Trios

Eh, they start that way, hence why I used the term 'degenerate.' I mean this with absolutely no disrespect, but I'm certain that Kuzzter has noticed that this thread goes more off-topic the longer that time goes by without a new comic posted. There's only so much on-topic discussion we can get into, and while our author has stated that he likes it when we guess at storylines, I personally find no humor in such a thing; I usually just step in to correct blatantly wrong or misleading information that I see, whether it's comic-related or completely off-topic. When we have more content to discuss, I'm certain the discussion will come back around to more on-topic things, and the next time a content lull comes by then it will degenerate again. If this bothers Kuzzter, his option is really to ask to have the thread closed to discussion except for the 24 hour period immediately after he posts a comic. Otherwise the very nature of conversation means it'll go off-topic again. I will state again that my opinion is that off-topic conversation, especially when it's about something as closely related as the shows that the author pulls so many tropes from, should not be seen as a bad thing. We're all here because we enjoy the comic; nobody is going to come into this thread only to talk about 1701-D's landing in Generations, but we talk about that since it's so closely related to what we're seeing in our favorite Kerbal comic.

We wouldn't all be here arguing semantics regarding warp capability and reentry effects if it weren't for Kuzzter's fantastic writing. The truth is that we're all dying to hear the next part but we're also polite enough to not just post tons of 'PLEEZE KUZZTER POST MOAR COMIC' so we degenerate into semi-off-topic discussion in an attempt to be patient and wait for the author to continue being awesome at his own pace.

It should be noted that in ST:III, the Enterprise entered (I almost wrote re-entered, but that wouldn't be accurate for Genesis) after the self destruct sequence had already destroyed most of the primary hull. Obviously the shields would not be up and there was no helm for anyone to control the entry angle or velocity. This shouldn't be used as evidence that the ship can't enter an atmosphere under normal, not-currently-also-blowing-itself-up conditions.

That is tough to watch...but I can't look away!

This is so off-topic I think Kuzzter is probably going to ostracize me, but no, the USS Enterprise CVN-65, the world's first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, is no longer operational. She was taken out of service on December 1st, 2012 and was officially decommissioned today. http://pilotonline.com/news/military/local/uss-enterprise-a-timeline-of-the-world-s-first-nuclear/article_005db8ec-d756-5b94-8e54-4880c9b59842.html

You read Sarge in a butler's tone? Wha? No, he's definitely Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket. Also the voice of virtually every Marine sergeant you see/hear in media (first one that comes to mind is the sergeant toy from Toy Story). He's very polite to officers because that's military decorum, but if you're below him in the rank structure, hoo boy you're going to get an earful if you do something wrong.

Updates! In 1.0.5 I made a version with the new SSMEs which of course made ascent much simpler, and now in 1.1 I've tested that the craft is still, in fact, capable of sending a significant payload to orbit. So, without further adieu, The Mark 4! Craft File Here! Flying this pig is kind of difficult but certainly not impossible. 1.1-era SAS is retarded and cannot hold the orbiter vertical for the first segment of ascent (the, "get the hell out of this soupy air" phase), so you'll have to fly manually to hold a mostly-vertical ascent to about 8-10k meters. After that I've been letting the stupidity of SAS slowly pitch the craft over and thrusting 100% until I hit the apogee I want to load a payload into. Get yourself as close to circular as you can with the ET while still technically being suborbital and drop the ET, then fire off the OMS and continue to your planned orbit.

I knew it!

That hurt to watch. What an awful smashup of two excellent episodes.

Trouble is, Kerbfleet would forget that they deployed him and if they found him later (say, wreaking havoc on a Kerbulan ship) they'd probably think he was Kerbulan. Until they forgot that they captured him.

This made me think of this: https://youtu.be/mkJ3--2K7yo?t=182

As a partial solution, if you can actually dock your craft in the 'docking bay' with a docking port/claw arrangement of some sort, then since it's one craft it won't hit itself. This will also allow you to time-warp; if you're trying to time-warp with just a craft inside a bay but not actually docked, it'll go flying out of the bay...

I CAN'T WAIT. No, really. Post the entire book. Now.

Just in case, I'm now going to have to figure out some sort of anti-missile countermeasures for all of my own KSP missions. Kuzzter is making me insecure that Jeb & Co. are the only ones out there... I wonder if the ISS has some super-secret systems to protect itself in the event of an attack by cloaked Romulan warships?

[quote name='Nefrums']What have the Kermulans done to Moho? Edit: I mean Noho, or Muho?[/QUOTE] Noho is No Mo'.

[quote name='Starhawk']Don't let Bob Kermulan hear you say that! He might send you on a one-way trip somewhere. :)[/QUOTE] Or activate your agonizer. [COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR] [quote name='Rath']I bet order 0 will get them out of the trial because otherwise it would not be important enough to put in the title[/QUOTE] Back from page 143: Rath wins.

So all of Duna Ore Bust and Eve: Order Zero is actually just fiction written by Kenlie Kermulan. [url]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllJustADream[/url] [url]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrWasItADream[/url] ???

Have you ever had a need to transport 26 Kerbals from one continent to another all at once? No? . . . . Well, neither have I. But just in case Jeb decides he wants to celebrate his birthday at KSC2, you can now take the whole Kerbal gang along for the ride! Introducing the Kerdonnell-Douglas KD-80 series, the latest in T-tail, rear-fuselage mounted engine goodness from Kerdonnell-Douglas! This craft flies quite well, has easy intercontinental capability and a max cruising altitude of 9500m (about 40,000 ft if you convert the scale height to Earth numbers, quite respectable). In addition to the pilot and co-pilot, you can have 24 passengers in this first-class-only configuration, each kerbal having nearly more than an entire seat's worth of extra legroom and tons of head and shoulder space. Even your fattest scientists will enjoy flying in this paradise. Flying this bird is easy; set flaps 30 (press 1) and throttle up. Fully loaded, V1 is at 58 m/s. V2 is untested but estimated at 75 m/s. V3 is 70 m/s, so lift your flaps and take off into the wild blue yonder. Stalls are very gradual and the nose drops naturally, recovering the stall. It's hard to crash this aircraft! See your local Kerdonnell-Douglas dealer today! Starting at only 51,091 fully fueled and ready for takeoff, these planes are a steal! (please do not steal our planes)

Emphasis mine. This is what was not clearly laid out in the original flight profile; when you switch to closed loop on the RAPIERs, you have to enable the nuke. It's quite efficient at that high of an altitude, nearly full efficiency. With the 3 engines running, I ran out of oxidizer at about 77km apoapsis, and continued burning prograde until I hit 95ish, turned off the nuke to catch up a bit to apoapsis for efficiency's sake, and then burned from 30s pre-apo until I was (nearly) circular at about 30 seconds after-apo.

I love how the swept wings make it look like it has F-14 style variable-sweep wings. The lack of a vertical tail surface makes this thing look incredibly unstable in yaw.

I just downloaded this craft and tried this precise ascent profile. Everything was going swimmingly, I had about 1300 m/s at 22k when the power fell off the rapier's, so I hit number 2 and engaged closed loop. My craft continued to accelerate and hit an apoapsis of....55k at flameout. However, I think my game may be seriously bugged, because while writing this post and allowing the craft to come back down on prograde autopilot, the plane overheated and Val was killed. I can't see any SSTO overheating when it didn't even make it to orbit... Strange behavior. EDIT: Tried again, got to orbit this time. I engaged the nuke along with the rapier's, and I got just outside of atmo when I ran out of oxidizer. Currently sitting in a 99 x 93 km orbit with 1783 liquidfuel left. After transferring what would fit into the central tanks, KER says I have 2305 m/s left, and it's not counting 444 units. So I don't think it's 3250 m/s, but it's close. Nice craft.

Kuzzter's amazing Hummlebee inspired me to create a similar shuttle. I know I could have just picked his up, but I wanted to make one of my own. This is not a 'Space Shuttle' and I made no attempt to make it behave like one. For that, please see my space shuttle. An earlier version of this shuttle made it to Duna, Ike, and back again bringing home over 15k science (and about 2 mil in contract funds). It would have been loads more science, but somehow I forgot my barometer and temperature probe, so at least 20 science payloads = gone . This version has that problem fixed. The cost is a not-insignificant 295,434. However, you'll get at least 100k of that back when you land at KSC, so just about any 'explore Duna' or similar mission should cover your costs and then some. Craft file here! Action group 1 is to enable or disable the Hummlebee style 'VTOL' vernier engines. Action group 2 grabs all easily-reusable science. Action group 3 grabs science from the goo and materials bay. Action group 0 extends/retracts solar panels. Getting the behemoth to orbit (I ain't gonna lie, this is hard): Z, T, space. Fly straight up for about 3000m, then begin to slowly pitch over. Around 12-14k meters (about 15 seconds left in outer booster stage), you will need to take what fuel has left the top of the center tank and refill it from the bottom of the center tank; this balancing is important or you'll tip out of control just before first stage cutoff. At 15k meters you should be at a 45 degree angle; at 20k, you'll be nearly ready to discard the outer boosters. I suggest shutting off all engines for a moment to do this; the seperatrons don't seem to do a great job here for some reason. Now, turn on RCS and throttle back up. I have yet to not lose control for a bit here; if you do, just turn off the engines and get back on course with RCS. You'll find that at first, the off-center thrust of the shuttle is causing you to veer a bit off course; then, the thrust of the mainsail will shove you the other way. Once you're almost about to lose control from this (watch your pitch meter), hit space to stage on the other shuttle engines and it'll even out for a while. Again as you near booster cutoff you'll have to take manual control of the mainsail thrust limiter to keep from veering, but it'll only be a few seconds of manually throttling it back before you cut it free. Throttle down to about 70 percent for a couple seconds, then about 40 percent and then it'll flame out and you cut it away with spacebar. You should be at about 100k at this point and ready to burn prograde to circularize. I can prove it's possible: Drills deployed, maybe this empty space has ore! As you can see, I have enough delta-v to make it directly to Duna or Eve without needing to refuel on the way. You could head out to Minmus and fuel up there if you wanted to bring some extra fuel with you to brake (I did a very, very careful aerocapture at Duna). No amount of fiddling with the launch window planner gets you to Jool with this craft, unfortunately. If you really want to bring it there, you'll need more fuel, or nukes, or some sort of booster.

Aaahhhhk! I need my fix, Kuzzter! I need my fix! NEED MOAR KERBFLEET

Oh, I dunno. Thegamer211 and I have by far the smallest 'area' of our guess, you have probably a better chance than we do...

My only suggestion would be to move the lounge to a docking port on the main station structure. I know if I were a kerbonaut, I wouldn't want to have to climb through 100m of tunnels through cargo bays and fuel tanks to get to the lounge; it should be as close as possible to the habitat ring.