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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Nothing much today. I just launched a smallish fuel tanker to refuel my Duna ship before the start of the mission.

duna_ship_refueling.jpeg

Still with the 6.4x Kerbol System. My rockets feel like rockets once again, when the payload fractions are in small single-digit percentages.

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Was doing some testing with an old design I haven't used since 0.24, landing it on the Mun. Expected a pretty regular flight there and back, with a landing, to make sure I had all the design flaws ironed out and that it still worked in 0.24 (and discovered two major design flaws in the process, so it was a productive mission). What I neglected was that this ship spent it's entire operational 0.24 and earlier history operating on Minmus in super low gravity, and that a ship with half the thrust and twice the weight of my regular Munar landers would need a considerable burn time to not crash.

It was decided during descent that killing both vertical and horizontal velocity in time to land was a fantasy, and the ship was reoriented for a full vertical burn. This decision apparently happened with seconds to spare, as the lander didn't start gaining altitude until it was about 50m from impact (while moving sideways at about 200 m/s). Fuel estimations were also off, with the lander successfully landing in the middle of an ocean with 40L of fuel left in the tanks.

Lesson Learned: The Mun has way more gravity from Minmus, and that's why I stopped mining there to begin with. Respect the gravity.

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I've been playing career in hard mode, and when I returned from the Mun, realized I had stored my data in the lander, and left it orbiting, while the crew returned to Kerbin. To top it off, I set my parachutes as drag chutes by mistake, and got Jeb, Bill, and Bob killed. They're never coming back. :(

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Did my first interplanetary mission of 0.25: round trip to Duna with a stop around Ike. Went allright, had to do 1 quickload because of an immense change in orbit after a time-warped SOI change and had to deal with several minor issues along the way, but overall my intrepid trio of explorers came back unharmed and with a few thousand science points.

Some of the issues included:

- the two sattelites that were to be deployed appearantly didn't have fuel flow from the toroidal fuel tank to their engines. They are in orbit around Ike and Duna as intended, but their orbits are near-equatorial instead of the intended polar orbit. They also cannot be de-orbited so they're stuck floating in their orbits forever... (or until I send up a next-generation ion-powered sattelite and delete them from the tracking center)

- the lander had less TWR than expected on Duna surface (or rather, I underestimated the importance of a decent TWR) so it ended up being a lot less efficient than it should have been. Still had plenty of fuel to get home though.

- the re-packed chutes on the lander did not deploy properly upon arrival at Kerbin, had to be opened manually. Fortunately there was more than enough time to do so.

- because I landed in the water and the return module + lander was quite high, it toppled over in the water and said toppling made the top of the module smack down into the water at a speed in excess of 8 m/s, destroying one of the material bays in the process :( . Still, a plethora of science and funds was gained. Launch cost was just shy of 200k, payout was near 2 million.

I have now accepted a contract for something I have never before attempted in my entire KSP career because losing kerbals scares the ever loving s*** out of me: go to Jool (and preferrably come back).

Wish me luck.

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Completed my first manned Mun expedition in 6.4x Kerbin. Maximum G-load on reentry: 5.7 gees. Remaining ablative heatshield material: too little for Bill's nerves. Delta-V remaining at Kerbin aerobrake: a hilarious excess thereof. Most heat-sensitive part on the landing stage: the landing legs (and not the tanks which still had fuel in them). Aerobrake temperature: almost enough to fry the other parts.

The view? Amazing.

BxHMEBF.png

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Ventured out on my first planetary mission in this career save - a mission to Gilly. I adapted my ion powered asteroid rendezvous spacecraft for the task, and the two Kerbonauts ventured down to Gilly's surface using a rcs thruster based vehicle with two command seats. It was a really bare bones lander and it's still far more capable than necessary. Gilly is hilarious :P

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This morning I can report that after eleven days in space the mission of the Auk IVx2 spaceplane to repair the design flaws of the Moneymaker 7 probe was a success. Bill made a successful rendezvous with the probe (which is in an orbit between Mun and Minmus) and performed a very fast spacewalk to transfer the missing part - an antenna - to the probe. He's since made a retro burn that should put the craft in a 100x33 orbit after aerobraking, which he'll then circularize so he can make preparation to land the Auk back at KSC. All's gone according to plan with that mission so far.

Now, as long as I don't botch the landing...

I also brought the Storax Sedan rocket design out of mothballs to deliver a pair of Hellhound 7 rovers to the Mun for a FinePrint exploration contract. There's a design I should've left in mothballs - it's from 0.20, if that tells any of y'all anything (read: complex engine clusters). Had to use the payload's fuel to finish the ascent and definitely missed having that fuel when the lander ran out of gas 400 meters above the Munar surface. Granted, I did burn up a fair amount making the course corrections necessary to get a landing close to the target area. Lithobraked at 40 m/s, but the 'hounds are designed to take a serious licking. Blew off the drop probes on impact and bounced; I was able to turn around and blow the other set of drop probes before the whole thing finally settled, upside down, on the surface. Fortunately, the way the craft was designed, landing upside down actually helped the rover deployment - both rovers arrived intact and I was able to deploy one of them right-side up to conduct the mission (the other one wound up deploying upside down, unfortunately, and that design has no self-righting mechanisms). I was maybe five clicks from the target area, and was able to complete the contract with the intact rover. Pretty expensive all told, but I got close to 1500 science just from that one contract, so it was worth it.

Also put another probe into a wonky orbit for FinePrint. That's starting to become old hat. I find I need to get my reputation up at this point so I can switch over from science production to funding production; going to be necessary I think if I'm going to shoot for Duna any time in the near future.

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This morning I can report that after eleven days in space the mission of the Auk IVx2 spaceplane to repair the design flaws of the Moneymaker 7 probe was a success. Bill made a successful rendezvous with the probe (which is in an orbit between Mun and Minmus) and performed a very fast spacewalk to transfer the missing part - an antenna - to the probe. He's since made a retro burn that should put the craft in a 100x33 orbit after aerobraking, which he'll then circularize so he can make preparation to land the Auk back at KSC. All's gone according to plan with that mission so far.

I love stories like this, fixing issues when they crop up on the fly, like a real space program. I decided I wanted a science module for my roving Mun base, and needed to come up with a module design that could be transported to the Munar surface and attached to the base - problem solving can be fun :)

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I had a mission to test the PB-ION engine splashed down. So i thought thats a good time to create a new helicopter in 0.25 that can land on water for this test mission. I finally came up with the following helicopter. Kinda missing the I-beams and panels though.

Of course the mandatory landing on one of the helipads had to be tested.

ex_ssn_bee_0_00_01.jpg

Here 'splashed down' to test the PB-ION engine.

ex_ssn_bee_0_00_02.jpg

Edited by DocMoriarty
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I love stories like this, fixing issues when they crop up on the fly, like a real space program. I decided I wanted a science module for my roving Mun base, and needed to come up with a module design that could be transported to the Munar surface and attached to the base - problem solving can be fun :)

It's great fun; in my case a repair mission was only a possibility because I use KAS. It was necessary because I forgot a single, tiny part. Had to send up a manned spaceplane just to deliver that one piece. Just like a real space program...

I had a mission to test the PB-ION engine splashed down. So i thought thats a good time to create a new helicopter in 0.25 that can land on water for this test mission. I finally came up with the following helicopter. Kinda missing the I-beams and panels though.

Of course the mandatory landing on one of the helipads had to be tested.

http://www.docmoriarty.com/ksp/gfx/ex_ssn_bee_0_00_01.jpg

Here 'splashed down' to test the PB-ION engine.

http://www.docmoriarty.com/ksp/gfx/ex_ssn_bee_0_00_02.jpg

That's a nice looking helo there. Looking forward to the 0.25 version of your guide, BTW; are you finding the new Swept Wings to be way less useful than they used to be? I sure am. Either that or I'm using them wrong...

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The Macbeth 1 mission to Duna, Ike, and asteroid 2 Bill that had its first launch back in April has come to its conclusion by killing Bill himself.

15033095073_0c08e7ac3b_o.png

The lander used some sepratrons to help cushion touchdown. I fired one pair a little early but landed safely anyway, but my reactions were too slow and I fired a second pair that sent it down the slope causing a crash.

I think I've left him a fitting memorial though.

15033247283_acdf294024_o.png

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Going to Jool and land on all of the five moons in a single mission... after failing the last time, it is finally time to get things going again.

So today i began to design the main mission craft, the "Robert A. Kerman" (right side - still a very rudimentary work in progress).

I also constructed and launched an orbital base to serve as quarters and storage for the orbital construction work (upper left - here you can see Ed Kerman working on the massive heat shield).

I also worked on a new return vehicle, a small fully reusable shuttle like craft to get the workers back to kerbin. It is no SSTO though, it needs rocket assist to get into orbit. (lower left)

3H7yNPr.jpg

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Made a ship break apart from aerodynamic forces - in stock aerodynamics. And not on chute deployment either, just from aerocapturing at extreme (25+ km/s) speed with a bad orientation. It went so quickly that by the time I took the screenshot the other half of the ship was just gone.

Lucky the view stayed with the important half, the bit with the Kerbals and science, which landed safely.

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Failed rendezvous 1.

Failed rendezvous 2.

Failed rendezvous 3.

Failed rendezvous 4.

Failed rendezvous 5.

Failed rendezvous 6.

Failed rendezvous 7.

Even after watching some tutorials its just not working out...

Failed rendezvous 8.

Failed rendezvous 9.

Failed rendezvous 10.

Failed rendezvous 11.

Failed rendezvous 12.

Project Cancelled.

Our program is completely incompetent... We will stick with demolitions.

So we did what we do best, destroyed most of the space center...

Updated our flag...

kspsig.png

Edited by MGCJerry
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