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Upon return to the station, the crew run the numbers and conclude that engineering really did give them some margin for error this time. So much so that they decide to take the station home, rather than wait for a ride home. Which frankly, mission control had forgotten all about launching last window anyway. Upon arrival in LKO, they are greeted by a new breed of spacecraft, made possible in part by all the juicy science the team has been beaming home over their year in deep space. We called it... a vacuumglider. Well, actually, we called it Sparrowflight, but vacuumglider is clearly the right name for this class of vessel. Sparrowflight handles remarkably well for a first vacuumglider. Arriving in LKO with over 700m/s spare in the tanks, rendezvous and docking go without a hitch, as even does re-entry, the craft remaining stable at all fuel levels and altitudes. Mackenzie is keen to point out that she did actually land on the runway but that the terrible condition of it bounced the Sparrowflight off during braking. We have taken her feedback under advisement and asked the local city council for their assistance with filling in the potholes. -- On the whole, the Duna mission has probably over delivered. The station still has 3500 data in it, but even my modified tech tree is looking much fuller than it did before, and I'd like there to be some reason to visit other bodies, so for now, Duna Station will be abandoned and considered science in the bank. It's there if I realise that the 22000 science points required for top-tier tech was a little too aggressive. The station-lander-rover trio is however, amazingly efficient, especially coupled with Bon Voyage for some autopilot on the long hauls. My homebrew rules will be that unmanned rovers cannot visit more than 3 biomes total, kermanned rovers with ECS may only travel during the day and must return to the parent vessel before night, and pressurised rovers may go anywhere for any length of time. Because otherwise I'll end up exploring Moho in a jeep, and that would just be silly.

What even... Bug? Or some kind of Minecraft zombie mod? x)

Having investigated the lacto-volcano at Duna's north pole, the team turns around and heads for the sun. Which doesn't necessarily seem to make things any brighter. Until suddenly it does. Perhaps the change in albedo can be accounted for by a liberal dusting of Dunan cinnamon near the spire. More than 20 days after setting out from the DEV, the expedition finally returns to their starting point. Packing the rocks and ice cream samples into storage, they head skywards. The stay is brief, in Val's case, and within a few days she's back in the pilot seat, this time bringing Bob and Orion Kerman down to the surface. And with that the Dunan expedition is complete. After nearly 3000km, Bullfrog will be allowed to die roam free amongst the red hills of the planet that is now his home. And of course, he'll be here to set out the welcome mat for future missions, and may even be helpful in the rapid recovery of personnel from less competent space programs. With about a year until the return window opens, Bob and Erin get to work in the Duna Station's lab, carefully sifting the reams of data before sending home the concentrated science-y juices.

32gb, since before the game had reliable 64 bit I don't know how people do anything with less than 16...

Continuing the exploration of the northern ice-cream cap... Despite the rather quirky design, Bullfrog's long legs allow the rover to climb over sharp angles in the terrain that would beach something with a more conventional chassis, while the complete absence of anything in front of or behind the wheels means that nothing but tyres ever touches the ground. It is possible to wedge this rover into a crevice that needs some backing out of, but on the whole it really does a good job of handling the ruts and ridges of the Dunan polar region. We have asked the engineering team to continue supplying quirk. The biggest worry turns out to be power. While Bullfrog has plenty of juice in the sunlight, there are all kinds of slopes and furrows near the pole where there simply isn't any sunlight. Ever. Power needs to be carefully managed as the rover darts from one patch of light to the next. And no I didn't change the colours of the Explorer's valley. It has quite honestly landed in an extra-pink patch x) Erin has come to suspect that Dunan ice cream may react badly to oxygen. By mutual agreement, the team seals the Explorer Valley samples to ensure that they remain uncontaminated and therefore in perfect condition when they arrive at the lab, avoiding any contact with the rover's internal environment. Waving the booping probe farewell, they head for a mysterious spire on the horizon; a literal mountain of ice cream, clearly caused by a great upwelling from somewhere deep under the Dunan crust. Unfortunately no light can penetrate the depths of the lacto-volcano, so an extended stay is impossible. Valentina plants a flag at the source reading "Valerintra Confectionary Ltd. No unauthorised access." Lol, my bad, edited

Having caught this year's winter cold IRL, I'm running a bit slow with KSP, but since lying down is worse than sitting, I might as well sit at the PC. So I might as well continue this Duna mission... The crew draw straws (except Val, since we only have one pilot) and Erin, Astra, and Val board the DEV. Transferring all but a wisp of fuel from the transfer stage, they begin their descent towards a comfortable looking spot on the Dunan lowlands. With the Bullfrog parked outside the front door, the team waits for the next sunrise to begin their journey across the long, dusty dunes towards the ice-cream cap. Bullfrog, it turns out, handles the Dunan surface admirably. With a cruising speed of 24m/s, he never shows more than 6% loading on any given foot wheel. Despite his tall bearing, his wide stance keeps him stable on even the most hairpin of turns. (I use Bon Voyage to autopilot the long hops because I have better things to do with my life than look at 305km of nearly identical red soil... Given that this is a large, pressurised rover, I don't feel guilty about the multi-day expedition. If I'd gone with my original plans for a micro-rover with command seats, I'd have set a range limit of around 100km and disallowed it being used at night. All of which together probably means that in future I will be aiming at larger rovers for rapid planetary exploration.) Upon recovery of the sample, the team are somewhat disappointed to discover that it is not vanilla. Or any kind of taste worth putting in your mouth. But then, it has clearly been cast aside from the ice-cream caps and it IS just lying here in the dust, so it's probably gone bad. Setting course for the next waypoint, the team prepare to set off once more. Also today's bonus shot; Duna is really dusty sometimes! Meaning Laythe/Duna/Eve/other-atmosphere-bearing-spherical-rock?

Hitting Mun is easy - it's a couple of hundred km across. Hitting another ship, maybe 10m across if it's a real biggie, with another ship, is very, very unlikely unless you decouple two vessels and then just leave them to float. In which case the eventually collision would be super slow because they're basically co-orbital anyway. And while theoretically you could get to the point of Kessler Syndrome, I suspect KSP would grind to a halt and die before that happened. You'd need thousands of rocks in identical equatorial orbits before you had a significant chance of hitting one during an ejection burn. Personally I'd call it an experiment. Leave them there and see if you can hit any

I imagine you could klaw a small probe to one and terminate it rather than stop tracking... that should make it go away properly. That said, the chances of a collision between things in orbit is very small. If you manage it, post pics, you'd probably be the first to

I figure nobody wants to see a trio of very similar launch vehicles, so let's jump ahead to the arrival of the Dunan fleet! That is to say, the fleet we sent to Duna, not the fleet the Dunans sent to us for the purposes of conquering and enslaving and various slippery recreational activities. The three vessels here represent a significant portion of our funding reserve, but after studying the scans of Duna mission control realised that there's a heck of a lot of science down there (read I only just noticed that Duna has been revamped with more biomes) and since we still haven't gotten a taste of those polar ice cream caps, it seemed like a sensible investment. We have no idea why the Bullfrog showed up so late. All vessels launched at 5-day intervals, and performed their mid-course correction burns with the same. Somehow Bullfrog managed to dawdle in deep space. Perhaps not the most auspicious start for a rover, but hopefully he'll do better once he's in his natural element.

Indeed the unseen moon was a bit of a mystery. After a lot of harrumphing, the astronomy team blamed it on a combination of a low albedo, a weather balloon, and a spilt coffee cup. We have now aimed the observatory at Duna and are hoping for some decent images soon. If there was a downside to the Dunaworrybehappy... it is that it's a bit basic. Aside from the science experiments, there's not a lot to do, and not a lot of space in which to do it. Hopes that the reddish dust would be some sort of strawberry dust from the ice cream at the poles were soon dashed upon, and Val and Bob decide to head back at the nearest opportunity. Bob notes that Dunan dust may be useful whenever there is call for a medical grade laxative, however. In the meantime, we have been given a loaner; a new "nucular" engine that promises unparalleled efficiency in a vacuum. This sounds like a great time to visit the coal-dark mystery-moon! In the end, the crew decided they did like Ike, but mostly because of it's views of Duna. In all other regards it is, as Jeb put it, "boringly Munnish". (And yes, I like this cockpit from SXT. It seats two, offers high visibility, and is weighted towards the back for a good re-entry profile as long as you attach a heatshield. Definitely a prettier option than a pea pod when you want to seat two kerbals in a 1.25m format!)

Tossing around some rover designs...

Trialling the Dunamite II rover. "Go on then, drive it out." Turns out there are a few scenarios when someone will need to get out and push. On the whole it's pretty good for 1.4 tons, but I may yet abandon the entire idea of a tiny rover and build something big and stupid instead. With the Bon Voyage autopilot, it's completely feasible to deliver a rover on remote control and have it meet the kermanned lander when it arrives.

This is one of my mandatory mods, tbh. It's what makes parallel missions possible. (Although I kind of recommend not running parallel missions because you can go crazy with it and never reach your launch window to other planets.) Another can't-live-without which I think the OP would benefit from is Transfer Window Planner - by the same mod author. Basically it'll tell you the right time to launch for highest efficiency. Both mods together give you a "todo" list of when to launch new vessels

I think I had my longest and most well-documented career in 1.3.1, so it served me well for sure. On the whole it was a reliable workhorse and I think I have that install directory still hanging around somewhere. That said, I have one game parked in 1.4.x that I do plan to get back to some day, and my current "short" career is a 1.5.x stock-system with many mods, and neither install has any particular problems. It is super rare that either version crashes on me, to the point where I really can't remember the last time it happened. I've done a lot of stress-testing on this PC, so I'm kind of suspicious that regular KSP crashes might just be indicative of overall system instabilities. 1.6 however... I get the lander-can bug that some people can solve, and others can't, and I'm in the latter crowd - and this bug is very clearly not a hardware issue. I'm sure it will be resolved eventually, and then I'll move to that. If my 1.4 career can migrate, I'll do that as well, because the parts revamps are pretty sexy

Bounced around three munar anomalies and forgot to take very many screenshots... First Mackenzie and Erin headed for the polar landing site, which turned out to be in a deep, deeeeep crater that has never seen the light of the sun and which rather prohibited an efficient take-off angle. The second mission, flown by Jeb and Astra, managed to hit two monoliths and squeak home with 13m/s left in the tank. The engineering team has been reminded of the term 'safety margins'. By this point, the papers seem to be getting bored of photos from the munoliths and thoughts are turning towards that sweet strawberry ice cream upon Duna's poles...

Except in my game where it crashes everything horribly x)

No time for KSP today, but turns out I have a bunch of screenshots from a Minmus expedition The return home in the dark was pretty harrowing... After surviving re-entry with the engine attached, Jeb decided to try to salvage the entire stage, resulting in a descent speed of 11.6m/s. Which promptly blew up the engine on impact anyway. Nonetheless, Jeb has now acquired the lucky trait, seeing as how he managed to miss that massive wall of mountains while flying completely blind. Also, this game can be really disorienting when the camera starts flailing around near planetary poles... But at least I got to land in the Sound of Music...

To be fair that is a very cool looking rover config... looking forward to whenever it gets made to work

Just a suggestion, but maybe move the nuclear engines forward to be at the wing roots? That tail section is going to be hella-heavy and with no fuel aboard you've got no weight at the front. Suspect your CoM is moving way back when the tanks are dry. If you pile all the engines at the back you pretty much have to go delta + canards rather than mid-wing + tail

That would certainly be nice, but I'll forgive them if it's not until next year Curious as to what the one thing that this part does but others don't is however. Clearly it does something new and weird...

Whelp, I'm giving up on solving this one for myself... I have deleted every file except for the saves, GameData and screenshot folders, I have loaded to menu to generate PartsDatabase.cfg and quit and reloaded and I STILL get infinite errors with the lander can. A brand new, no-mods game does work, so I get that it's a mod thing... but I have thrown out every single mod, and save games that were affected by this bug are still affected Seems like there is no rescuing these careers outside of updated mods.

Yes, thank you, that was the magic! My final script worked out as this: @PART[kv2Pod] { @MODEL { %rotation = 0,-90,0 } } @PART[kv3Pod] { @MODEL { %rotation = 0,-90,0 } } @INTERNAL[KV2_IVA] { @MODEL { %translation = 0 , 0 , 0 %rotation = 0 , 0 , 90 } } @INTERNAL[KV3_IVA] { @MODEL { %translation = 0 , 0 , 0 %rotation = 0 , 0 , 90 } } Which spins the IVAs and models of the KV2 and KV3 pods so that the kerbals' feet point "down" in relation to the control axes. But it does mean that the 'front' window is pretty rubbish. On the whole these are not good lander cans from the pilot's perspective x)

Had a busy few days, but finally got a few minutes to document my first Duna shot of this career Having made Minmus runs, it was clearly time to move further afield for more exotic sciences. Checking with the boffins, mission control found out that the time to launch was right now... or probably yesterday, but right now was close enough. Assuming the engineers could cobble together something that would make the trip in the next few hours. Rather to our surprise, they did. Since future kermanned missions will likely begin at the equator for fuel reasons, mission control decided to drop the Dunemite on the planet's north pole, which turns out to be an absolutely delicious shade of pink. Which means we're very much now considering a polar expedition in the future, but we'll probably have to prove the hardware with a simpler mission first. Also it turns out Duna has a moon, and is verging on being a binary system. We've aimed our observatory at this dark companion to see whether we like it.

"New" PC appears to be about 6 years old so... not the best brag on the block x) It will be fine, but like everyone else's PC it will hit a performance wall if you go for too many parts in a vessel. My guess is you'll feel the lag around 200 parts in vacuum, maybe 150 in atmosphere. Which is actually plenty to do pretty much anything, unless you get into aesthetic building and start slapping on things you don't need but which look fun.