michal.don

I sense that the regular missions are getting too easy for you... But I love the fact that you create your own goals to fulfill during them, and even add a bit of a story.... As always, I have no reservations about your mission, so I'll go straight to the badge-awarding part... Good job! And you did a great job as well! A bit on the easy side, but an important one, nice mission, and good job landing the plane too! Well... Sorry, but in this case, this would be a "no"... I always try to encourage a creative solution, but this is not the intended goal of this particular mission, and I believe that this is the case I mentioned in the rules of the "Test pilot" mission: "An STS-or-Buran-looking shuttle+LV is strongly reccomended. You might not be able to complete certain missions with a significantly different design!" I hope you don't mind too much and it won't discourage you from completing the other missions. Sorry. Yep, that's quite a bit of an overshoot But that's where the fuel reserves come in handy, so, no problem Good job, nice mission, another badge, you know the drill It looks like the end of december was quite the RTLS season... An impressive mission as well, it looks like you got quite far downrange, and still had enough boom in the tanks to get back. Also, a very precise landing! Congratulations! I was wondering how you managed to fit the hab segments into the shuttle... I'm not a big fan of sticking cargo to the exterior of the shuttle, but since this is additional cargo to the payload in the bay, flies up in a fairing, and ends up being towed behind the shuttle in orbit, I don't have an issue with that Again, the station is a great piece of engineering, and the shuttle flying through the ring is a great ending to this awesome series of missions! Very good job! And of course you modified the mission again to make it more challenging I'm genuinely getting curious how you'll fare in the later missions at Duna, Jool and Eve... Good free return trajectory planning, and nice two munar excursions! Very good job! I hope I got them all, Michal.don

Hey guys, I'm back after the holidays, it's been a while, but I finally have a bit of time to sort through all the entries, sorry for the delay... It's been a busy couple of weeks gor me... I think I'll never grow tired of this kind of sight - two shutles dancing around each other in very close proximity. It just feels sort of... Beautiful? Magnificent? I'm not sure of an appropriate word, I just like it And, of course, brilliantly performed mission on your part, all objectives met, so a new badge for you: Congratulations! This... This is what still amazes me about this game, and this community. Just when I think I've seen it all, somebody comes along and proves me wrong I don't think I can express how impressed I am, this thing is really beautiful, and insanely complex. Very, very good job on your part! Because of the IR and Dockrotate usage, I have to qualify this mission as "modded", but I hope you don't mind! Congratulations! Genuinely curious where this is going (Next page of reports soon, will merge the posts afterwards)

Oh, I did not think about checking the orbit window, I'm used to older KSP versions and having to rely on KER.... In that case, no objections from me, here's your badge: Congratulations! Haha, the small airplane looks really cute, compared to the shuttle Almost guessing who is carrying whom Jokes aside, great mission and a nice landing! About the "deploy shielded" thingy, another workaround is attaching the wheels to tanks and then ofsetting them into the desired position manually. (oh, and I'm curious both about the telescope, and the RTLS abort protocol... ) Michal.don

So, about a week has passed, so let's take a look what we have here: Very nice! There is a lot of stuff that I like about this one, beginning with the robotic arm holding the telescope in place, the MMU work with the panels, the shutter deployment, and finally, the landing straight from the inclined orbit! Very good job, this badge is very well deserved: Congratulations! Welcome to the challenge! That's a very unusual design, I can't even remember if anybody flew a twin-fuselage shuttle here, and we've seen plenty of shuttles, indeed On top of that, your shuttle is capable of lifting two Mulletdyne pods to LKO? And on your first mission here? Very impressive! The orbit is very precise, and a runway landing? That makes it a very successful mission, worthy of two badges: I'm looking forward for more missions of your shuttle, congratulations! Oh, and another one from you Well, it's the first time someone actually landed two pods, if I remember correctly, so I'm willing to overlook the fact that you pumped the contaminated fuel from one of the pods into the tanks of your shuttle This is even more impressive than the first one, even not considering the beautifully spaced CommSat constelation and a booster landing! Very good job on this one, here are your badges: (by the way, the STS-2a and STS-2b missions can be flown separately, but I guess this clarification comes a bit too late...) Congratulations! I like the fact that every sat has its own unique design, and its own name But I guess it shouldn't surprise me that much, given the level of detail that you give into your shuttle program. But if I can see correctly, there isn't a picture showing the final orbits of the sats in your report. Before I can award you the badge, I need to see that the sats are (at least approximately) in geostationary orbits. Would you provide these screenshots, please? Thanks! Michal.don

I'm not sure where you are going with this question, and because I'm curious, I'm going to say "go for it" Yeah, I thought so... My go-to method for deploying geostationary constellations is goinf for the first maneuver at the same time, and then spacing the sats using 4 hour orbits, and circularizing one every orbit... But his one works too, there's just some adjusting to do... Looking forward to seeing the next mission! Michal.don

Good job on this mission, too! The sats aren't exactly equidistantly placed, but I'm going to take that as precise enough Curious though - is there a reason why you chose this deployment method (the three maneuvers 120° apart, which caused the not-exact spacing)? Other than that, I have to admire the precise landing again Congratulations! Do I see a sort-of-Skylab? Michal.don

Hello there, time for a new round of reviews! Oh my, this was very interesting indeed! From the video thumbnail, I was wandering how you managed to pack the ring segment into the shuttle, and I certainly did not see this one coming! Very good job sir, here's your badge: Congratulations! Shuttle in a fairing, haven't seen one of those for quite some time! And using the support launch for stuff you forgot to take with you, htat's a properly kerbal way of doing things On another note - I didn't expect aerobraking at Duna would be possible with the outpost exposed to aero forces like that, but I was mistaken, it seems. No objections on my part, very well executed mission, good job! Hello, welcome to the challenge! It's perfectly fine to comlete the 1a and 1b missions in one go. Great to see another STS-resembling shuttle around here, and apart from a bit of wobbling duriing the ascent, your design seems to work pretty well! Also, I was surprised to see the quite steep reentry, but it brought you just where you needed to be to execute a perfect landing. Very impressive, considering this is your first entry here, congratulations, here's your first set of badges (of hopefully many more to come ) And this time, you nailed it perfectly! Nice flight and a pin-point landing, definitely commander-worthy, great job! Michal.don

Alright, it seems you chose to do the missions in order, thanks! There is only the slight issue of not leaving atmosphere, but since you got pretty close, and the mission looks fine in all other aspects, I'm willling to overlook this detail and call the mission successful. Good job! Regarding the STS T-3 - yes, RCS tanks are considered as fuel, they can't be included in the probe/lander. The two small tanks are the only means of propulsion allowed. Michal.don

Thanks for the link - I see that you completed the STS-1a mission, and were awarded the appropriate badge. If you have a new shuttle design, you can either start from STS-2, or complete the STS-1a again - up to you. Michal.don

Welcome back! To be honest, I don't remember exactly which missions you completed so far - could you please send me a link to your most recent one? Of course you can then continue with the next one. Well, since they are sort of "bonus" missions, I think it's not neccessary. But so far, everybody completed them in the order they are in the OP. Are you interested in only a specific one? Michal.don

Just for the protocol - absolutely fine by me. And good point, I should update the subassembly for the current version. I'm soooo looking forward to seeing this one fly.... Michal.don

Alright, sorry for the slight delay, but I'm finally ready. So, let's get to it! And the first entry I get to review after my holiday is an impressive one indeed! Good call makng a video report, the robotics stuff does look very good in action. I have to admit, I did not try all the functions of the new parts yet, but after seeing this, my urge to properly play KSP grows significantly And the "crawler arm" design that moves around the whole station is a great piece of engineering! The overall design of the station is very nice, too. I have no objections to any part of your mission whatsoever, so, a well deserved commander badge for you, congratulations! Looking forward to seeing the announced 1.8.X redesign! Alright, the first mission requiring orbital rendezvous out of the way - congratulations on completing that one! Also, nice robotics touch with the docking boom, I really, really have to give the robotics a proper try. And of course, good job on the runway landing from an inclined orbit - not an easy thing to do Again, no objections on my part, so a new commander badge for you: Congratulations! Oh, I missed this question.... But as @sturmhauke said, droptanks/boosters of the LV can go with you to LKo and beyond. The rules don's specify when you have to drop those, only that you drop them eventually. For example my, design for the Duna missions dropped the ET almost after the departure burn to Duna, so no problem with that. Hope that clears your question, Michal.don

I have to admit, the jet lag hit me harder than I expected, so I did not manage to get to the extries yet, but I'll at least share a few images from my holiday. If you're interested, they're in the spoiler: I'll hopefully adjust to my regular timezone soon, Michal.don

Hi guys, so I am back home, tired, jet-lagged as hell, but with many great memories and interesting experiences I was watching the thread when possible, and I am glad to see many new faces, as well as a few comebacks. I'll have a closer look at the entries when I get a full night of sleep, now I'm just stopping by to say hello to you all and thank@4x4cheesecake for doing an awesome job, I really appreciate it Michal.don

Good luck with your missions! I'm curious how the station will look like! Hello, welcome to the challenge! Just to clear up some (possible) confusion - the "Pilot" and "Commander" aren't different missions, just different difficulties of each mission. You have to begin with STS-1a, but it's up to you whether you decide to go for the "Pilot" or "Commander" set of requirements. I hope I was clear enough for you to get what I meant.... Anyway, good to have you here, good luck with your first mission! And one bit of (sort of) important info - tomorrow I'm leaving for three weeks for a holiday - my first real one this year - and @4x4cheesecake was again very kind to agree to take over the challenge for the time I'm gone. So, all the entry-checking and badge-awarding will be done by him, I'll just check the thread from time to time, when I encounter decent internet connection (which might not be too often) So, I expect all of you to be on your best behavior, and have fun flying shuttles! Michal.don