VincentMcConnell

You\'re so lucky that you first landing happened when EVAs were released. It was always boring landing and then having nothing to do.

Back in my day -- when I made my first Mun Landing -- there was no MechJeb. Plug ins didn\'t exist and neither did persistence. lol overly hipster.

I wasn\'t. Just talking about the crew portraits, is all.

What is it? Please share: Mine is when Luke Skywalker is about to be executed at the Pit of Carkoon and Jabba says he\'ll listen to anyone\'s pleas. Han and Luke do some epic dialog there: '3PO! You tell that slimy piece of worm ridden filth he\'ll get no such pleasure from us! Right Chewie?' 'Jabba. This is your last chance... Free us, or die.' And then they proceed to wreck everyone.

I know I can launch and go anywhere manually. But it\'s inefficient. I use MechJeb for almost everything now. Quick and easy and programmable. MechJeb4Life

How many pod interiors are there to choose from and can someone post a picture of all of them? I am trying to best mimic the Gemini interior.

I\'m hoping the next world we get will have intelligent life... Now that EVAs are in place.

The reason that someone stayed in Lunar Orbit on the Apollo missions was because someone had to be there to assist in the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. Remember, Lunar Orbit rendezvous was EXTREMELY new. It was first semi-tested on Apollo 10. The ships were in plane the whole time, though. Back then, rendezvous in Lunar Orbit with an unmanned mother ship was completely unheard of. Many at NASA were even worried about the Transposition and Docking Sequence because it meant that you had to be detached from the Lunar Module while it was unmanned and then turn around to dock with it. They had experienced quite a few issues with docking with unmanned Agena Target Vehicles in Gemini, so it was safer just to make sure someone was on board. The Command Module Pilot did have a job to do, though. He was a navigator and an experimenter and astronomer in Lunar Orbit. For anyone interested in Command Module Pilots, I suggest Michael Collins\'s book, Carrying the Fire. He was the third crewmember of Apollo 11.

Why would you report this? If you find something like this, don\'t tell people.... They\'re going to fix it now...

Haha. I liked the Generation Kill reference in the name 'Generation Kerbal'. Great book, great show. Gunny Griego is making a documentary.

OK. Last update of the night. I should go to bed. It\'s 2:02AM and I put a lot of work into this despite a lot of obnoxious crap that happened in real life throughout the evening. The Redstone is REALLY shaping up. To the point where it will probably be fully textured and done in the next two days. That doesn\'t mean the Mercury will be ready, just the booster. It was easier than I thought but it still required some measurements of the real deal and some calculations and such. Pwner did an awesome feature in Blender to smooth out the models. (Don\'t ask me how. I can\'t navigate Blender to save my life. It\'s more complicated than Orbiter 2010 for sure.) As you can see, the rescale has not yet been done, so it\'s pretty big. But we plan to drop the size down. I\'d hope we could get something in the area of 1 meter, as the Mercury capsule had a diameter of 6 feet (a little over average height). And the Mercury holds one Kerbal, but we want it to look like a tight squeeze. The textures and everything will still apply after the rescale, but the Redstone is almost done. A few more kinks to work out in some places, some color altering and a little issue with flickering red at the connection between the adapter and then capsule and I will put the Redstone aside. This also marked the first time I 'cross' textured something! Which means that I textured two different parts so that the paint job would meet up in game. It\'s harder than it sounds, especially when your map is curved. I\'m still dreading the capsule texturing, but it will get done for sure. I\'m thinking making a separate layer over the current base color with the window, flag and decal 'Kerbal States' and a hatch and then making the corrugated metal texture a separate layer that will get added in later in the texturing process, but it\'s certainly scary. The Atlas is going to be hard, but it will be fun. Especially when it flies! Now we have some actual flight issues to work out with the Redstone, but the configs come absolutely last.

Here\'s a picture of the Redstone in its current state. I had to retexture the aft section and the tank. The words are in a bad place in that picture. Things can be rolled though in the VAB, so just don\'t keep your words under your fins.

If he meant 'My' first rendezvous, then nothing I said applies. If he meant 'The' first rendezvous, that\'s a different story.

haha. I like the idea of Kerbals on little reentry modules

[gmod]Yeah, real constructive Vince....chill out.[/gmod]

So far a lot of it has been, 'How realistic can we get everything?' There was talk from me before I became a worker on this project about reducing capsule mass for safe reentry, but ultimately we decided on keeping the mass realistic and just adding more drag to the chute. So it\'s possible that the capsule might be rescaled down to just above 1 meter or so, but right now, we want to try rescaling everything to about 1.7 and then seeing how it looks. There\'s always room for adjustment and we have plans for more than just one release.

Eh, Vostok\'s idea of rendezvous is not really how they do it in real life. The best thing to do is to use Kosmo-Not\'s rendezvous chart. That can be found here in 'Orbital Rendezvous made easy'. For Rendezvous, I have a target (space station) in a 200KM orbit. I put myself into a 180KM orbit and when I am exactly 50.5KM from my target, I burn to increase my Apoapsis to 200KM. Then at Apoapsis, I burn to increase my Periapsis. Usually ending up a few hundred meters from the station. From there, it\'s a matter of fine control with the RCS and then I end up right next to my target. The distance from the target at the burn will vary depending on the altitude of the orbits. That\'s where Kosmo-Not\'s chart is helpful.

EVAs from Gemini. Where are they? lol

Thanks! I\'m personally really excited to see how the Atlas is going to look, too. The Redstone missile I got was really impressive the first time I saw it. It was untextured and black, but there was some work to do to get it to the state in which it currently is.

As Pwner said, it\'s over 2 meters at the moment, but everything is going to be scaled down before the first release. It looks really big on the pad. In fact, the Mercury/Redstone already dwarfs the launch tower, but it flies fairly stable until you have to pitch over. We will have some control surfaces in the making soon and we will probably be improving the way the capsule and booster actually moves and make the ASAS a little stronger if possible. After the scale down, I think it will look much more realistically sized for a one-Kerbal rocket. Right now, the capsule looks like it could fit 2.5 Kerbals On the more advanced side of the news for the Redstone, we\'re currently in the process of making it much smoother so you can\'t see those blocky panels and such. The textures will still be compatible. I also have to texture the adapter piece but cross-texturing between parts can be hard.

lol. Fine with me. =P

Got an update for everyone on the Redstone Missile. I did the texturing on the booster itself tonight. The only thing left to texture on it is the actual engine part (the dark gray in between all the fins). MrPwner will be increasing the Polygon Count to get rid of this blocky look, but as of now, my job is still texturing. Remember, none of these updates depict release-ready textures or models, so don\'t feel disappointed if you see something that looks a little rough. I am constantly working on smoothing things out and fixing them.

No, the problem lies somewhere in the part itself. It will not thrust in orbit or in space at all. It has thrust defined and the rockets fire, but it doesn\'t actually lift it anywhere.

Minmus Base Alpha 'Lander City' as seen from above. About 16 Kerbals currently at the facility.

Cleaning up this thread, I came upon your post. I have a very detailed answer for you... The Mercury Capsule is capable of practically anything around Kerbin. We are working on a Redstone right now for when you want to launch your capsule into suborbit. It will not be able to achieve orbit. For that, you\'ll have to use the Atlas. Right now, the Atlas has not been done, because we have a lot of work to do on Redstone. I\'ll have some pictures of the Redstone when I get a basic texture going, but doing the capsule has been work enough on its own. The Atlas, of course, will be able to get you into orbit, but you won\'t really be able to fine tune the orbit with the capsule, and here\'s why: Mercury couldn\'t really change its orbit. It could tilt this way and that way, but it didn\'t have linear thrusters like the Gemini that could boost into different orbits. This is why a lot of people look at the Mercury as a tin can. You put a guy in it, shoot him into space and let him control very little of his orbit after the booster cuts off. This isn\'t to say this mod is going to be boring. There\'s still a lot to do and we\'re going to be putting a hatch on it. You can do EVAs from the capsule if you\'d like, but right now, no such hatch has been put on -- primarily because the part tools for hatches have not yet been released. Last of all, we will be making a Little Joe Rocket. That little short booster that was used to test the launch escape tower. In fact, we\'ll probably need a Little Joe... [You\'d get it if you already knew about the LES problems we\'ve been having]... (nothing that won\'t be fixed.) Anyway, if you have any more questions, don\'t hesitate to ask.