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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Today was a bit productive :D

Got my orbital research station to Duna, landed a rover on Eve, and now that I have a mining facility on minmus, I have started exploration of the moon in earnest with my G.R.U.B.

Leaving Home...

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Initial retro burn...

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Final circularization burn...

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Undocking from transfer module...

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Assembly of solar panel structures...

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Duna ORS is ready for operation...

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Eve rover: last leg of descent (I had intended to capture a screenshot of the atmo entry buuut it was bit hectic and I forgot)

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Touchdown! Unfortunately I still do not have the RTG tech, so I resorted to solar panels. They are woefully ineffecient due to Eve's soupy atmo.

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The Ground Roving Utility Buggy... but I call it the G.R.U.B. for obvious reasons ;)

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All I was able to accomplish today was bringing a few Kerbals home from my LKO station, which I only did to begin with because the station appears to be infected with a rather aggressive strain of sticky docking port syndrome (I've actually made a support request thread about this if it rings any bells). Le sigh.

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After the sacrifice of 12 kerbals, I finally successfully tested my first Eve capable lander. After hyperediting it to Eve's surface, I determined it could achieve orbit launching minimum 2000m above sea level, which is better than I expected! Before it can be used in the actual mission, I still need to find a way to land it safely, since it undergoes RUD when the parachutes deploy...

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My first probe sent to interplanetary transfer made it without a hitch. Got an encounter with Duna, managed to encounter Ike while pulling the orbit in, and transmitted science from near space and outer space for both.

I have two more probes en route to other locations, but now it's time to plan manned missions to Duna and Ike.

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I ran two major tests in anticipation of a forthcoming colonization attempt on Duna...

The first test was to make sure the lower half of a VTVLSSTO crew return vehicle could land safely back on Duna in case of an emergency. (The upper half had airbrakes, chutes, and a heatshield for protection.)

After being refueled in orbit, the ship retro-burned and split up.

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The lower half struck the upper atmosphere of Duna soon after, deploying its airbrakes.

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The ship's smoke/contrail plume was quite visible from a long way off...

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The landing was smooth as silk... :)

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The second test wound up serving as the first mission of the colony program.

The MU MegaHab base lander retro-burned, and smacked into the atmosphere fast, using airbrakes and engine thrust to decelerate. (At 3x physwarp)

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The ship then started approaching the ground at an uncomfortable rate of speed, leading me to pop the chutes, max out the throttle, and jettison the landing boosters just before touchdown.

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Amazingly enough, the base SURVIVED.

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However, with the loss of the core engine (which hit the ground and blew up), the base is forever stuck in its new home. Which is just fine. :D

Only AFTER I landed did I realize this all played out at 3x physics warp. :P

Also, the base has a giant fairing on top to act as a "hollow" habitat, complete with internal rooms.

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I just sent my first mission to Duna today, in traditional kerbal fashion - I strapped a jet powered by an aerospike in an extremely unbalanced manner to a large rocket with giant fins and boosters, then sent it on its way:

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This rocket has more or less exactly the amount of dV needed to reach Duna with its payload, considering the difficulties and losses incurred due to the imbalanced setup.

With a little tweaking of thrust limiters, I was able to use the aerospike in conjunction with the main engines to keep thrust balanced in space:

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Aerocapture was smooth as silk; I didn't even see any re-entry effects. Just cobra, cobra, cobra.

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However, as it turns out, Duna isn't the easily-flyable yet low-drag atmospheric paradise this thread

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/122944-Duna-s-Atmosphere-in-1-x

makes it out to be. My plane would need a lot more lift to have even a reasonably low stall speed, and so landing didn't go well. I probably could have made it (and was very close, too) but I knocked off the aerospike during landing, then went over the edge of a crater, with predictable results:

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Fortunately, this plane was sent as an unmanned test, and no kerbals were lost. All further lift-based landing missions to Duna have been cancelled pending the development of an extremely high-lift craft to handle the thin atmosphere.

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I spent all damned day trying to make a shuttle capable of carrying cargo...

When I finally launched one successfully I got so excited that I didn't think to test other things... Like landing. Instead I reverted back, took out the rocket parts containers I was using as cargo and put in a small satellite. I did manage to get it to the mun, and went to deploy the satellite... That is where things went horribly wrong. Valentina and Bill went out to inspect the satellite...

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At this point I realized I screwed up and used a docking port on a part that I cannot simply release the port from... That was the first error. Then I decided I didn't want to be all nutty with the eva packs so I used the winches to reel my people back in... This is where something went really wrong, I suspect kracken attack. Bill bless his socks somehow got lodged in the bay doors and I couldn't release him. Valentina the poor dear did the same but only briefly, she later went rocketing off leaving her line just dangling there in space... The report at the end later said she hit the bay doors and was killed, but I saw her go flying off.

I took off anyway, with the doors closed and bill tethered inside, only to later see him flying behind the ship still on his tether (but much further than I knew they could go!) By the time I could stop the engines he had broken loose and is still orbiting the mun... a rescue is planned.

It wasn't until I reached kerbins upper atmosphere that I realized I had never tried to land this thing... and well... Yeah.

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Screwed around with 5v5 jet battles over the KSC, using BDA's new AI mode. ~550 parts in range at the beginning of a battle (Though that number went down very, very quickly) meant that I was running at about 10-20 fps, however. Not a problem, as BDA doesn't care about FPS. I might upload pics, but I'm too lazy to create an Imgur account at the moment. I launched them all at the same time, so I generally counted myself lucky if I hadn't had a midair collision in the first 20 seconds. TL:DR: Many 'spolsions. Somehow, Jeb managed to survive almost all of them practically undamaged. The last one he got absolutely shredded by vulcans, then the cockpit fell into the ocean.

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Built a Kerbalized Saturn V with stock parts. Versions include a lander, minus lander, large survey probe, docking core, and a lab and crew tank coupled with 2 of the big liquid fuel boosters. All can be manned or unmanned. I dont understand the fuss about the fairings I like them. They make it possible to make interstaged landers. Kerbal joint reinforcement to hold it all together with out using 3 trillon struts(still some though).

I must be missing something when it comes to launching rovers. Been trying to add a rover to the design to keep with the Apollo theme. Balance is fleeing. Rockets dont fly right. Back to the drawing board for now.

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Designed a 100 ton payload to LKO reusable launch system and beat my head against trying to build a 100 ton Mun/Minimus delivery system. You'd think that would be easier but the lack of staging is an issue and the number of LV-Ns starts to get into serious partcount issues.

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I changed my mind about unlocking the extra large NASA parts before attempting an Eve return mission. I know that moar boostars and bigga engines is the Kerbal way, but sometimes, just sometimes it might be a good idea to keep the payload light instead... After having thought that my Eve lander was finished, I launched it, of course unmanned, as it's enough to risk a Kerbal life once it is in Eve orbit. The launch didn't go well. Aero forces ripped off the payload at about 7000 m altitude... There go 250000 funds...

Sadly I didn't take a screenshot of the broken rocket, but here's one where I was still optimistic.

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But, the worst part I didn't even mention yet: I have no contracts for Eve. This whole mission has no return of investment, just (hopefully) a few science points...

And yes, it's basically the same lander that ruined my launchpad, just with a few modifications, so that the fairing now separates the way it should.

Well, the other Kerbal way is to add more struts. That's exactly what I did before the second launch attempt, between the small tanks and the large tank just above, and now I got a hopefully functional Eve lander in LKO, waiting for the transfer window in 2 weeks...

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Nothing, backing up everything in awaiting of my new PC!

Sunday will have me installing the new system, maybe I will find time later in the evening to test KSP on a faster CPU and a different brand of graphics card (switching from Nvidia to my first ever AMD).

Yet planned are more probe missions to everywhere, construction of a new space station for bonus research points, a for the present final mission to Mun, designing an interplanetary ship with nuke drives borrowed from a contractor. :wink:

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Last night was one of those night where i felt like i did alot, but ended up being nothing ;

i tested my Duna Express ; i was 45 days away from the window, so i couldnt land on it, but i did manage to get "close to it" with more than enough fuel for a landing and a take off (was close to 5000 delta V left).

Once i knew that was gonna work, i decided to go do a tourist mission, where i had to go around the mun before landing on minmus. I wanted to try it in one launch. I did it, quite easily even, and didnt save.... didn't save.... so guess what happened when i entered kerbin atmosphere? yup, big ol' ball of flame....

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Spent most of my evening refitting the Ballista 7 after porting it from my litterbox to my career game; the changes were necessary given that I didn't have certain technologies unlocked in my career game. Was dismayed to discover that the craft, which flew into orbit in the litterbox, suffered total structural collapse in my career game. I only had thirty minutes to play yesterday, so I'm hoping to get the bugs ironed out this evening.

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