fulgur

When you timewarp on rails, there is no longer any control of your ship. Your ship will continue in the exact same state and just move along the orbit. As the ship moves along its orbit, the relative velocity between your ship and the other ship will change, and so your ship will have to rotate a little bit to match that. Since your ship is in rails mode, it cannot rotate using its reaction wheels or RCS. It continues pointing in the same direction relative to KSP's universal co-ordinates. If your ship is changing direction at all in rails mode there is something very very weird going on with your KSP.

In order to collect more science, you'll need to go further from home. You can point your rocket in different directions. For example if you are landed on the mountains, that gives you science even if you have already done experiments landed in the water. Some experiments, such as the atmosphere analysis or EVA report, are different when you are flying above different biomes. Others, like the mystery goo, are the same whether you are Flying Low over Kerbin's Shores or Mountains or Grasslands... So in order to get more science I would advise using new engines (my favourite low-tech engine is the Swivel), building a bigger rocket and pointing it Up. For maximum science, try escaping the atmosphere. & don't forget to bring your new thermometer with you! I am currently flying around Niven (Galileo's Planet Pack) in a helicopter at 70ms-1. Going to get allllllll the science.

Sent a fleet to Niven in Galileo's Planet Pack. Consisting mostly of craft which look like this but also one which looks like this Incidentally, I love EVA construction! I had my engineer add some struts and they worked an absolute charm. Very pretty ship. Engines from Kerbal Atomics. I wrote a nice mission report for this.

A career mode playthrough of GPP, starting with an expedition to Niven. Employing the following mods: and at normal difficulty except 30% science. So without further ado I present Chapter One - Launches and Landings

Drove up to Green Monolith. Did not get new science node or even World Firsts achievement. # I've recieved other messages though.

Landed on Ceti (Galileo's Planet Pack). Then sent a series of craft to Iota: A base, a rover, and an orbital shuttle. although the last made a stop by Ceti first, to pick up a rescue. Unfortunately, the amount of science picked up by the rover made it almost immediately obsolete in favour of Mk.II parts, so instead it carried some surface samples back to Gael. Also tested a VTOL which works very well on Gael (top speed: 250ms-1) but not at all on Niven.

Started a new heavily modded career in Galileo's Planet Pack. Visited Iota... and then sent a station/ship to Ceti: Going to land tomorrow.

I built a new SSTO, the Aesir, and took it for a tour around Kerbin system. The landing was perfect, it did not almost clip the ground, losing a wing strake, and swerve sideways off the runway. Drogue chutes and additional control surfaces are definitely not being added as we speak. Craft file to follow.

Thanks a lot! Very helpful, I don't make rockets very often. Now to get it back up to orbit...

I've never been to Eve, so I designed this thing and cheated it into low Eve orbit. It's got about 7.7kms-1 which should do it... but I can't even get to the surface! it starts out fine doing this... but at around 60km it does this and then it explodes. Does anyone have any suggestions?

This has always been one of the best fanworks I have ever read - you could easily be a popular sci-fi author. Take all the time you need & we and the KSP community will be waiting for you whenever you return.

Just caught up on this after a while, it continues to be most excellent.

It will be substantially easier to help if screenshots of your mod folders were provided, but they should contain BH, Parallax, Kopernicus for the appropriate version and any other mods you may have. @BlackEyedPhantom, make sure that you have the correct version - including the .1 of 1.10.1, because Kopernicus prevents itself from working if you have not got the exactly correct version, because it is highly dependent upon the exact code in KSP. And now for what I came here to say: this mod is utterly awesome and the most beautiful planet pack I have seen.

As always, it is being livestreamed at nasa.gov/nasalive and also: Splashdown is about 6:30GMT.

Perhaps if, inside the fairing, you added one of those C7 2.5m nosecones behind the port. I think that that would be a more effective way of reducing drag. Plus, I believe you can't attach stuff to a shielded port in the SPH/VAB, so unless you want to build a crane you'll have to find some other way of making it aerodynamic.

A gigantic pile of struts and fuel, assisted by Vector engines, had done the usual at 10km altitude. Most of the wreckage came flaming down over the Island Airfield where Thommy Kerman had just put down in a top-of-the-range jet, one engine of which promptly snapped off. He searched through the flaming, mangled wreckage only to find a large Vector engine! As he lifted it up to put on his craft however, a recovery helicopter landed on top of the Vector he lifted above his head, squashing him inside the engine bell. Six hours later he was declared 'lost' and the helicopter flew back to the KSC. Thommy now used that vector, some bits of fuel and sheets of slightly mangled steel to create a "plane". However this plane did the usual and he fell three kilometers down near the runway, only to survive! The Vector engine then fell on him. Asthin Kerman, faking Mun landings on a soundstage on Duna.

Not sure, but considering that you are moving Westwards and so are they, at the same velocity, if you did a horribly inefficient ascent profile, you might just be able to do it... (and by horribly inefficient I mean literally impossible in real life, and you'd probably have to use Far Future tech in KSP to match orbits in the very short time limit...)

Chapter 2: Pike As Val sent the message, Bill tapped out a command on his kPad. It altered four letters of the word: "We are going to Duna." Back at the KSC, Gene exploded in a cloud of rage. His beautiful Jool-5 prototype ship had been taken to Duna! And why? There was no reason to do that, even to test anything important. Steam rose gently off his head as he stormed down to the VAB. "WERNHER!" he screamed. "DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING INTERPLANETARY?" Wernher, standing by the door, replied "Ja, we have something but it is not perfect-" "I DON'T CARE!" shouted Gene. "STRAP A HITCHHIKER ON IT, PUT THE FIRST PILOT ON THE ROSTER IN IT AND SEND IT TO DUNA!" "But the first pilot is-" "NOW!" screamed Gene, the jets of steam shooting out of his ears. And that was how Adhat Kerman, stupidest kerbal on the program, flew an ancient rocket to Duna. The exhaust from the Mammoth engines rose into the air as the behemoth spacecraft rose into the air. Adhat turned the ship sideways, because planes fly sideways and this has plane tail-pieces on it. Adhat turned the engines off, because it was too hot. Luckily, the apoapsis was already in space. When he was in space, Gene told him to turn the engines on. He was bored of the boosters, so he let them fly away, and enjoyed the pretty exhaust. A couple of weeks later, which he had spent looking out of the window at a blue-ish star, Gene got him to burn the engines. Eventually, he told him to turn them off. Gene, whose anger had now worn off, realised that his rushed choices were pointless, as the window to Duna was only today, and completely stupid. He just hoped that he would have fun watching the Halberd flying around Duna, trying to evade a gigantic rocket. Although he did now remember that the Pike did not in fact have any parachutes. *** After several weeks being held in the cabin, Val finally decided to just enjoy an unplanned holiday to Jool. And perhaps she'd get to land on Vall again. So she plotted a burn to Jool, with a Tylo encounter to fiddle with. The Halberd burnt most of its fuel in a very long burn. They were now committed to Jool, as much as they had ever been. Val busied herself with transferring fuel out of the cargo - fuel not needed until they reached Tylo. Bill spent a while processing the 150 units of ore they had brought with them, and then started fiddling with his kPad. Bob pointed an antenna towards a part of the Veil, setting it up as a radio telescope and continuing his study of its origins. *** Adhat had pointed his ship towards Duna a while ago, and finally it appeared as more than a red dot. He smiled; there wasn't really much longer to wait. He was quite surprised to see Ike growing larger than Duna in the window, and radioed Gene: "Thanks for sending me to Ike! I like Ike! I should land there!" Gene, who agreed that it was better than landing on Duna without parachutes or landing gear, told him to go ahead and land somewhere with ore. The gigantic fuel tanks easily put him into orbit around Ike, and Adhat began to land. Duna set over the horizon as he began the suicide burn. The four NERVs provided enough thrust to easily slow down. Adhat, who was a good pilot if he was interested in it - and he liked Ike - throttled down. And up. And down. Because that also was interesting. Adhat got out and looked around. It was quite nice, so he went walking around Ike. Eventually, nearly a year later, a bleep in his helmet told him that the Pike was full of fuel and ore, having dredged it up from somewhere with barely any. Having had a look at Duna's clouds, he decided to go and look at them. He circularised at about five hundred kilometres, and pointed the ship towards an interesting cloud pattern. Back at the KSC, Gene ran the scanners in the Pike's cargo bay. Shortly afterwards, having found out that the Halberd was nowhere near Duna, he promptly blew his top again. But having no idea where it was, he did not order ships to every single planet. He merely sat and steamed gently in the breeze.

The Halberdiers is a mission log / story around a ship I built: a SSTO which can land nearly anywhere. The lander can also do Tylo in multiple stages, and the upper stage can do larger moons. I'm playing in Sandbox. There is a single mod part, a kOS controller, on the Halberd. I also have Better Burn Time, DiRT + a skybox by Jade of Maar, FMRS, Kerbal Engineer, Navball Docking Alignment Indicator, Restock, SciFiVE, Transfer Window Planner and Kerbal Alarm Clock, plus dependencies. Without further ado, let me present the Halberd! Val locked the cockpit as she climbed in. It felt good to be back at the controls of a ship, after such a long time in high orbit at Aster Station. She checked the fuel levels, the old-fashioned dials reading: "Far too much" LF, "Just enough" Ox, "No RCS" for monoprop and "Infinite, you have RTGs" for EC. "Are you all ready for takeoff?" she asked the others. "Ready when you are!" replied the perpetually cheerful Jebediah. Val smiled and hit [SPACE]. The plane eased off the runway, the four RAPIERs providing little power for the large craft. Although, now she came to think of it, there might be enough to add a couple more tanks of fuel... It was too late now, anyway. They accelerated slowly through the lower atmosphere. They hit the four hundred metres-per-second barrier and eased through it just below the clouds. Everyone but Jeb treated themselves to a small smile. Jeb of course whooped exultantly. As the speed increased, so did the thrust from the RAPIERs. Flames licked at the wings and fuel tanks, dancing round the cockpit. "Angels eighteen" called Bill, and Val staged again, the pink exhaust of the nuclear engines mixing with the flames. Then at twenty-five kilometers, she triumphantly hit [1], quickly draining all the oxidant in the tanks... but not before the apoapsis touched space. Val's expert hands pulled the craft gently upwards, the slight lift from the wings increasing apoapsis despite the thin air. As the ship cleared the atmosphere, Val opened the solar panels and antennae. The sun shone next to the Veil Nebula as she coasted to apoapsis. With a burst on the nuclear engines, she circularised the orbit around the blue jewel that was Kerbin. "Where shall we go next?" she asked Bill. "Minmus, or the Mun?" "While the Mun would be fun," he replied, "we don't have any oxidant left. So we need to fill up on Minmus." Despite having only 1200m/s left in the tanks, Bill assured her that the ore would make up the difference. She plotted a course which would graze the minty moon, and followed by gently glowing radioactive exhaust, the Halberd flew on through the night. The time passed very quickly, and soon they were coasting in down to the minty moon. With less than 500m/s left, Val felt that the margins were nailbitingly thin... The combined circularisation and deorbit burn was to set them down on the edge of a flat, where the ore was good. Numbers flowed down the screen of Bill's k-pad as Bob scribbled calculations, and luckily some of them were bigger than the others. The ship descended in the correct manner - slowly - near the edge of the flats, just a minute's taxi away from the less-lowlands. Val expertly throttled down to keep the Halberd floating at under 5m/s, and - realising that there was no oxidant for the RCS - asked Bill to override the cargo's closed fuel valves. With a fuel rushing to the engines, the ship managed to flop down in an ungainly fashion onto the Minmus flats. Val pressed the quick-start button and began drilling for ore, as the others jumped out of the cabin in the low gravity. Val pulled out a Kerbal Space Program flag with a flourish, stabbing it into the ground. As Jeb, Bill and Bob made their way back into the cabin, muttering about the pros and cons of a manoeuvre called 'barratry', optimal chemical compositions and the presence of olivine in the surface compositon respectively, Val stretched her legs for the first time in the six days since she had embarked, jetpacking over to an interesting rock formation. While it was rather larger and further away than Val had anticipated, she had a very nice ten minutes without Jeb's bad jokes, Bob's technobabble and Bill's eternal keyboard-tapping. Having checked out the rock formation, and how steep the hill was - potentially useable as a runway - she turned around and returned home. When she got there, she went to the cabin, because Bill was distilling his famous dimethyl hydrazine. At sunrise, a couple of Minmus-days later, Val's headache had finally worn off, and incidentally the liquid fuel tanks were all full and the oxidant was all drained. Val, finally stone cold sober, attempted to open the door connecting the cabin to the cockpit. It was locked, as was (ten minutes later, having found the keys in her suit pocket) the outside door. However, from her pocket kPad, she could still access the speaker systems, which she did. "JEB," she screamed, "WHY ARE YOU IN THE COCKPIT?" "Well," Jeb smiled, not picking up on her anger in any way, "Bill says that we don't have the TWR to land on the Mun. But I looked at the cargo, and we can land that on the Mun..." "SO WHAT?" blasted the speakers. "It's a Tylo lander," he smiled, "and since we only need the upper stage, I though we could visit Jool!" "YOU IDIOT!" she shouted, and opened her kPad, to try and lock the engines. Unfortunately, Jeb had deleted that program. The Vernors began to lift the nose off the ground, and she managed to immediately shut them off. Then Jeb closed the landing gear, to try and rotate while they fell down. Val hit [G] just in time to cause the Halberd to bounce up in the air. With a "Wooooo!" Jeb pulled back on the throttle. Jeb, laughing maniacally, managed to clear the edge of the hill with metres to spare. Val meanwhile attempted to find out what systems she could still control, and finding nothing important, began to calculate the next transfer window to Jool. As Jeb burnt for orbit, Val told him, "The next window isn't for 150 days anyway. Gene will have us brought back by then!" Jeb just smiled, keeping the ship pointing prograde. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" she screamed as he kept on burning. "Well, as you said, Gene will bring us back... but nobody has successfully rendezvoused in solar orbit! And from there we can actually get to Jool faster!" "Fine," she sighed. "If this is irreversible, then I'll take you to Jool. But give me back the controls!" "Right," said Jeb, a gleam in his eye. "And now you have had the controls, you have been the one to allow us out of Kerbin SoI!" Val sighed and tapped out a message to Gene: "We are going to Jool. Jeb's fault."

For HAVOC-style airships, which are a krakensend on Eve (especially pre-BG electric propellers), see the Heisenberg Airship mod by WildBlueIndustries (Angelo125). For the real High Altitude Venus Operational Concept, see this PDF by NASA.

Mod List: The game keeps crashing in the SPH. I don't fly much anyway as the game runs slowly in Linux compared to Windows, so I haven't noticed it on my couple of trips, which never take me further than Minmus and most to LKO. The thing I am currently working on is a medium sized Mk2 SSTO, with 90 parts (not counting as-yet-undesigned payload), which is the biggest thing I have designed for a while. Yet despite this and the small modlist, it keeps on crashing. EDIT: I was fiddling with the payload in a separate save file, with about 10-15 parts, and it crashed. Oh yes, my computer specs: Last line of the log: [LOG 17:18:04.513] parachuteRadial added to ship - part count: 89 The log is here. Thanks in advance for any and all help I receive.

Hooray! You choose to go to the Moon! Also, thanks for getting 'Murder Most Foul' by Dylan [about Kennedy's death] stuck in my head...

Lovely pictures! Is this a career mode game? If so, how come your first launch used 2.5m parts? (unless you meant Swivel not Skipper)

I don't really have pictures, but because my computer is bad, I use 5m pieces a lot to launch anything too big to fit in the cargo bay of a SSTO plane. (I love SSTO planes, they're far superior to rockets in terms of manoeuvrability and fun.) What is a SSTE? As opposed to a SSTOrbit and a SSTAnywhere? Also, nice.

SPACE JUNK! Also, well done for getting craft ready for a Munshot so early! Will you try to recover Pathfinder? Also, why did the breaking of the service module mean the loss of the ship? Surely the probe core was not in that section, if they were going to land it.