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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Built a launch booster that was capable of carrying my current design of my primary use lander, getting it to Duna, and still have fuel onboard for the lander to dock with it (after it landed on Duna), fill all of it tanks, then undocked, and both the lander and transfer/refueling section flew to Ike idepently, lander went down to Ike, came back up, took the last bits of fuel from the refueler, then the lander went back to kerbin, and the refueler used it's RCS props to deorbit into Ike (don't like having 'dead' ships floating around if I can help it. Going to have to redesign my lander, as even though it has the fuel to transfer back to kerbin (it was designed to make multiple hops around minimus and mun without refueling) it currently only has 4 LV-909s as it's engines, which was able to get off Duna without aid, but burned a lot more fuel then it could have, also the transfer burn back to kerbin took 12-13 mins to complete (yes, my lander is VERY VERY heavy on fuel), because of the length of the burn needed, I actually used MJ to control it, that way I could just monitor the burn and not be stuck waiting on it (normally do all my burns manually).

Really glad that my redesign (tweaking) of my normal lander for this Duna mission had me adding extra mono tanks to it, as it turns out that I had wasted nearly 1k of delta-v earlier by burning on the wrong direction to get a transfer to kerbin (screwed up my calculations, then followed MJ's suggestion (which somehow got a 3 maneuver stack in the queue, the transfer maneuver was #2 it turns out, turned out I had burned on #1) so rather then getting back to kerbin with 600-800 ms left for deorbiting had to spend almost 10 mins burning the RCS props to finish the braking into kerbin orbit, then deorbiting. Ah well, live and learn, and time to go take advantage of this Jool window coming up, first need to see if this idea for a fuel tank 'cube' I designed in my head, can A. be actually built in the VAB, B. Not blow it self up on the launchpad, and finally C. manage to make it into orbit using my heavy booster design. :)

btw, here's a pic of the lander I used above

VMD8JOS.png

the center tank on the top is there just to make it easier for docking, and yes those are advanced grabbing units being used as landing gear. They don't actually latch to the ground it seems, but even landing at angles the lander no longer tries to tip (only done a 20-30 degree touchdown with it, don't want to repeat Jeb's minimus landing on a 40-50 degree slope, and what was so damn amazing with that minimus landing IS THAT THE LANDER DIDN"T TRY TO TIP AT ALL EVEN WITH JUST USING NORMAL LANDING GEAR)

Edited by Ruthgar
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yeahhhh, having a few design flaws with my mega refueler, seems that it might be a little too heavy for the couplings to handle, first launch attempt, the refueling section somehow detacted from the transfer section (no pics) slight redesing of the coupling there, and 2nd launch attempt..............why did that fuselage adapter just turn 90 degrees. Here's a pic of the results while still in flight...or rather while the rest of it was still in flight.

W1idC1O.png

well, time to go inspect the launchpad and make sure it's clear still.

*edited* attempted a second launch just so you could see what happened

l3xHdbO.png

Edited by Ruthgar
added a picture of the recreation of the accident
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I built a lander that's just about perfect for landing three kerbals and a hitchhiker on Vall and then getting the former back to orbit without much (or any) fuel left over.

I also managed to dock it to a transit vehicle in Kerbin orbit, and soon I'll strike out for the Joolian system and see if I have enough delta-V to get back home. :sticktongue:

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Jool 5 Level 2 Complete! (Mods are Mechjeb, FAR, and Stock Rebalance v2, restrictions are Single Launch, Single Lander, no Jets, no Ions, no parachutes, only Jeb can use Mechjeb, all moons and back.

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If I was to do this again, I think the biggest thing would be Action Groups. I was toggling engines and solar panels everywhere, and being able to do them all at once would have lowered my personal anxiety level.

Also, might as well have used Stock Rebalance v3- compared to V2, it nerfs reaction wheels but buffs RCS- I had plenty of RCS fuel and being able to use it for propulsion would have stretched my Dv a little furthur.

I enjoyed the challange and probably wont be touching KSP till .24 now. :P

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Epica Base Stage 4 complete. Labs and Comms installed.

Stage 5 was going to be a rover garage of some kind but the lag is so bad from the high part count that I don't think I am going to do it any time soon. I was starting to get motion sick moving the lab and comms tower in.

1388DFD72904E3E33AD20B3E0820F97C95AF9E07

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Even more budget cuts. The bean-counters wanted me to bring the price of a Mun or Minmus disposable mission ship under 18k funds. Well, okay then.

So, first I made the modification I mentioned earlier, switching the LV-909 and small decoupler on the crasher stage for a 48-7S and tiny decoupler, bringing the price down to 18012. The mass reduction counteracted the decrease in ISP, to the point that there was a net increase in dV. I could tell this by the fuel figures: 33.9 liquid fuel in the crasher stage when dropped, 11.7 in the lander as it returned.

VmvOB3.png

So, the next thing to do was obviously remove another fuel tank from the crasher stage, making it a single FL-T100 affair. This put the price at 17902 funds, and I think to get it down any further, I'm going to have to redesign the lifter entirely.

IrflHx.png

Speaking of the lifter, there was still enough fuel left in the lift core after getting Mun orbit to put the rocket on a suborbital trajectory. I used the crasher stage to decelerate, burning off much of the horizontal velocity immediately. At about 500m from the ground, the crasher stage ran dry and was staged away, and 5.29 units of the lander's fuel supply was used to touch down softly.

SDDjdo.png

JByimu.png

The return was rather simple: half an orbit, then an escape burn. Recently, I've been setting the parachute release pressure to 0.33, activating it the moment my periapse is in the atmosphere, disabling SAS and just letting the return happen on its own. This has worked out fine for me so far, and the lander tank had 7.60 liquid fuel left when it came in to land.

The cost-effectiveness of the smallest tanks seems to be rather terrible, as does their mass-fraction if the wiki is accurate. That's why I'll probably be looking into designing a cheaper lift vehicle if I end up wanting to cut more costs. Or...

This may be a terrible idea, but... if I remove the parachute, the mass reduction should save a bit of fuel... How difficult is a powered landing on Kerbin, I wonder...

Alternatively, what if I just go without boosters at all? Heresy, I know.

Edited by Concentric
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I was in the process of moving my asteroid, D class that I got in my career mode save, into a more equatorial orbit (This is really testing the limits of my patience to be honest) and I noticed something odd. I noticed my solar panels were not charging due to being blocked by something, so I decided to look into what it was that was in the way. Well here is what I seen.....

205trgg.png

Now I named my asteroid "Watch Tower" so this was a bit of a shocker when looking at it. RUN IT'S A POTATOROID!!!!!!!! I am sure this may have been noted before, but I found it kind of funny.

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On Friday 11th, Jebediah was on Minmus at roughly 21degS 10.8deg E heading NE to go sample the sloped there, when suddenly what looked like a huge cylindrical building appeared between the base of the hills and the lake horizon (ie: the base of the thing was out of sight due to the curvature of the surface of the lake). The top of the thing had a definite lip to it, as if it were topped by a short cylinder slightly wider thn the main cylinder. Colour very dark greyish-black. Size - estimated at 30-50 metres tall and wide, but this was only a guess. Seen from 2.8km I used cockpit view to zoom in on the thing, but sadly didnt think to grab a screenpic whilst in close-up. I do have one pic from the exterior view (but no idea how to post pics here). I couldn't help thinking that the thing looked somewhat like the base of a huuuge artillery shell. Which made me wonder whether some Kerbals having been reading Jules Verne... - moments after I took teh screenpic I have, the thing vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and seconds later, Jeb's rover (of a reliable standard type I use a lot on Minmus) started playing up, eventually rolling and destroying most of itself, although the cabin and Jeb survived. Bill has just arrived in a two-man rescue ship and there is no sign of the circular column. Very peculiar...

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I disposed of some surplus equipment from Kerbin Cup activities:

mC7ko5s.png

Discovered an interesting glitch effect:

PZod8lU.png

And began teaching kerbals to sing.

9BH1nGl.png

Not really. But the new kerbal astronauts choir does look good.

On Friday 11th, Jebediah was on Minmus at roughly 21degS 10.8deg E,....

This is interesting. An easter egg? Do others know of this?

Also, to post images, you must first put them in an image hosting website. Flickr, imgur, photobucket, whatever.

Edited by Tw1
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So I decided to launch a giant egg to Eve. No but seriously I built a lab with the intention of collecting atmospheric data and the data from the oceans before transporting a kerbal up to one of the highest peaks to collect land data and then make an easy launch to orbit. All went well until I hit the eject stage. Guess I have to change the angle on that seperatron!

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Since I'm going to start to have paying for parts soon, I worked out a cheap SRB-only launch vehicle for lofting an Apollo'esque orbiter.

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The spacecraft can orbit the Mun and return on its own. I'm now working on a lander and transfer-orbit kicker stage to lift on the same launcher to work with the orbiter for Mun landings.

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I have not done anything yet, but...

On Friday 11th, Jebediah was on Minmus at roughly 21degS 10.8deg E heading NE to go sample the sloped there, when suddenly what looked like a huge cylindrical building appeared between the base of the hills and the lake horizon (ie: the base of the thing was out of sight due to the curvature of the surface of the lake). The top of the thing had a definite lip to it, as if it were topped by a short cylinder slightly wider thn the main cylinder. Colour very dark greyish-black. Size - estimated at 30-50 metres tall and wide, but this was only a guess. Seen from 2.8km I used cockpit view to zoom in on the thing, but sadly didnt think to grab a screenpic whilst in close-up. I do have one pic from the exterior view (but no idea how to post pics here). I couldn't help thinking that the thing looked somewhat like the base of a huuuge artillery shell. Which made me wonder whether some Kerbals having been reading Jules Verne... - moments after I took teh screenpic I have, the thing vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and seconds later, Jeb's rover (of a reliable standard type I use a lot on Minmus) started playing up, eventually rolling and destroying most of itself, although the cabin and Jeb survived. Bill has just arrived in a two-man rescue ship and there is no sign of the circular column. Very peculiar...

I am going to investigate this today through clever use of MechJeb. I will report back. I love it when something is discovered that might be a new Easter egg!

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I disposed of some surplus equipment from Kerbin Cup activities:

This is interesting. An easter egg? Do others know of this?

Also, to post images, you must first put them in an image hosting website. Flickr, imgur, photobucket, whatever.

Ah, thank you. I have no such account, never felt the need. I might look into it just for KSP, but for now, no pics from me, then. If you don't mind my asking, how did you customise your Kerbals?

As for the anomaly - I have no idea if it's an Easter egg or just a graphics glitch. I only saw it the once, for something under half a minute. At first, it just appeared to be a black square around my target, it was only when I zoomed in from inside the cockpit that it looked like a dark column with a lip on the top. The size I was guestimating from how big my remote kethane landers look compared to the target icon at extreme visual range. I also have no idea if anybody else has seen such a thing. I only know that I've never seen anything like it before. And Bill having rescued Jebediah, it's certainly not there now (Bill had to drive through where the column appeared to be).

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Since I'm waiting for the new update, I started a new sandbox game with new mods. Today I sent a couple of Warp Drive Beacons to space, one is orbiting the Mun, another is going to Moho. I built a lander and a carrier that will hopefully dock to the Warp Drive (already built in the VAB, not yet launched).

This is the lander with it's carrier.

screenshot4.png

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