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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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I tested a modular heatshield, that can slow down a heavy craft in an aerobraking maneuver around Jool.

I want it to be constructible in orbit, while all parts need to be launched with a stock launcher and fit inside regular fairings. Doing it the way i tried, proofed to be quite effective. The complete set of shield parts can be delivered to orbit in a single launch, assemblage is easy and it fulfilled its mission with 850 units of Ablator left (from 12.600... ok ok... it was pretty close).

The shield decelerated the craft enough, to establish an elliptic orbit around Jool with no fuel usage at all.

Due to bad balancing of the test craft it entered a little of a em errr totally predicted (say uncontrollable) spin, exposing 2 of the trusses to too much temperature.

This resulted in the loss of 2 shields before they were actually burned up. So, with a decent craft this should work as intended – with Ablator to spare...

For the final version, i plan to dock the trusses to the ship as well, to reduce profile. This test version was actually cheated to orbit.

http://i.imgur.com/rEmJI4W.png

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

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That's pretty good to know. Thanks for the head's up as I shall try that eventually !

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In my 0.23 file I just launched my largest rocket ever... a lifter to get my 1000t Eve lander into orbit. The whole thing had about 1600 parts and weighed 10000t on the launch pad. The first stage was powered by just 4 SRBs, from stretchy tanks mod so they are custom sized. They have 30000 kilonewtons of thrust each, so they are by far the largest engine I have!!! It took 4 attempts, as it kept disintegrating at about 14000m. Anyway, if the Eve lander can takeoff from Eve, it will be the first one I have seen to not use asparagus staging! The only mod used for the actual lander is stretchy tanks for those large conical fuel tanks. (I'm sure someone else did it, but I didn't see it..:P) Images:

Shortly after liftoff:

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Dropping the massive boosters:

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Each one of those boosters is a KW Rocketry Griffon Century, packing 11000 kilonewtons of thrust!

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Next stage...

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The stage after...

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And finally orbit! The last stage of the lifter still had 500m/s of Dv left, which means I could probably use it for even larger payloads...:cool:

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I wonder what would have happened if I tried this in 1.0.2:D. This is why I keep my old saves, so I can go back when I want to do something like this!

Edited by A35K
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Today, or, tonight rather, I continued in my Eyes Turned Skyward work. Now that the rockets and spacecraft are done, I'm going through the process of testing them all as well as setting up my save so that when I decide to do mission reports (starting with Skylab) I'll have a semi analogue to the Earth system ITTL.

Also, some roving fun:

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Low on funds I took the easiest contract I could at the time... Rescue some kerbal (I already forget the name) from orbit around Kerbin.

On the plus side I did make a decent amount of money from the completion, bad news is it cost roughly 30% more than the advance to get up there so I didn't really make as much as I was hoping to.

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Drove MOLAB over a crater wall at night - managed to use the landing thrusters to save it.

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Got my Saturn shuttle prototype on a better sub-orbital flight. Still couldn't land it. dmWvG29l.jpg

Game crashed while trying again with a full Saturn V launcher (previously had cut out stage 2)

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It took 24 days but my latest, biggest refinery-tanker ship has filled, launched, and docked to the L2 fuel depot. I now have more than enough fuel in HKO to begin building the next echelon of my space infrastructure. Also I slightly improved my Mining Infrastructure efficiency by 1% by using a more direct MinLO-Transit 2-step way from Minmus to L2.

Where shall I build next Mining/Fueling operation ? Ike, Gilly or Vall ?

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Suborbital hops to Kerbin's northpole and the badlands (proud on my first-try pinpoint landing!) for contracts.

My Mun mission had the option to get into an orbit that would make landing close to the area of a survey contract possible.

Had two Quickloads due to circumstances ... :P

First I landed in Mun's long night - map view looked like early morning, but it was pitch black all the way down. (Note: Build with lights even if you think you wont need them!) - so first try was a crash at 300m/s, as I also misjudged the power of my engines. Quickload to orbit.

On the second try I got down at gentle 5m/s, but the lander instantly tilted by 30 degrees, yet managed to stay in place even without SAS. The crew got out, set the rover (with no lights ... ) on the ground, but even with their headlights they could not see more than 10m ahead - an eerie feeling.

Contract checkpoints were 1.3 to 3.5 km away, so they began rolling along the hillside seeing basically nothing and being unable to see the rover itself it happened as it had to and the rover tumbled on its side, sliding a few hundred meters. Fastforwarding to sunlight: ... died of starvation, yay LS mod! :P Quickload to landing, fastforward to morning, save, quit game, go to bed.

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Busy night last night - the first in a while. Redesigned my Stratofortress 7 design with improved solar panels and docking capabilities. Sent Berris up with a group of KSC staff - a scientist and three engineers - to dock with the New Horizons space station, after first undocking the Condor 7 from the space station with three tourists headed back to Kerbin. I'm hoping to ultimately get my current KSC staff some experience, at least enough to get them up to the 2-star level. That all will depend on funding, of course. Meanwhile, the same Stratofortress craft, which I renamed "Straight Flush", offloaded the engineers on the station and picked up three tourist passengers; they're all now headed for a suborbital flight around Minmus. Meanwhile, I landed the Condor...400 klicks short of KSC and in the dead of night. Lost the main engine and two Twitches on touchdown but at least the whole damn thing didn't explode. I still need to re-examine my design process for spaceplanes, particularly when it comes to pitch authority; that's two planes in a row where the plane's pitch became nigh uncontrollable during re-entry - and two where I botched the re-entry point.

Picked up a couple of new contracts to put satellites around Mun and Minmus; I'll be launching Ballistae missions this evening to get those underway (I need to add A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S to the Ballista 7 design - those seem to help a great deal with re-entry heat). And I finally fulfilled a contract to put a satellite in a very high polar orbit around Kerbin. Sitting up near √1M at the moment; hoping I can keep the momentum up and unlock the Level 3 R&D facility soon.

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My Minmus training mission landed, including a couple decoupler testing contracts. Then I had a kerbal jet ~30KM to the Highlands to get a bit of extra science. She ended up walking over half a KM to get to the biome and roughly 3 km to get back to the ship, ending with 0.03 fuel, just enough to get to the bottom of the ladders after a jump from he surface. Now a quick rendezvous with something left behind in orbit by some rich bu careless person and I'll see if I have fuel for a quick hop outside the Kerbin SOI before heading home. (hoping to have 3-5 level 3 scientists for the lab on my upcoming Duna mission)

My Minmus jogger had to take a brake around 0.5KM form the lander so I could reverse thrust on my first Sol station after collecting lots of Solar data. Looks like the return trajectory will pass through the Mun SOI then settle in LKO with over 1km/s delta-v left. Should make for a nice soft landing close to the KSC.

Started on the design for my Duna mission, looking like it should have nearly 8km/s once it is in LKO, but I'll need more verner engines on the nose for setting it back on it's tail if I intend to do any mining or roving on Duna. Perhaps I'll just do all the mining I need to do on Ike and make Duna just a quick-stop for science...

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Today I resumed my save after few days off. Since I am waiting for Duna station to get there I have decided to do few contracts on the Mun and Minmus. But before I did that I have decided that it is finally time for me to standardize my launchers instead of building new one for each and every mission. So, I have basically been working on that for a few hours today and here is an example rolled out on the launch pad with Mun return vehicle and lander inside fairings

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This is Obelix 2-5 booster with Asterix 2-1 2nd stage. I still haven't flown them though as I am trying to optimize their performances a bit better. Basically, all my boosters will be named Obelix with 1st number describing it's size (1 = 1.25m, 2 = 2.5m, 3 = 3.75m) and 2nd number describing number of engines (1, 3, 5 or 9). Same goes for Asterix 2nd stage. On some flight there may be even smaller 3rd stage which will be called Snoopix and it will come only in 1.25m - 1 engine form.

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I began developing spaceplanes, which I am calling the SiStOr class. Version Dua isn't exactly a true SSTO since it utilizes a couple drop tanks and engines, but for LKO work it certainly fits the bill compared to the cost of building disposable boosters. I neglected to take screenshots during the testing flights. Then I timewarped to the Eve launch window, periodically stopping to transmit science from my Ike based lab. Upon arrival of the launch window, the Gilly mission took leave of its 300km parking orbit and waved bye-bye to Kerbin.

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Fixed my issue with Drill on my Mun base (for the record, no matter how long they are, keep them close to ground if possible)

it's not pretty, its not light, but it filled all requirement (and yes, that is a big orange tank, without any way to detach it from the base.

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Built a Mammoth-based Asparagus launch stage. Because I could. It's no longer a launch stage. With small payloads it can fly three times as far as the farthest planet orbit.

But it can't get to Kerbol. Some 3000m/s shy. Sure, with gravity assists or bielliptic, but that takes sooo much time!

So Instead I gave it a payload: 3 big MK3 liquid fuel tanks, a nuke engine and some science, plus basic necessities. The probe was leaving Kerbin SOI at nearly 5000m/s. It still has some 10,000m/s of dV in the tanks.

Then I got my speeder delivery craft into Minmus orbit and ran out of time. Five neat little scooters plus a garage for refuelling them, plus accessories to be attached at the front docking port (extra fuel tanks, atmospheric shields for reentry). They should be well capable of bringing any Kerbal back to Kerbin - in a command seat, and perfectly survivable!

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Started using fairings, forgot a couple of instruments, and ran out of fuel.

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The above probe-capsule combo was intended to first take a scientist to Stopover to get them on SixFerry to head to Minmus, and then to take the empty capsule for a Mun rescue mission. I wanted it to dock with the rescuee at MunRod to refuel, get some readings with the probe portion, and take the rescuee home. However... the rescuee's orbit was in the opposite direction to MunRod, and I knew this didn't have enough to do that job. I still sent the scientist to Minmus, though.

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Tamrie was selected, and went off to Minmus with four tourists in SixFerry. The plan is to be just about suborbital when entering Minmus SoI, then adjust periapse so that getting orbit will lead to docking with the Minmus Lander in reasonably short order. Shortly after her departure burns, the new rescue ship encountered the Mun.

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I wanted this one to pick up Jebford and take some thermal readings at Mun, before heading directly home. Jebford happened to be in a Mobile Lab, so I may look into researching the grabber to avoid having to put one up myself just yet. Perhaps I'll send it to Minmus orbit, that shouldn't be too bad. As for the thermal readings, they were all quite low down and close-ish to the south pole, and two of them were landed in the highlands.

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Jebford also got what science he could, and planted a flag for a contract at the second landing site. The first time I attempted to do this, the lander fell over and I couldn't get it back up. So, I quickloaded... all the way back to before Tamrie's departure. So, of course, I redid it, making sure to quicksave more regularly and also to touch down softly, then wrestle to stay upright. Unfortunately, I ran out of fuel after picking up the final reading in space and making a shot at escaping. This looks a bit far for a get-out-and-push to be worth the bother... so I guess its another rescue mission for Jebford.

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Working on escorting columbia's jumbo jets with two of my f22s. It's not easy. Eventually I want one on each wingtip. His jet isn't ready for download yet but keep an eye on him here.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/members/138509-Columbia

Also working on a VTOL f35

[cb_co] f-35 Stock Raptor 4_7 by clown_baby on Sketchfab

Edited by clown_baby
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