What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Ruthgar]

Landed and installed two more modules to my Mun Base. Maybe three more and the whole thing might be operational already.

http://i.imgur.com/DD3oVpV.jpg

I am accumulating quite some waste in the vicinity though.

http://i.imgur.com/VzTEbQ5.jpg

Very nice, have you thought about some type of lander transport, assuming you have access to the clamp-o-tron or the docking ports that is. If so, build a small depot station up in Mun orbit, dock your transport ships there, and after you transfer all the fuel they have left into the station, decouple the transport engine/tanks, along with activating a series of those tiny srb's setup so they fire in reverse to the stations orbit. The now debris parts now fall to the mun and destroy themselves on impact. Then you attach your orbital tug up there to the payload, then move the payload under the lander transport. Dock the tug, launch the lander, land at the mun base, drop the payload off, position the payload where you want it, hook it up, then either leave the lander at mun base until your next tranport arrives at the station, or send it back to the station now, dock it, refuel and wait. If you don't have access to the clamp - o trons and dock o trons, I can understand why you're accumulating a debris field. One roleplaying suggestion in that case is make a list of what is still intact, build a juryrig ship out of that list of parts back in the VAB, then edit it onto the mun near your base, and then delete those debris items. Or just break out the space tnt again

[Kerbal01]

Nothing, since my rents deleted the game when I was playing it when I wasn't supposed to. I'll try to get it on a school computer in little over a month, so hang tight.

[Ruthgar]

Just call him Bob 'Duke' from Hazard County

[EdFred]

Landed on Dres, (first time) did science, and did an immediate launch back to Kerbin. Had enough dV that I didn't even bother to wait for the transfer window to come back.

[TrooperCooper]

Very nice, have you thought about some type of lander transport, assuming you have access to the clamp-o-tron or the docking ports that is. If so, build a small depot station up in Mun orbit, dock your transport ships there, and after you transfer all the fuel they have left into the station, decouple the transport engine/tanks, along with activating a series of those tiny srb's setup so they fire in reverse to the stations orbit. The now debris parts now fall to the mun and destroy themselves on impact. Then you attach your orbital tug up there to the payload, then move the payload under the lander transport. Dock the tug, launch the lander, land at the mun base, drop the payload off, position the payload where you want it, hook it up, then either leave the lander at mun base until your next tranport arrives at the station, or send it back to the station now, dock it, refuel and wait. If you don't have access to the clamp - o trons and dock o trons, I can understand why you're accumulating a debris field. One roleplaying suggestion in that case is make a list of what is still intact, build a juryrig ship out of that list of parts back in the VAB, then edit it onto the mun near your base, and then delete those debris items. Or just break out the space tnt again

TNT is MUCH easier than that. Game still runs smooth at the base, but once I got to many debries arround, I'll just delete them. Of course its cheating on the one hand. But on the other hand, its only cheating because the game / computer cant handle the ammount of parts in one area when it gets to much...

Edited July 8, 2014 by TrooperCooper

[Richy teh space man]

One of my cargo planes meeting up with a tour ship in space.

Not sure whether to send it to Moho or Dres, may flip a coin and see.

[NecroBones]

My lander for Tylo is extremely heavy, it weighs almost 100 tons, does someone have a better idea for a Tylo lander? It has enough fuel to land on Tylo, but the design is terrible. It is stable as a rock, it can land in steep terrain, but it is extremely fuel inefficient when it is that heavy. I'm sure I could have built a better craft, but after three hours of staging, testing and strutting the lander I was to tired to start over again.

http://i.imgur.com/hl5Zpao.png

Here is what my first Tylo lander looked like. just shy of 70 tons, and worked great:

[No one]

I landed on and returned from Eeloo.

Well, I say "returned". What actually happened was I launched, escaped Eeloo, found a maneuver node which would bring me to a Kerbin intercept, throttled up and switched windows on my computer to do other stuff while waiting for the rocket to be done (It would take ~10 minutes, but I wasn't away from KSP for that long). When I switched back to check on KSP, it was loading. I was like "OH NO DID THE KRAKEN STRIKE?" "That ship had practically no parts, how the heck does the kraken eat it?" (It was just a command chair, OTKO2 probe core, a few xenon tanks, an ion thruster, 4 1x6 solar panels, a parachute, and lots of batteries). Then when it finished loading it was back at KSP, displaying all the science I had earned from that, as if it had been recovered. I went to the R&D and checked on science, all the science reports I'd been bring back was there, and the pilot was in the astronaut complex.

So I landed on Eeloo, escaped back to Kerbol, then magically teleported back to Kerbin. I'm counting it as a valid return and saying I'm done with Eeloo, since the game counted it as a return and also I was pretty much done, all I needed to do was finish that burn, make a few corrections to hit Kerbin rather than doing a flyby, and then activate the parachute. The craft was extremely light and small and had no chance of crashing, and also all the science was in the pilot, so there were no science bits to break off. Also I had more than enough fuel.

[Ruthgar]

TNT is MUCH easier than that. Game still runs smooth at the base, but once I got to many debries arround, I'll just delete them. Of course its cheating on the one hand. But on the other hand, its only cheating because the game / computer cant handle the ammount of parts in one area when it gets to much...

True, had suggested the "salvaged" vehicle idea as it would be somewhat realistic for if/when we start setting up permanent bases on the Moon, Mars, etc... there will be three types of ships, ones constructed completely from what's built here on Earth, one's built from parts made at the bases, and one's that get made from the reusable salvaged parts of the original ships

[Ruthgar]

Here is what my first Tylo lander looked like. just shy of 70 tons, and worked great:

http://i.imgur.com/I1wc7MV.png

http://i.imgur.com/sitrLpS.png

Looks similar to my current general purpose lander I'm using on the mun/minimus just a little bigger/smaller in some ways (for multiple landings per missions, no refueling)

Best screenshot I have of it right now, with the two detachable rovers connected to the top of it. (rcs to lift them off, and flip them. Current rover as seen there works fine on Min, but underpowered for rcs liftoff on Mun, but does have enough to just flip off the lander.)

[Ruthgar]

Bob 'Duke' managed to get his rover traveling a nice 52m/s, or just over 180km/hr. Course he did this traveling to the bottom of a Mun crater, and managed to blow all 8 tires, but managed to stop it upright, with all solar panels intact thanks to the rcs props. Quick tire repair and he was on his way again, however the walls of the crater proved to be too steep for him to get the rover out. So after managing to travel 38km from the lander he abandoned the rover, used his eva jets to get out of the crater and to a large flat area, and called Jeb in the lander to come pick him up. Jeb and Bill then flew the lander 1km off the surface of the Mun at horizontal speeds that topped 200m/s, successfully landed 200 meters from Bob, picked him up, and then returned to Kerbin. There was a moment of panic during the flight to pick up Bob, when they realised that the lander was not generating any power and the batteries were down to a charge of 80-90 (from 720) thanks to the lights and SAS being on, AND a solar eclipse happening during the entire flight thanks to Kerbin. Current lander has LV-909s for engines, which you know does not generate power, hence the reason why they were so low on power (and the lights had been on for about 20-30 mins during the eclipse already). Didn't notice the eclipse as there was still plenty of light to see with.

[Jouni]

I built a new heavy lander in my career mode game (using FAR and DRE but without biomes and science experiments) and did some flight tests with it. Because the lander had over 3000 m/s of delta-v, I decided to take it to the Mun.

My previous landing site was conveniently under the orbit, so I landed next to it.

The real destination of the lander is probably going to be Moho.

[cantab]

Working on my Laythe boat. Finally satisfied with the basic superstructure. She isn't exactly pretty but nothing built with structural panels ever is. I need to add finishing touches like guardrails and science instruments, and strut it up a bit, before I tackle kind of the most important aspects: making her float and go.

[GoSlash27]

I tested a new method for precision deorbiting. Mixed results so far.

I also worked on what I hope will be a Kerbin SSTO ion glider... with no wings

[coreross]

My long range probe made it to Jool.

[Thorium]

How many stages do you have? For Tylo a single-stage lander is possible but will be heavy and inefficient, two stage would be better. Either the conventional descent/ascent stage approach, or a lower stage that does the deorbit and velocity cancelling burns then is allowed to crash, so you just land the lighter upper stage.

Besides that, just seek to trim unnecessary weight. For example you can use multiple small lander cans, or even external seats, to accommodate your kerbals, and can take your science data and leave the Goo and Materials parts behind before making your ascent.

Thank you for advice!

I started building a new lander today, which turned out has 6822 m/s of dV and weighs 56,5 tons. The new lander is asparagus-staged and will perform the deorbit burn, the landing and the ascent back to the mothership.

Haha, by the way, when I tested the old lander yesterday I experienced Kraken throwing the lander into the bottom of the sea when I landed on water, maybe because off some kind of weird strut-bug.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Thorium

[coreross]

Ive been exploring Jool and her moons, super awesome.

[XtensionCord]

Clipping my friend.. Clipping..

(Image)

That’s a nice looking Ares 1 you have there. Does it have to use any of the Orion Capsule’s fuel while getting to orbit? I would imagine that having an extra SRB would dramatically improve performance.

I think I will try clipping. Did you surface-attach the two SRBs to the second-stage separator with some structural pieces and then put the large-to-medium adapter on afterwards?

[TrooperCooper]

The last Life Support Processing Unit incoming for landing at Mun Base Alpha (see prior posts here and here)...

Decoupling the travel-stage...

While the travel stage impacts on the surface next to the base, creating another wreck, the rover is descending to land...

Touchdown within spit range...

Moved into position and deployed the payload. Bill already came out to do his part...

Doing the dirty ground work again...

And then the base was completed. The following Mun day all life support processing units were running round the clock without a problem. And now the time has come to do the 5-year habitation study experiment and proove that Kerbalkind has gained a fully independent foothold away from its home planet Kerbin.

Edited July 8, 2014 by TrooperCooper

[TrooperCooper]

Well, considering the effort I put into this (about a dozen landings)... this wasnt really worth it.

But I guess I have not gone with the most efficient approach. In rerto-perspective, it probably would have been better to land a crapload of empty life support tanks with one ship, another ship with a single processing unit, fill up the tanks over time and then come with a Kerbal and do the study. Lesson learned.

[Cuky]

I did my first manned mission to Minmus today. First try was a failure because one of two boosters just fell away and I lost control of the rocket. 2nd launch was successful but when I had achieved orbit around Kerbin I have noticed that I forgot to put solar panels on my CSM/Lander module. So I detached my transfer and science stages and deorbited back to Kerbin. 3rd launch was success and I went to the Minmus. While landing on Minmus I used a bit more fuel than I wanted to, but I did all the science I could on that Mission and set course back to Kerbin. When I went to bring my periapsis down I was about 150-200 m/s short because my tank was dry. Luckily I still had some monoproppelant left in so I waited for my craft to come on apoapsis which was just outside of Minmus' SOI and I only needed 30-40m/s to bring my periapsis down enough for landing. Landing went without a problem, although it was a bit hot so I came back home with almost 600 science

[LordCorwin]

Second successful Mun landing achieved!

I did another landing with a similar probe, but it was quite difficult to manage, my horizontal speed increased and started to do rolls over the surface until it crashed.

This time I added some RCS to facilitate control, and finally achived landing.

My intention is to come back to Kerbin, though I'm not sure if I have enough fuel.

Lord

[Karriz]

I sent a small probe to Eve, it's quite thrilling with FAR and deadly re-entry installed.

More pics.

[munseeker]

Building a massive tanker/tug in Kerbal orbit to finally get Jeb and his crew out of the solar orbit they've been stranded in and on to Duna, where at this point about half a dozen station modules are awaiting the construction crew.

Meanwhile Bob and his crew on long duration mission aboard the space station around Kerbin are preparing to be replaced by a new crew. A few weeks back on the ground before they'll go to the Mun!

[dryer_lint]

I finished the Whack-a-moon tour, and visited the Mun and Minmus in one mission. No orbital assembly or docking, because I'm lazy- I MEAN... "I LIKE CHALLENGES". Turns out it actually wasn't that hard with the nuclear engines...