What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Melonfish]

This weekend I sent a rover and a lander to Duna, the rover I managed to get into a Polar orbit, the lander i put onto the equator.

Things I learned:

I don't require heat shielding.

Duna's atmosphere is really, really thin.

I didn't bring enough parachutes...

The lander JUST survived impact, blew off the legs and all bar one of my battery packs but was left with one circular battery the science JR, probe core and importantly 2 of my 3 deployable solar panels, a barometer and seismograph.

after gathering and transmitting science I was pretty happy with my pulled from the fire mission.

My rover which I launched at the same time as my lander, I decided to bring in partially powered. at 100m i dropped the fuel/engine and let the large chute take it the rest of the way. one busted wheel (out of 6) so he's off getting polar science as we speak and i managed to drop him by that little lake biome so i'm working on getting there now.

I also remembered how utterly pants I am at trying to rendezvous space station parts. I mean i really suck at it i get within a klick and it all goes pear shaped.

c'est la vie

[doublewohli]

@DunaRocketeer: What mod is that RoverBay? Looks like i want it!

And what i didi today: Realizing i forgot to switch on the RwmoteTech Dish again! So i created valuable debris in sunorbit again. :/

Dunno how often it needs to happen yet, until it won't happen again.

Edited October 12, 2015 by doublewohli

[DunaRocketeer]

@DunaRocketeer: What mod is that RoverBay? Looks like i want it!

The 'rover bay' is just made out of stock parts (I-Beams, struts and wing segments) I'm thinking of completely enclosing the bay with wing segments next time, and use Kerbal attachment system to take a couple of segments off at the landing site and use them as ramps for the rover. Hope that helps

[GarrisonChisholm]

Made a video of my mission to the moon using SLS. First actuall mission I was able to do with the SLS besides the Europa lander.

Wow. I would watch dozens of hours of this... 100x better than how it looks & sounds in my game.

[percyPrune]

My Mun polar expedition finally ground to a halt in a valley almost sheer sides about 25km from the pole. To grab the last bit of science I deployed the TiddleyRover:

It wasn't a great success as a kerballed rover as the wheelbase is too short for stability, but the guys took it for a spin anyway:

After the fun it was re-docked to the tail for ascent:

In Munar orbit I re-docked to it inside the cargo bay and headed for home. Reentry went swimmingly until 10000m altitude when I tried to deploy the chutes:

"Cannot Deploy While Stowed"

What the *geep*!They aren't stowed! They have never been stowed! I can *geeping* well SEE them!

Anyway, at less than 5000m alt. and no reverts available I thought the only option was to try to FLY the thing down. So I put the nose down to try to gain a bit of forward speed, then pulled up sharply at the last minute, hoped for lift and (literally) closed my eyes. The last indication I saw was surface speed 78 m/s and vertical descent considerably more than 20 m/s. There was a BANG and:

Thank goodness for KJR! The crew will have stiff necks for a few days but they survived and so did the science.

The cheering was heard all around KSC...

[MaxwellsDemon]

Assembled the first two major portions of my Kerbin orbital station, the core section and the science lab, along with a tug and an emergency return capsule. Three more launches and it'll be open for business.

Launched a "Fungeye" infrared telescope toward a solar orbit pursuant to a contract, though it will take some time to get to the desired orbit.

[Val]

..."Cannot Deploy While Stowed"

What the *geep*!They aren't stowed! They have never been stowed! I can *geeping* well SEE them!

...

Anything attached near or on a cargo bay, is at risk of being considered as "stowed". Open cargo bays for a sec when deploying, then close it again.

[Jatwaa]

I had the closest close call I ever have had I think (to this point at least)

http://gfycat.com/RashSpotlessIndianpalmsquirrel

[capi3101]

I had a very busy weekend. Took screenies and everything; naturally I've made it to work this morning without the screenies...

On Friday night I designed a booster for the Midas 7 IRSU lander and launched the craft successfully; it will arrive at Minmus in twelve days, full four days behind Enola Gay, which means that Jeb and his tour group aboard will have to wait a bit before they can head back to Kerbin - giving them plenty of time for a surface excursion. Midas turned out be one expensive bugger - at over √200k - so I'm hoping I won't have to send up another one when my Mun operations get underway; on the other hand, she'll add a great deal of capabilities to the Wildcat drilling site on Minmus when she arrives in terms of storage and power production, not to mention fuel production. Meanwhile, I sent up a Vulture 7 refueling plane to rendezvous with Bockscar, which had ran out of gas over Kerbin in a stable orbit. The rendezvous and refueling was successful, and ultimately Bockscar arrived successfully back at Kerbinport to refuel and reload a new tour group. Cerxie and her tour group aboard Bockscar are now headed towards Mun, where they are scheduled to dock at Munport and make a surface excursion before returning to Kerbin. Finally, I sent Theogel back to Kerbin from Minmusport aboard the Project Peacock craft docked there. Originally the idea was for him to head to Kerbinport and take a Raven flight back down to the surface with three tourists, but I'm thinking about retiring the design of the original Project Peacock at this point owing to later events that happened over the weekend.

Saturday was spent in a frustrating attempt to get a couple of plane designs working. I began designing the Albatross 7, my first Mk3 sized aircraft. She was designed as a tanker, a scaled-up version of the Vulture. I came to the conclusion during the test flights that I need to wait for some more tech before she can become operational; she's a heavy bird and I don't have the large gears unlocked yet, so almost all of the test flights all ended with the craft wheelbarrowing and crashing. The one time she rolled off the Runway to the left I was able to get her airborne, but she promptly lawn darted into the drink - too stable. Finally, she was designed with RAPIERs in mind, and I don't have RAPIERS unlocked. So yeah, a lot of work to be done there. I also began tweaking the Magpie 7 ore carrier plane design in the hopes of alleviating her pitch-up tendencies. Pretty much I just increased the sweep on her main wing, which helped somewhat. She wasn't loaded with enough fuel to make orbit, and during the descent I accidentally sent all her excess oxidizer aft instead of forward like I'd intended; by the time I realized my mistake, she was out of control and down she went into the drink. I also made the mistake on that one of hitting the "space center" bar instead of the "revert flight" bar, so that one wound up costing me some bux - which I was NOT happy about...

Sunday was spent doing some more fun stuff. I began by designing the Carrier Pigeon 7, which was designed specifically to increase the range of Project Peacock craft. I realized shortly after I put the first one into orbit and docked it at Kerbinport that the Peacock would have to be redesigned so that the Pigeon wouldn't have its center of mass off-balance with a Peacock attached. The Peacock design was updated and a new capsule launched to Kerbinport, where the Pigeon undocked from the station and docked with the Peacock; the combined craft is now en-route to Mun, where it will act as an emergency "lifeboat" for any future rescue contracts over Mun. I also undocked Bockscar from the station with Val as a passenger - she had lost her XP rating in the Raven accident two weeks ago, and I figured she could stand to do a Mun landing to get it back. I'll send her down with the tourists and pray she doesn't strand them on the Munar surface (which she has an annoying tendency to do); right now almost all of my engineers are deployed to Minmus. I also successfully launced a Beep-Beep 7 probe to a polar orbit for contract (after two failed Ballista flights), and launched another space station towards Kerbolar orbit for contract; that one will exit Kerbin's SOI in two days, and will make me √300k when it gets out there. That station might get picked up by Eve at some point as well.

As of this morning, I've got √170k, 69% rep and all buildings at KSC fully upgraded except for the Tracking Station at Level 2. I'm 7080 science points short of having the entire tech tree unlocked.

[Sido]

I finally got back into my 1.0 game and added a couple of mods. First off; Kerbal Joint Reenforcement, where have you been all my life??? Secondly, I installed Kronal Vessel Viewer, and made some diagrams of my latest creation:

http://i.imgur.com/rakU8jU.jpg

...And a screenshot of where the mission is at now, off to Ike next.

http://i.imgur.com/LOLUT5s.png

Interesting work here

[Goddess Bhavani]

Kerbal NCAP Krash testing.

The Kanyonero SUV has a record-breaking 0 star passenger safety rating.

[moogoob]

Did a powered slinghot off Tylo to bring the Jool Outer Moon Explorer 2 (1 was running out of power and had to be put in stasis in low Jool Orbit.) to Pol, at the suggestion of the fine folks in the Gameplay Questions forum section. It worked! I feel so accomplished now.

[coreross]

My Martian inspired trip to Duna is working well in Kerbal Space Program

[Terwin]

"Cannot Deploy While Stowed"

What the *geep*!They aren't stowed! They have never been stowed! I can *geeping* well SEE them!

Anything attached near or on a cargo bay, is at risk of being considered as "stowed". Open cargo bays for a sec when deploying, then close it again.

This is why I use my cargo doors as auxiliary air-brakes during descent(not sure if it helps, but at least all the contents can contribute drag). Got to be careful not to allow too much heating, but usually I have enough air-brakes that it is not a big risk.

On to my exploits for this past weekend:

Ejected My Outer Grand Tour from Pol using about 60% of my LFO for improved acceleration and d-v for my LH2 engines.

Had an adjustment burn shortly after leaving Jool's SOI, and then drifted back through Jools SOI on the way to Eeloo.

During the transit, I scanned all the remaining moons of Jool using my Jool Scansat probe, leaving it in orbit of Lathe.

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While that was going on, my Scansat Dres finally arrived(years after my manned vessel left), scanned the planet and headed off to Jool as I still had > 5KM/s and I did not think the Scansat Jool would have enough d-v to finish.(Tylo has about 0.5% left for the high-res scanner, but that is the only thing left for it to do when it arrives ~ 6 years after leaving Dres)

More than a year and a half after laving Pol, my Outer Grand Tour reached it's final planet: Eeloo.

Used the narrow-band scanner to scout out landing locations once I got within 500 km, Could not locate the biomes easily without any scanning having been done, but I did manage to find some good science while I was there. Much easier to land on than Bop and Pol with their uneven surfaces.

Managed to find Lowlands, Midlands, Glaciers and Ice Chasm biomes before lifting off and heading for home.

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Having lifted off fully fueled, I burned off all of my remaining LFO in the ejection burn with a plan to refuel on Minmus before landing on Kerbin.

During the 2.5 year return voyage, the Eeloo scansat arrived and scanned the planet, finding all those hard to locate biomes and ore pockets while the manned lander was on it's way home.

As Dres, Eeloo, Bop and Pol were all scanned after the manned ship left, I suspect I need to plan my missions better in my next game.

Finally, the Outer Grand Tour arrived home, 9 years and 190 days after it departed towards Duna to rescue a couple of stranded scientists.

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----------

Then I started up my new EPL game.

After my first couple orbital missions(one to get to orbit and get most of my Kerbals to 1 star, then a second to get my last pilot to 1 star and rescue a stranded kerbal, both with tourists loaded up in all empty seats), it occurred to me that I am still stuck on my Grand Tour techniques, and there is no need for me to barely eek-by using single stage rockets for brief missions where multi-stage will work better.

(This is something I should have thought of during the 5km EVA trip to the stranded kerbal and the 10km trip back to the rocket which barely had enough fuel for a 5km near-miss as I wanted it to also be able to de-orbit)

On the plus side, the stranded kerbal was in a workshop piece, so with KIS/KAS I should be able to add docking ports and use it as part of an orbital construction site.

tonight: multi-stage launches and rescue missions! (including one in an orbit outside that of the Mun)

(perhaps I will also set up the beginnings of my UKS testing base a couple KM from the KSC)

[Mikki]

Launched two habitat rings made of stockparts for the Laythe colonization. Currently i have 0 Kerbals on ground...

I really need more Staff!

[Gaarst]

Redesigned my RSS lunar rocket for the 8-th time before launching it. Probably going to redesign it again because I find the upper stages too weak.

Technically called "CX Alba 9 CReU Ice 2", but I just call it "Alba Ice 2". 2250t at launch and 122m tall (somehow taller than a Saturn V but I don't trust KSP's size indications).

Kudos to NecroBones' SpaceY mods for 90% of the rocket and Ven's Revamp for the 10% left under the fairing.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Anything attached near or on a cargo bay, is at risk of being considered as "stowed". Open cargo bays for a sec when deploying, then close it again.

Thank you. I had noticed this with one of my craft-- fortunately the chutes involved were drogues rather than my main chutes, so the landing was good. I fixed the problem by moving the drogues a little farther from the cargo bay, but I didn't really understand why that worked.

[aramil]

Landed At Arkas http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/134547-1-0-4-Arkas-0-2-1-A-Thick-Atmosphere-on-a-Desert-World-17-Unique-Biomes-Cloud-Support-Added! & setup a mining base, because "The Spice Must Flow"

[Mat2ch]

Today I made my first LFO-only space plane. I think it still needs some tuning, burnt a lot of fuel in the atmosphere. Getting 2000 m/s fast below 50 km makes a great show though.

- - - Updated - - -

Got tired of never seeing the Muncastle easter egg, so I built my own:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61004449/KSP/1.0.4/VSR/screenshot148.png

This screams for some more reputation. But the system wont let me. And it gave me a great idea... really great.

[TormentedPenguin]

Started a new Science game. Forgot what I was doing.

Staged Solid Booster and Parachute in first stage.. it was.. FUN and almost a constant 10Gs for poor Jeb

Bad reentry Caused my capsule to flip and burned off all my science and parachutes. Held off jumping until the very lest second and with No Parachute watched Jeb slam into the water hard...

He Survived. Next few missions were taken on by his Colleagues so Jeb could rest and heal.

[Vermil]

I finally got back into my 1.0 game and added a couple of mods. First off; Kerbal Joint Reenforcement, where have you been all my life??? Secondly, I installed Kronal Vessel Viewer, and made some diagrams of my latest creation:

http://i.imgur.com/rakU8jU.jpg

I really like that diagram.

So, if I get that Kronal Vessel Viewer, I can figure out how to do things like that?

- - - Updated - - -

I didn't do much today.

I planned to start the flights back home to Kermin. But I don't have time. Tomorrow.

But the boys can at least climb all the ladders back up into the rocket.

Fun fact: As Kronos_A now stands on Laythe, she weighs in at 486.6 t, and consists of 333 parts. When she took off from Kermin, the vessel weighed 8,447.7 t and consisted of 980 parts, had 50 stages and six toggles. There's not going to be much left, when she returns to Kermin.

'Alpine style'. All the way in one single push. Surface to surface and back again. No docking, no refuling, no stations, no "lander".

(It's madness of course. And the wrong way to do it. Cost: 3,373,290. I'm just trying to make it sound cool.)

Edited October 12, 2015 by Vermil

[Fengist]

Went for a swim.

Tested some neutral buoyancy and automatic keel leveling code.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Fengist

[gre8]

Went for a swim.

Tested some neutral buoyancy and automatic keel levelling code.

Dude, I love submarines! Hope they open cool new exploration oportunities... like dropping one of those in Laythe!

Btw, today I re-installed KSP in order to test some things.

[cantab]

My Coleridge 1, the mothership for the antennaless lander I posted before, left Dres, dropped a probe into Jool which blew up pretty much instantly, then arrived at Duna. The atmo landers have antennae at least, so I should get good science from Duna's surface. (This is in the New Horizons system, with Dres, Duna, and Ike all orbiting Jool.)

[nsgallup]

I completed a landing/return mission to Moho!

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/136574-Finally-Conquered-Moho-(Pic-Heavy)?p=2241798#post2241798