What did you do in KSP1 today?

[micr0wave]

Scouted Minmus for a good spot to build a colony

 

 

[RizzoTheRat]

50 minutes ago, micr0wave said:

Scouted Minmus for a good spot to build a colony

The inflatable hab's are presumably USI, what are the rover wheels and cockpit from?

 

[micr0wave]

It's the Karibou rover from Roverdude (USI&Co.)

[Hotaru]

Finally finished the arrival maneuvers for my Eve fleet.

 

The flagship Constant, carrying the Eve hab module, needed several long burns to circularize in low Eve orbit.

 

 

Neither the ascent vehicle nor the mining rover had enough fuel to circularize and land without refueling, so they had to make several aerobraking passes each.

 

 

Super Aqualung "Blue" deployed the mining rig on Gilly, which is now operational.

 

 

Phoebe left Eve station for Gilly, where it will drop off the crew of the mining rig, refuel, and then--hopefully--depart on a round-trip to Moho.

[GarrisonChisholm]

...yeah.  They weren't too thrilled either.  Jeb had his finger on the Zed key for an abort for a full minute as the 110 ton ship rocked back and forth as much as 20 degrees before settling.  Still, it worked, and landing in an atmosphere should provide superior performance. We hope....

Edited February 4, 2016 by GarrisonChisholm

[GarrisonChisholm]

6 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

I tried to learn to play with left mouse hand to continue my Dres project. My right hand have some medical problems and I have to avoid using of mouse.

Ouch. :\  That's going to be tough-  good luck with that!

[Ravenchant]

I finished another model, and while I haven't even begun to delve into Blender's more advanced options, it seems like an improvement in quality from the first one. It's ~3600 tris, so a bit resource-hungry. OTOH, even with that I'm positive that some of the pipes connect in wrong places... anyway, tomorrow starts the horrible task of UV-unwrapping. It'll be a while before it's in the game.

 

Also, @DavidBowman, this may be of interest to you

[Evanitis]

Redid the landing part of my STS Challenge submission, as the administration deemed that the craft ended up in too many different parts. The conditions were extreme, as I was carrying 42 tons of payload on the way down, but forgot my landing gears at home.

I was really surprised that I managed to land in one piece at the end, though it required some serious out-of-the-box thinking.

 

[peachoftree]

I landed a VTOL on the island tower!

 

 

[Evanitis]

11 minutes ago, peachoftree said:

I landed a VTOL on the island tower!

Very nice! Only those of us who struggled to do the same can appreciate how cool it is to actually succeed. If it gets too easy, do it again with the with the VAB.

[mackadelik]

On 2/3/2016 at 2:02 AM, RizzoTheRat said:

Realised that my exploding satellite design from a couple of days ago wouldn't have enough power to do the job around Duna and Ike, so as that launch mission was a failure anyway I've redesigned the satellite, and figured I'd do a mission report for a K-Prize submission while I was at itGreat lo

Great ship! I've had a terrible time making those MKII parts attach to the side of my space planes without being all loose and wobbly on the runway or in the air! How did you get those parts side-by-side like that and keep it one piece?

Edited February 4, 2016 by mackadelik

[peachoftree]

2 hours ago, Evanitis said:

Very nice! Only those of us who struggled to do the same can appreciate how cool it is to actually succeed. If it gets too easy, do it again with the with the VAB.

I assume you mean the air traffic control tower on the SPH, but that always seems to find a way to kraken me off whenever I try to land, wheels up or down. 

[Evanitis]

3 minutes ago, peachoftree said:

I assume you mean the air traffic control tower on the SPH. 

Nope, I meant the VAB building. It has nice helipads on top, begging for a landing. And lower crash tolerance than most wheels.

[Puggonaut]

Been a busy day , last Video "Shuttle Launch "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yOL1j9p9bQ&feature=youtu.be

6 hours ago, Hotaru said:

Finally finished the arrival maneuvers for my Eve fleet.

 

The flagship Constant, carrying the Eve hab module, needed several long burns to circularize in low Eve orbit.

 

 

Neither the ascent vehicle nor the mining rover had enough fuel to circularize and land without refueling, so they had to make several aerobraking passes each.

 

 

Super Aqualung "Blue" deployed the mining rig on Gilly, which is now operational.

 

 

Phoebe left Eve station for Gilly, where it will drop off the crew of the mining rig, refuel, and then--hopefully--depart on a round-trip to Moho.

Please for gods sake share your craft files , your craft are nothing short of epic

[Alchemist]

Developing a couple of crafts for a particular mission replica.

Here's the lander:

No, it's not Apollo (although, the sketches you can find on this project look way too similar). It's LEK - Lunar Expeditional Complex (ЛЭК - Лунный Экспедиционный Комплекс). This lander is slightly larger (crew capacity: 3-4) and meant for longer stay on the surface (10-15 days in 2-launch scheme). It's launched uncrewed to lunar orbit, so the mission profile includes to rendezvous of the lander and the orbital craft used for crew transfer.

One of the best features of having separate landing and ascent stages (especially, if the lander is launched independently) is the ability to use the same landing stage to deliver something else (with another launch before the lander) to the landing site. Here's one of the options, which would allow even longer mission duration (entire month?) - Laboratory and Habitation Module (ЛЖМ - Лабораторно-Жилой Модуль).

Furthermore, this scheme is easily extendable to a permanent base with multiple modules and supply crafts sent in addition to the crewed ships.

And the launch vehicle? This scheme (and the base itself) was most likely first proposed for N1F (although L3M was chosen at that time), but after that project got canceled, it became the lunar expedition scheme for Energia (which didn't even require much change, since both launch vehicles had similar payload capacity)

Yes, it's side-mounted third stage. An interesting note is that in 3-stage configuration of Energia the entire third stage (as well as the payload) is supposed to be packed inside a container (couldn't really replicate that with the stock fairings) that split-opens after the second stage separates (almost in orbit)

 

The only thing still missing is the orbital craft (lunar-grade modification of Zarya spacecraft?), which is launched last (crew capacity 5-6).  1 or 2 crewmembers are staying in the orbit, while the rest transfer to the lander and go down to the surface.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Alchemist

[Val]

Made an SSTO Spaceplane that has 3000+ m/s dV in LKO with 6 kerbals and 3.6 t payload and then flew it to Duna and landed.

It was the first time I ever tried to do a horizontal landing on Duna. I'd heard it was hard due to the thin atmosphere. And it sure was. Took a lot of practice runs before I discovered a barely repeatable method.

It has ~2000 dV left after dropping the payload in 70 km Duna orbit. Should be plenty to get back in orbit, but probably need to be refueled, before it can make it back to Kerbin.

 

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I screwed up. You know that mining operation I started on Minmus? It's... not working. I landed the miner probe, and the ore display was messing up so I landed it in  bad spot where I'm getting very little ore. The batteries on the ship can't keep all drills running at the same time, so it's even less effective. The only good thing is heating isn't a problem. As for the space station orbiting Minmus where I plan to store the ore, it's power systems can barely keep it running while the lab works, and I haven't even brought over an ISRU. Finally, the lander I sent wasted fuel trying to land on the poles, so I couldn't biome hop for more science. So I'll have to plan several more missions to fix everything.

Edit: Moral of the story, practice with this stuff. This is my first time ever using mining or the lab or anything, so I have no idea how it works.

Edited February 5, 2016 by Choctofliatrio2.0

[Fearless Son]

I felt in the mood to make a plane, so I built this fighter-like craft that flies very high and very fast and is relatively agile.  

[Hotaru]

7 hours ago, Puggonaut said:

Please for gods sake share your craft files , your craft are nothing short of epic

Glad you like them! I may set up a showcase thread at some point and put some of my more interesting designs up on KerbalX, although I'd like to test them in 1.0.5 and possibly make de-modded versions (I mostly use mods to reduce part-count on things like RCS and ladders, so it shouldn't be too hard) before I do that. 

 

Having completed its mission in low Eve orbit, SS Phoebe headed for Gilly to refuel and pick up a couple of contracts. 

 

Conveniently, Gilly was near periapsis so the transfer only took about a day and a half. 

 

Phoebe stopped to pick up Ansa Kerman (formerly of Jeb's Junkyard), who had somehow managed to get herself stuck in a Mk 2 cockpit in high Gilly orbit. Apparently Jebediah is running his own space program completely independent of my one, may have to ask him about that when he's back from his tour at Base Ardan. 

 

Rescue done, Phoebe landed at the Gilly mining rig to refuel and drop off the rig's temporary crew. It's not meant to be permanently manned, at least not at first, but it'll need a crew to refuel the Aqualung tankers for the duration of the current Eve expedition. It might get expanded into a proper base in the future. 

[RizzoTheRat]

10 hours ago, mackadelik said:

Great ship! I've had a terrible time making those MKII parts attach to the side of my space planes without being all loose and wobbly on the runway or in the air! How did you get those parts side-by-side like that and keep it one piece?

Yeah, they only bond on the first one you place so additional parts have a tendency to flap around a bit..  I've bonded the front tank to the central fuselage and then attached a couple of short struts at the back connect the rear Y adaptor tank to the main fuselage. There's still a little big of flex when it drops on the runway at the start but it seems to be stable enough in flight.

[RizzoTheRat]

After spending ages messing about with Infernal Robotics trying to make a crane rover to assemble bases, I decided to hyperedit my latest attempt to Minmus to test it out.

It turns out that a light weight crane with support arms doesn't work well in a low gravity environment where the momentum of the load can cause the whole thing to take off.  Jeb enjoyed the ride though.

So I had a bit of a change of plan and built what I'm currently calling a Spider Crane which worked well in both Kerbin and Minmus gravity.  I Hyperedited to the whole thing to Minus for a test and then used the Spider Crane to rearrange the base. 

The concept works fine, however the docking port blocks the hatch on the middle hitchhiker which I'll need to fix.  I'm also thinking I might have a vertical central module with a cupola on top to take in the view with the other 4 modules arranged around it.

 

I can probably get all this in to Kerbin orbit in 2 launches, although each module should fit in a Mk3 cargo bay so I could do it in several SSTO space plane launches once I get that design sorted out.

For Minmus I'm tempted to assemble it in orbit and land the whole thing in one piece without bothering with the crane,  but I plan to use the same base design on Mun as well where the crane will make more sense.

Currently the station has drilling, refining, fuel storage, habitation/comms (I have a contract to put a 12 Kerbal station on Minmus), and the 4th module contains all the TAC-LS storage and recyclers, plus a large container for KAS/KIS modules.  Each module has a large battery and a couple of Gigantors for independent power.  Other than a lab (which I'll need for the Mun station contract), and potentially some form of greenhouse mod, is there anything else I might need on a station?

Edited February 5, 2016 by RizzoTheRat

[Nightshift83]

Well I'm sure you all read my blog post a while ago where I told you about that little space race to Duna I had with a friend and how this would be my first Duna landing.. If not http://imgur.com/a/rcjVq

that was the first part, but I was getting low on fuel.. so after bringing the mothership into a closer orbit and descending from there after a refill I actually landed on Duna. And with the help of a technology called parachutes I managed to still have 1600 delta-v wich I was told should be enough to get back into an orbit of 50km.

Well the landing was bit hard and the lower tank on the lander exploded (wich was engeneered of course-since it was the empty one *cough*).

Turned out I was still missing just a little bit for that circular orbit, but I knew I still had some mono-propellent that should do it. But alas those RCS thingys were on that exploded tank shattered in red dust below me.

I still had those one directional RCS on top of the lander and after a split second of genius I turned the whole thing upside down, enabled SAS to keep it aligned and held the 'i' key for a couple minutes until that periapses was out of atmospheric reach as well.

Now I might make it back to the mothership, and reuse that lander on Ike (thats the job I was getting paid for in the first place), even though it now only has half the capacity and its landing legs are broken..

http://imgur.com/a/hJaTv

This time pictures are uncommented and kinda unsorted but you should get the idea.

As you can see my first two Kerbals on Duna were female (or is it kemale?).. anyway thats how Kerbal women finally earned their right to vote (on Duna -haha).

 

I'm still proud on my first succesfull Duna landing and I think Ike will be no problem even with that damaged hardware.

 

P.s.: That friend told me that he could not only not land on Duna but that he might even have problems to get his rig back to Kerbin without some sort of rescue/ refill mission - muhahahaha

Edited February 5, 2016 by Nightshift83
learned st today

[Evanitis]

28 minutes ago, Nightshift83 said:

This time pictures are uncommented and kinda unsorted but you should get the idea.

You attached the same album twice.

BTW, in the posting interface there is an 'i' icon in black border on the top-right. If you paste the last bit of an imgur album's link there ("rcjVq" in this case), it gets nicely embedded into the post.

 

Congratz on winning the space-race by the way!

Edited February 5, 2016 by Evanitis

[loch.ness]

I spent part of today working on my Vostok concept model - I'm running into trouble with my pilot evaporating from heat even when fully occluded by a heat-shield.  I'm going to try again with radiators attached but I might need to resort to the cheat-menu to make this one work.

 

This concept build is launching from the KOSMO base at Kraken's Belly.  The Vostok is using a slightly modified R-7 launcher.

 

I do make use of clipping (though not off-set clipping) to make the "Pod" work - but that is also what is causing my current problems.  Everything works except for re-entry - and possible the 'ejector seat' function.  

 

On this test the re-entry was very steep on the next test (with radiators installed to see if that helps), I'll be aiming for a much more pleasant re-entry path.

 

Test 2 - Puppy needed attention - launch abort.

I'll be testing it again soon.  I think I've got it set up so that Val won't poof on an appropriate entry - then I'll be testing the "ejection seat." to make sure there are no collision issues.

 

Test 3  even with excessive radiators and full heat occlusion Val still poof's on re-entry due to rising ambient heat.  There is nothing I can do about that without accessing the cheat menu.  I'll need to consider either allowing a "Just this time" exception to keep a more Vostok look or finding an alternate design.

 

Test 4 - using the debug menu to turn off max-temp for this flight only I made it through to the lower atmosphere but the decoupling force was still too high and the pod explodes taking the kerbal (and chute) with it.  Will need further testing.  My first Vostok work-alike is both A) - massively bigger than the Satyputnik rocket and B) much much worse looking.

Edited February 5, 2016 by loch.ness
Added Test 4

[MaxwellsDemon]

My Minmus mission was successful up until reentry, when KSP crashed.    Will continue today.