ZaPPPa

New update to 1962. Moon Probe mission that completed three contracts (Moon Flyby, Moon Impact and Moon Orbit)

Probably Level 5 in Realism Overhaul mode, not sure how that translates into stock KSP...

Over 100 mods.. It used to take ages to load until I discovered my ssd was going bad. With a brand new ssd, it loads quite quickly.

I completely understand... That's how my little adventure story got completely out of control and I am currently at 203 pages and over 72,000 words.. Basically a decent size novel by now.. and I'm not even half done.

New update to 1962. A topic that probably nearly everyone already knows. How to read a DeltaV map.. I put it there for completeness' sake. However, I also added a little chapter on how to tailor the mission rocket design to the specific mission deltaV requirements.

1962 has started.. first update

This is one impressive project. I have not read through all your updates yet, but will sure be following along.

Small update to 1961, starting on page 21. Couple of test launches to get back in the groove and to get TestFlight re-balanced (all test data got reset to zero after the switch to 1.2.2) The only odd thing left is that Kerbals instantly vaporize when on EVA on Kerbin.. Something to do with overheating. Not sure what causes this, but it means I won't be able to get any crew screenshots until that is fixed.

I have a general question. What do people want to see? I know this story is different from most, but I'd also like to make sure that the people that are actively reading stay interested. Heavy on story? More world history (what specifically do you want to know?) More mission based? Less Text? More pictures? Specific requests for techno-babble (calculating transfer windows, rendez-vous planning, orbital manouvers etc etc..) As you can see I am slowly moving away from log entries to more of a first person perspective story line as this gives a lot more creative freedom in writing. If all goes well, I may rewrite some of the earlier entries and add color to it.

Alright, here we go. 1961 was updated. All story this time. The update starts at page 17. I'm still working out some minor issues with mods, but am able to load and launch my old vessels now.

@michal.don you read all the old ones in one day? Wow, I've been re-reading and it's taking me quite a while so far :).. Little update. I tried to launch some of the old rocket designs and am running into some issues where the solid rocket boosters explode mid-launch without warning. Something must have changed in either the temperature or FAR settings or mods that I need to investigate. I do expect an update to the story line some time this weekend. I am also thinking about editing some of the old documents to add more color to the various missions, but I don't want to keep some of the loyal readers from last year waiting any longer. Update: Figured it out. The version of TestFlight I used before did not contain a lot of the engines at the time. Now they have been added, but this means most of the engines have no testflight data yet and are very unreliable. I can tweak that luckily. So, with that out of the way, the story can continue.

Good news... or indifferent news, depending on how much you enjoyed this thread and the story. After a looooong hiatus, primarily caused by my new job, a bit of a KSP burnout, a pretty severe addiction to Football Manager and then the upgrade of KSP to Winx64 which caused RSS, RO and RP-0 to have to be updated, I finally got back to (re-)installing KSP. It seems a bit of a miracle happened because I never expected the Wernher save file to load, but after some manual tweaking it actually did and nothing exploded. I am now going through the process of validating the install and checking whether the saved rocket designs still function properly or if they have to be adjusted. There are still some glitches to work out, most having to do with manual edits I made to various mods to make tweaks to components or add graphics, textures etc etc.. I'm afraid I am going to have to get re-acquainted with the story and especially the launch trajectories and idiosyncrasies of the various designs, which may take a while. I squeezed every last bit of DeltaV out of each design and remember I had to launch in a very specific trajectory to achieve the various objectives.

I will try to do another update soon. For the last two months I have been voluntarily unemployed, but I started a new job today, so I don't know how much time I will have. I have a good idea on what is going to happen next and it will involve new missions (finally). Mine was not supposed to be nearly as detailed as it turned out to be. I had a simple mission log in mind when I started and then it all kind of went off the rails and here we are... For the rockets? I went for "Famous Ancient Scientists & Inventors" for the rocket families, "Mythological Creatures" for the individual stages and "Roman Emperors" for the project(s). Roman and Greek names always sound cool, so you could search for famous generals, gladiators, families, senators, philosophers, provinces, conquered tribes and/or famous roman women.

Drumlin is the bigger bastid in that movie.. and hits closer to home for me. But Kitz fits the story better.