meters diameter).

A new construction station was launched after the previous one exploded thanks to the ore containers expanding. The new station was put into a polar orbit to allow more efficient ore launches. With 2 windows where the ore can be launched onto the same plane as the construction station I save fuel on rendezvous. A new 800 ton ore payload launch vehicle takes advantage of the lower Mun gravity to save time in ore deliveries to the construction station.