GalFisk

Oh man, this is great! I thought this was not done, since I for some reason stopped getting email notifications after "The Sage of Barkton". I had other things to think of and let it slide, and now I discover that I have lots of chapters to enjoy, and an ending as well! Thanks for writing this epic epic.

Didn't know this forum had likes. Your story got my first KSP forum like. The first two in fact. I read every new chapter as soon as I have the chance, and when the story is all done, I'll read it all again from the beginning.

I've had email alerts on this thread for years, and will read what you write until the end even if that too should take years. Amazing story and very well written.

I did land (strand) some kerbals on Eve in 0.2x. The first landing was Jeb in a modified munar lander - with a ladder that didn't reach all the way to the ground. Oops. The second was meant to land a science lab for him, but it hit the other side of the planet and then fell over - so its ladders too didn't reach the surface. In 1.x I've only sent probes further than Minimus so far, but I have a semi-viable plan for Duna and Moho as a result. My first munar mission needed 5 or 6 rescue missions before all kerbals were returned to Kerbin.

Eve's an eggplant, because why not.

RCS and SAS should be possible to turn off and on by clicking (I think it was in earlier verisons?) Everything that has a hotkey should display a tooltip for that hotkey, for instance hovering above symmetry mode in VAB should show that hotkey, hovering above Brakes should show B and so on. Right now hotkeys are poorly documented inside the game, and it's easy for beginners to hit something you don't know what does and struggle/google to get it back the way it was. Showing a hotkey list ingame for different views would be helpful too.

My monster manned mission to the Mun went through a few iterations before finally being somewhat successful. The mission consists of 12 complete manned munar landers, with their own Kerbin return capability and stuffed full of science equipment, strapped to two large Kerbodyne tanks. It is designed to get maximum science out of all Mun biomes, in order to unlock the parts needed for even grander schemes. This beast is more than 1000 parts big at launch. It doesn't save properly, but is always called "auto-saved ship" (instead of "Munar madness"). *At one point, symmetry got screwed up, and all twelve munar landers got attached to the same point and placed inside each others. One of the spotlights on all of them also turned on. My framerate turned... not off, but close. Reload. Lauch time: launch underpowered. Rebuild. And rebuild. MOAR boosters! If I recall correctly (i'm at work now) it has: Six of the new liquid fuel boosters 18 of the long solid fuel boosters (3 to each LFB (LRB?)) 54 of the medium length fuel boosters (three to each long SRB) --- Something went wrong with the numerous struts during symmetry building. On launch, when separating the last of the SRBs, one of the LFBs exploded. I didn't really notice until the craft decided not to go to space today, even when correcting with all the RCS thrusters on all the landers. Retry: explosion. Rebuild all struts I could find: explosion. Rebuild everything below the waist: no explosion. But the Kerbodyne rocket engine at the very center very serenely drifted away when separating the LFBs. ...oh well, there's plenty of fuel in the next stage, let's go to the Mun! ...hm, turns out there wasn't. Rebuild, retry, engine fell off again (I think it even exploded this time). Add separatrons! What do you know, it actually worked! Enter munar orbit. Detach one lander - success! Land it on the Mun - not so much success. Turns out I built them too small, and the fuel didn't last all the way down to the landing ...I mean crash site. Reset, rebuild, bigger better, add some MOAR BOOSTERS for the added weight, relaunch, retry. This launch used up so much RCS fuel from the landers, they couldn't land controllably. Add lots of tanks and RCS thrusters to the main body, relaunch. NOW we're in business, finally. I didn't want to go around deactivating all RCS tanks on all twleve landers before launch, but now we're in orbit with more than enough RCS fuel left to top off the landers as they leave. Landing 1, canyon: Lander tipped over. Righted by RCS, scienced, launched, returned to Kerbin. Success! Landing 2, some big crater: Nice enough, but had to my RCS dry to get to a Kerbin intercept orbit. Landing 3, some small crater: Was going to land on very uneven ground, tried to fix it end ended up semi-crashing a bit farther away. Launch vehicle tipped over. Went out and scienced anyway. got science from instruments and stuffed them in capsule. Tried to right vehicle for launch: Science jr. exploded. Oh well, at least the data is safe. Separate stages. Not enough fuel to get anywhere near home. Quickload... Only to find that the quicksave was of landing 2. Tomorrow, I'll probably retry landing 3, hopefully with more success. Then there's only 4 thru 12 left that can go disastrously wrong... By the way, with two of the landers separated the ship still has 600+ parts. It's a real relief for the computer when a lander gets far enough from the mothership to put it on rails. Edit: This mission has now ended, with only two further problems: 1. I counted biomes from the wrong list when I created the ship, so I didn't bring enough ships for all the biomes of the Mün, 2. I tried to put the mothership with two landers remaining into a polar orbit, in order to save lander fuel when visiting higher latitudes. The remaining landers were attached asymmetrically, and all I managed to do was to tumble. I detached one of the landers, landed, scienced, flew home, quicksaved a few times during the process - and found that the mothership and the remaining lander was gone. Apparently, the attempts to change the orbit resulted in one intersecting Mün... my only non-F9able kerbonaut fatality so far.

It does indeed. I donated this morning. This Popular Mechanics article says the probe has sequencers instead of computers. I'm curious, is there a place on the web that describes how these things work?

That's what he's usually doing there too. The last time, he snuck aboard my rescue operation #4 (I think) for getting poor Bob Kerman out of münar orbit. He was rescued in operation 3, along with the people from operation 1 and 2, but there was no space for Bob in that vessel because of some miscalculation when adding single digit integers during the design phase. Rescue operation #4 was converted to a münar landing, that did return quite a lot of valuable science results. And there's now a flag and plaque on the Mün, commemorating Jebediah's epic butt slide, when he forgot to brake his considerable forward speed in the EVA suit before touching the ground. He claims he was not joyriding, but his ****-eating grin makes it a bit hard to believe him. (this is my first post btw, I'll introduce myself later in the appropriate thread)