What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Srpadget]

I've always sucked at precision landings on airless worlds, so Jeb and Bob went out to Minmus to practice. Because everything is always easier on Minmus, right?

Results were ... mixed. On the plus side, Bob got impatient after the third less-than-successful attempt, jetpacked over to the target plateau, and won the prize for the snarkiest flag name ever:

[LABHOUSE]

I've always sucked at precision landings on airless worlds, so Jeb and Bob went out to Minmus to practice. Because everything is always easier on Minmus, right?

Results were ... mixed. On the plus side, Bob got impatient after the third less-than-successful attempt, jetpacked over to the target plateau, and won the prize for the snarkiest flag name ever:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/36651676/Precision%20Landing%20Practice.png

For me airless landings are easier because you don't need to take into account drag and parachutes.

Hint: use atmospheric trajectories, or bring your orbit to 5,000 m perogee and less than 10,00 for apogee, and make sure it is a polar orbit; that can get you landing anywhere.

Edited November 23, 2014 by LABHOUSE

[Tembaco]

Unfortunately the new shiny wing parts added to the game somewhere in the last year made my trusty SSTO look old an wrinkly, so a good time as ever to start on a completely new design and possibly even build a superior craft. If only it was so easy... It seems you DO forget some basics about spaceplanes if you haven't build (a successful) one for a while. Who would've thunk it that you would need to align the center of thrust with the center of mass! Sorcery that is.

Anyway today was the big day that I finally achieved stable orbit. Completely stoked I decided to do a flyby of the Mün, build up some velocity and try to do a high velocity reentry of Kerbin burning all my remaining fuel (oxidizer that is, leave some liquid fuel to land back on the runway) to test the stability of the craft during said reentry. This was all going fine until the left wing of my craft suddenly decided it liked the Mün better and subsequently abandoned ship. This triggered a mutiny aboard the ship, and even though the remaining loyal officers did their best to keep the vessel afloat we ended the mission as just another crater on the Mün. Apparently there is still lots of work to be done but that is for another day.

[Steambirds]

^ nice landers!

launching a supply platform to minmus turns out to be pretty hard with only half of the tech tree unlocked, but after a failed attempt and some redesigning it got there anyways. a few transfer stages ended up in minmus orbit with a bit of fuel left so i landed them as well

http://i59.tinypic.com/2lo0nr9.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/30sdqog.jpg

rover docks to the platform nicely

http://i57.tinypic.com/2m34g8y.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/25qwvpv.jpg

That's not a rover - that's a proper landship!

[NecroBones]

Over the last couple of days, I repainted the 5m tanks for Space-Y (and added a new one), made external ring ASAS units, and started on an engine that is meant to be a single unit from the mod's largest 5-engine cluster.

[Torquemadus]

Today I landed on the Mun and sent Bill on EVA to plant a flag. It's times like these I'm glad I play with quickloading enabled.

[SA_Drone]

Yesterday I started a new game for the first time in a few patches, and I'm really liking the addition of money/reputation (though I have no clue what reputation is for, really).

My first Mun mission was ambitious and ended up stranding Jeb out there for a month while I organized a rescue mission. The rescue mission (probe body-piloted, empty capsule) then got marooned too for lack of fuel. And the next one.

In the end I put a space station into orbit of the Mun, then sent out an unmanned probe to ferry Jeb up to it. I figure it's more hospital orbiting in a tin can than in a tiny failed Munar lander.

[Frank_G]

Yesterday I started a new game for the first time in a few patches, and I'm really liking the addition of money/reputation (though I have no clue what reputation is for, really).

My first Mun mission was ambitious and ended up stranding Jeb out there for a month while I organized a rescue mission. The rescue mission (probe body-piloted, empty capsule) then got marooned too for lack of fuel. And the next one.

In the end I put a space station into orbit of the Mun, then sent out an unmanned probe to ferry Jeb up to it. I figure it's more hospital orbiting in a tin can than in a tiny failed Munar lander.

A better reputation gives you better contracts. Its that easy.

[coreross]

Landing my new shuttle on the runway

[GloriousWater]

Finished my Duna mission:

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Then I got Jeb and Bill stranded in a 27000x83000km polar Eve orbit with no fuel, power, science or anything. Mission Control has told them to hold their breath for roughly 800 days while a rescue mission is set up.

[r_rolo1]

Inspired by the announcement of the next years test of the ESA ( so far ) unmanned Shuttle IXV, I decided to make a mock up and test it in terms of controlled landing without chutes ( in here I'm being more ambitions that ESA that so far will not attempt a non-parachute landing ), consisting in launching it with a RT-10,then turn it to the runway and try a unpowered landing :

I got to the conclusion that, while the thing is landable without chutes, it has very rough landings even at the low altitude of the runway. So, full deorbit tests are scheduled

Edited November 23, 2014 by r_rolo1

[Belphegor]

launched yet another flight to minmus, this time carrying a lander pod with 2 additional kerbals to man the minmus base and an ion powered satellite with Oring Kerman on board to transmit data for eternity as punishment for blowing up my launchpad.

before picking up the lander pod in minmus orbit i refueled the smallest skycrane by vertically docking it to a supply platform on the surface. it's amazing btw how much you can do over there with just a bit of fuel

[cantab]

It suddenly hit me while watching Quetzi's stream why airplane parts are high up in the tech tree. It's because the Kerbals think holding onto a ladder constitutes flying.

[Fiddlestyx]

I crashed a space plane... a lot.

[Treldon]

I crashed a space plane... a lot.

Pics or it didn't happen

[kopapaka]

[sumrex]

I took my basic landers for a spin. The lander can land and return from mun, minimus, duna and other lesser bodies. They are very sturdy and handle great even with no RCS rockets.

I also revived the alan parsons project base to rocket off to various locales.

Of course blowing a few things up never hurts.

Edited November 24, 2014 by sumrex

[Jovus]

I slammed my spaceplane into the Runway at 20m/s (after deploying my 2nd inner planets uplink). It survived without a scratch, surprisingly.

Now I need to make a kerbalmover version - I'm hoping I can wait until unlocking Rapiers...

[Lunaran]

I managed to land my emergency repurposed SS Care Package right next to Dilfrod and Munrick's cabin of doom downed lander without breaking anything or killing anyone, in the dark. And with Planetshine installed, the dark means the dark:

I also thought of a way I could get some kind of a rescue ship to them without breaking my launch delay rule: an experimental SSTO so far only flown by Jeb in simulations, the "Airhog One." It only had a single short cargo bay, so whatever I sent had to fit inside that. It would be flown by the only two Kerbonauts I actually had left on the ground, Lenbrett and the legendary Buzz Kerman, first Kerbal in orbit.

The boys back at the lab had pulled an all-nighter to put together a lightweight monopropellant-driven probe with two lawn chairs welded on top. It would be an exciting ride to orbit, but with KER reporting 2400 d/v and the ability to refuel it after landing with extra monoprop from the lander can and the Care Package it would absolutely get the job done. It was nicknamed ScootyPuff Jr. because it was 5AM and they'd used up all their original ideas building it. It was also slightly too big to fit in the cargo bay.

I remedied this by adding some KAS boxen in the cargo bay as well and slapping a 'some assembly required' label on, but this left even less room for the lander so I had to strip even more bits off to put in even more boxes, until eventually Lenbrett had to basically build almost the entire thing in orbit, in a hurry.

And he did, because he's a trooper, troubleshooting a Communotron that wouldn't unfurl by pulling it off, sticking it on the hull of the Airhog, having Buzz extend it, then reattaching it to the lander, and scavenging some solar panels off the Airhog when it became clear that the mini-RTG wasn't enough to keep the batteries topped off on its own.

Just before Munrise, the rescue scooter's engines were fired for a shot to the Mun. The 2.4km/s dV that Kerbal Engineer reported evaporated after only 800m/s of acceleration: not even enough to reach the Mun's SOI, let alone land on it. I'm not sure why - I switched to my screwing-around save, built exactly the same lander in the VAB and tested it, and got 2400m/s out of it. My theory is that KAS has to faff with the physical-insignificance setting on tiny parts to prevent the Scott Manley Magic Exploding Lander bug, and that was contributing a bunch of nickel-and-dime mass additions that KER wasn't accounting for because those parts were supposed to be massless.

The boys in the lab have another night of work cut out for them (so does the KSP PR department), but it looks like Buzz gets to fly the Airhog One again tomorrow morning.

[Starman4308]

Finally completed that Apollo-style mission to the 6.4x Mun, from launch to reentry. I don't feel very good about it: I redesigned my CSM a little and forgot to add life support (requiring a little save-file editing), and found out that the "bug" causing Bob to crash last time was probably just me not accounting for the greater max terrain height in 6.4x (smashed into lunar regolith on the dark side of the Mun a couple times until I figured it out).

On the plus side, I raked in almost 850 science, enough to unlock the seismometer, gravity meter, and sensor nose cone I wanted for my Duna mission.

[Eddlm]

I built this.

It is, ovbiously, a refueling station. Not only refuels the LFO mix, it has a quite decent amount of Xenon gas and Monopropellant for any kind of ship.

The Advanced Grabbing Unit is here to maintain the station (SS FUEL GOD) hability to refuel any ship, even the ones without docking ports.

I've realized a little too late that these kind of stations work better in the SOI limit of Kerbin, so maybe i'll try to move it.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Finally completed that Apollo-style mission to the 6.4x Mun, from launch to reentry. I don't feel very good about it: I redesigned my CSM a little and forgot to add life support (requiring a little save-file editing), and found out that the "bug" causing Bob to crash last time was probably just me not accounting for the greater max terrain height in 6.4x (smashed into lunar regolith on the dark side of the Mun a couple times until I figured it out).

On the plus side, I raked in almost 850 science, enough to unlock the seismometer, gravity meter, and sensor nose cone I wanted for my Duna mission.

http://i.imgur.com/C92nPoh.png

That is some insane ground scatter man...

[CatastrophicFailure]

After two years my tiny Jool I probe arrived at 6.4x Jool today.

The very first thing it learned is that solar panels really do suck out here, and transmitting data from the relatively small science package takes hours. Next up was a 30 km/s swoop just above Jool's atmosphere (I'm not quite sure where it actually begins) to scoop up that low Jool science:

That put it on a direct course for Tylo, for a very inefficient gravity capture.

Grabbed all the Tylo science, skimming only 2.5 km's from the surface while going nearly 14 km/s. This put the probe on an oddball, retrograde, highly eccentric orbit around Jool. Some maneuvering for another swing past Tylo on the return put it on track for a Laythe encounter.

This is where things nearly went Kerbal. Apparently Laythe's atmosphere now starts at around 70km, leading to a very unplanned (so unplanned I didn't get screenshots OR low science out of it ) 15-gee aerobrake replete with firey FX and "about to explode" sounds. Amazingly, the probe emerged unscathed. That hardly put a dent in its velocity either, necessitating an expensive burn to re-capture into Jool orbit. 60-some days later came a Pol encounter:

Pool seems to have a very large atmosphere too. Makes me want to sneeze just look atCHOO!

And that, unfortunately, was the beginning of the end. Its fuel now completely spent, the little probe was now hopelessly on a collision course with Jool. It trains its cameras back towards Kerbin for a quick "family portrait," although Dres & Eloo seem to have wandered off...

...and one last bit of science before the end...

... the end did not last long. A 40* entry angle at 30+ km/s and it was over in seconds. Heat FX, something broke off, then BOOM.

According to the trajectory plugin, whatever survived faced over a thousand G's of deceleration. Before the REALLY awful stuff happened.

[Xacktar]

Experimented in using open cargo bays to make a smoother-looking booster stage.

[Mareczex333]

Stock Bentley