What did you do that you didn't think would work?

[kBob]

Mine:

I got jealous of all the rovers I've been seeing around here, but I don't have rover wheels unlocked so I tried to make a wheelless rover...and it worked! It's not fast about 4m/s and it takes a bit of practice to steer and it just spins in water and it can take a few tries to get up a small hill, but as you can see it will get you around and around and around...

[Geschosskopf]

If you build big rims on the ends out of girders, you can then festoon it with rockets. Then it will go faster and spew cool clouds of fire and smoke. Of course, it will become essentially impossible to control and will probably fly apart or explode spectacularly, but that's why you do this anyway .

[JimmyAgent007]

The first time i had to get a Kerbal out to push I didnt think it would work. I just thought it was a joke that people on here liked to tell.

[EndOfTheEarth]

The very end of my mission back from Gilly, I kept noticing that the location I had stored the parachute in relation to the capsule kept ripping the chute off during my return. Due to my fuel level I didn't have enough time to slow down for orbit, so I was coming in with interplanetary reentry speed. My solution was to wait until 7000m, kick in all engines at full throttle (and these are nukes with still a massive load in-atmosphere, so there was an overheat danger as well, and then simultaneously decoubled and activated the chute at something like 900m. It snapped anyway, but the crew compartment survived, so mission success!

In fact, the whole mission was pretty nuts. It was the first time in nearly a year that I'd landed a spacecraft horizontally somewhere, the first time I'd ever landed on Gilly, the first time I'd ever sent a manned crew to Eve SOI, the first time I'd used this design beyond Kerbin orbit...heck, I didn't even know if my RCS thruster system would actually let the ship take off once it reached Gilly.

Full album of the journey here:

http://imgur.com/a/U7CBc

[Jart]

My recent Mun sciency/rover lander.

Landed!

Separated! The rover was fun to drive like that. I kind of wish it had a docking clamp on top.

Final Separation!

If I was good enough maybe I could use that as a landing pad. No fuel left in tanks but.... challenge.

[GeoPhizzix]

Here is one that I did during .22 (so science was repeatable) and using the Deadly Reentry + Realchute mods. Typically, when a satellite as outlived its usefulness, I will crash it into its orbiting planet. On this occasion, I had equipped the vessel with a few parachutes and a low end heatshield to test out the atmosphere and a "safe" angle of entry into Duna before I finalized my manned mission there. During the process of adjusting my orbit for reentry, my last few remaining droplets of fuel burned faster than expected, leaving me with a very low angle entry that would land me on the opposite side of the planet near its equatorial plane.

Needless to say, the low angle of reentry and the accidentally correct combination of parachutes landed the vessel on a hillside, where it slide down gently before coming to rest and losing only 2 of the solar panels and a few other minor instruments. So the once designated Duna Sat 1, was renamed into Duna Stationary Probe Opps. Lots of science was gathered with its fully functioning equipment payload and best of all...a functioning (although, very limited) ground based telescope on the surface of Duna.

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c60/kryptman/screenshot5.png' alt='screenshot5.png'>

[Max Grant]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPc3eqRwLc

I didn't think the first part of this would work (the Curiosity-style landing). I was really surprised that I was able to pull it off.

The rest of the mission was a disaster, hilariously! The ship could hardly be steered (this was my first foray into multi-part ships, and there was no Clamp-O-Tron, Sr so it wobbled mightily). None of my other landers worked properly, as I recall. I spent all my R&D budget (meaning, my time) researching how to make the skycrane work. Forgot to try out any of the rest of it.

[xrayfishx]

A ship designed for high poly count to heat the laptop so I could warm my fingers on the GPU. No screenshots, sorry.

I've done this before with Skyrim and Bf3, but that day I was too lazy to fire up either of them. Also, I don't remember which one it was, but with one of these I've burnt my finger with the GPU. And I think that was one of the few times I actually went over the maximum recommended temperature. Laptop high temperature parts ftw.

[spudman2]

A ship designed for high poly count to heat the laptop so I could warm my fingers on the GPU.

That... That is horrifying.

[GeoPhizzix]

A ship designed for high poly count to heat the laptop so I could warm my fingers on the GPU. No screenshots, sorry.

ROFL! I have done this on more then one occasion when I am doing field research/mapping in colder regions.

[problemecium]

It snapped anyway, but the crew compartment survived, so mission success!

My advice (I'm not claiming to be an expert Kerballer here, but here it is anyway): if the ship can't take one big parachute snapping open, give it multiple parachutes at different heights along the hull, or tweak them to deploy all at different altitudes - that way the big shock load will be split into many small shock loads and slow the ship down a bit more gently.

[kBob]

Good stuff everyone, I'm learning lots and getting all sorts of ideas for future projects (well okay I try not to use my computer as a room warmer I always way over engineer the number of cooling fans in my computers). Thanks for sharing...keep it going!

[Comrade Jenkens]

Kraken Drive...

[Max Grant]

My advice (I'm not claiming to be an expert Kerballer here, but here it is anyway): if the ship can't take one big parachute snapping open, give it multiple parachutes at different heights along the hull, or tweak them to deploy all at different altitudes - that way the big shock load will be split into many small shock loads and slow the ship down a bit more gently.

My advice from 3 years of this is, not quite. Each chute will exert its own force, and if they are not precisely in alignment it will still rip your ship apart. Even if you put the chutes on the heavy lower sections of the ship, you still run the risk of them ripping it in half. Has happened many times.

What I usually do is struts, across all parts of the ship. I also do a drop test if I'm not sure it will work, on Kerbin.

[kBob]

Now twice as fast, going places faster than a Kerbal can run.

I unlocked the large SAS wheel now I'm getting about 8.4m/s, It is a bit more fragile can't move and turn at the same time. I stuck a sci. jr. on it and found a few sci points I'd missed (like the runway). Added solar for daytime use. Next is to try it out Minmus or Mun.

[Drew Kerman]

I didn't think I would be able to devise a way to land from orbit at the KSC with my space shuttle (it launches from the launchpad not the runway) but after 3 tries with the method I came up with lo and behold I made it and was able to land two more times in a row. I made a challenge for it if anyone's interested.

[theend3r]

Survive this at 4x physics warp. I had to drive about 70km on Eeloo to the landing site of my return craft:

[Rickenbacker]

Tipped over a very tall rover on the Mun. It had a KAS winch, so I attached an anchor and tried winching it upright. I was amazed when it actually worked!

[qromodynmc]

Lot of think I think it would work,But most of them didnt work..

[MajorThomas]

For me, being able to right a fallen lander, without any damage, amazes me everytime.

Most recent example: I landed right on top of an anomaly that had a slippery slope. Toppled over, no damage. And I was able to stand the lander up again using only SAS and retracting/extending the landing legs.

[Vanamonde]

I got impatient while waiting for a launch window, and decided to take the scenic route:

[kBob]

^good thing we fly Kerbals about and not humans...I had something worse when trying to get Jeb back from collecting science at the sun (and I had to cheat and use unlimited fuel or he'd still be there). I think the Kerbal's have a pretty bad space union. Then of course there are those times I've time warped and let my mind wander at just the wrong moment and oops we are now going interstellar (need to get the alarm clock).

Being able to get those capsules back up again, yes it is amazing (though it took me a long time to even think to try)...that's this game you need to keep thinking outside that overly mentioned box.

[Ryu Gemini]

Honestly, the rollerblading mecha would fall under this (second half of video). Uses mods, most notably infernal robotics.

What with how kerbal physics work, I was not sure actually pushing sideways against rollerblade wheels would be able to generate actual forward thrust like it properly would. I was pleasantly surprised that Kerbal physics did indeed replicate the effects to a reasonable degree of accuracy.

I was also not entirely certain that a boat that uses oars to row forward would work properly or not. But even that did, to a point.

Its always surprising when the kerbal physics engine actually turns out capable of realistically emulating something interesting like that (considering its weirdness with things like "infiniglide" and the "Kraken Drive"). Things you can't actually test much (or at all) without using parts from the infernal robotics mod.

I mean, it may not be perfect, but the fact that the physics engine (clearly not designed with the purpose specifically in mind) can actually result in a rollerblading mech functioning is just...

Yeah, guys? I think we may be slightly harsh on KSP's physics engine sometimes. We should apologize to it.

.

[thetntm]

I made a ship using no liquid engines, and mainly just solid thrusters. eventually i got this down to a science, and now one of my ships, the furthest one i sent (completely out of power due to lack of sunlight) has just reached Giga-meters (when the display at the top shows the letter g, and you have 13 place values) in altitude.

edit: screenshot:

the scary thing is that this isn't even halfway to the appoapsis yet. if i look at the map from another ship I can see where it returns.

(the green line)

Edited February 15, 2014 by thetntm
found out the height.

[kBob]

^That looked interesting so I thought I'd try it.

Everything went well for the first stage

then things went out of control:

this is going to require some thought.