Misguided Kerbal

I'm excited for the modding scene that KSP2 will bring, and for all of the future adventures in the Kerbal universe and beyond!

On a whim, I decided to experiment with air launch. Perhaps, I thought, it would be able to streamline launch operations with the use of FMRS, and if nothing else, it would at least provide a significant dose of cool factor - I think a paragliding, air-launched gemini-esque spacecraft really hits the sweet spot.

Spacelab 4 was supposed to be just a routine mission to Spacelab, ahead of the much more ambitious missions planned for Spacelab 5 and 6. However, BARIS decided to throw me a curveball, and took me instead on a wild, wild ride... Also, this is the fourth time I'm writing this chapter - I originally began writing this chapter on the first of December, and it's currently Christmas Day at the time of posting. You would've thought that I would have learned my lesson by now, and in all honesty, I'll probably just start writing these chapters in google docs from now on. It's quite the downer when you're about halfway done writing a chapter and it suddenly decides to un-exist. Anyway, writing rant aside, in other news I've had to begin a spreadsheet just to keep track of the crew roster and everyone's missions. Also, to those who celebrate it (and happen to be reading this around the time of posting), I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and I wish you all a happy new year! Chapter 14 "Okay Houston... we've had a problem here." - Jack Swigert

I've had this horizontal lander design in my head for a while now, and I finally got the chance to build it and fly it around for a little bit. While I'm not 100% happy with the concept yet, it performed much better in-flight than I expected, probably due to the sheer amount of reaction wheels I clipped into it. I cheated it to the Mun, where it takes off via 4 verniers mounted on each side, which is more than enough to easily lift the lander even when it has a full fuel tank. Unfortunately, when I tried testing vertical takeoff on Kerbin, it still wasn't enough thrust to get it into the air. Decently high above the Mun's surface, an action group is used to toggle the Vernier engines and the main engine, a Poodle, lights up. Here it is attempting a landing after a short suborbital hop. Since the control center is still in the capsule, it's kinda hard to judge exactly which direction to point the engines so I ended up with a little horizontal velocity, but the landing gear took it like a champ. In a future iteration, my first priority will probably be adding a control point that is aligned with the vernier engines to the top of the tank. After touching down (not pictured), the lander thrusts into munar orbit, solar panels fully deployed. All in all, I'm quite happy with this weird little spacecraft.

For a while, I did think about launching everything on a massive rocket, Apollo-style - however, a Kerbin-Orbit Rendezvous mission profile simply gives me an excuse to do more stuff. For a Munar-Orbit Rendezvous as per the Apollo Program, we would get a cool mega rocket, and not much else. The Kerbin-Orbit Rendezvous profile, while using most of the same hardware at the start, gives much greater opportunities for expansion down the line and requires infrastructure such as space stations, tying in to the program's (current) station-centric focus and ensuring a smooth transition. For the circumstances the space program is occuring in, it also doesn't make that much sense. There is no race to the moon, so instead the program can take its time, with no need to develop a brand new rocket from scratch when existing, reliable vehicles exist. TL:DR - A Saturn V (Or Lindor V in this case, since Lindor is the second gas giant of the JNSQ system) would be cool, but unnecessary, as a KOR mission allows for more opportunities for expansion down the line. Mega rockets are cool though, maybe we'll see some of those in the future, such as for the heavy-lift capability needed for missions to Duna.

Haha, definitely. I once had a go at a career save, a long time ago. On a particularly disastrous (and quite expensive flight, featuring a load of RTGs), I managed to simultaneously take out the VAB, Runway, and Launchpad with all the debris. I thought it was a good idea to play without reverts when I started that save, so I just gave up. Fun times. Definitely! I have plenty of plans for the Leo spacecraft (such as a 3 seater paraglider variant perpetually in the works), and I hope that the spacecraft line will see a long and storied history (think the ETS Apollo, for example). I have somewhat of an idea for munar missions already thought out, which is: 1. The munar injection stage, derived from the Vanguard upper stage (probably a dual-engine version, for safety) is launched into LKO. 2A. For flyby missions, a stripped down version of the Block II will be launched to meet with the injection stage. 2B. For the eventual landing missions, either a Leo-derived direct ascent lander or a Leo Block II derivative plus a dedicated lander (I haven't really quite decided yet, but the more capable direct ascent lander is the direction I'm leaning towards right now.) 2C. In the future, the transit stage will probably carry payload, such as base/station parts. We'll get there eventually. 3. Flyby/land/base = profit (metaphorically speaking, this is sandbox mode haha) 4. In the the future, a reusable tug will replace the hardy injection stage, complete with fueling depots and ISRU equipment on the moons. Maybe, we'll see. Of course, we'll probably proceed with the Spacelab (and Spacelab 2) programs first. If all goes well, perhaps a few chapters down the line Spacelab 2 will become a shipyard for munar-bound missions...

I believe that's a picture using JNSQ, which just has a darker shade of grass on Kerbin.

You could just remove all the other folders except 'ALSEP' I think. I am pretty sure they require the breaking ground DLC to function though, if you don't have that.

I've been busy recently trying to get into Stellaris, but last night I decided to take a break from the constant menus and I ended up spending about an hour or so working on the design of a resupply vehicle. A resupply vehicle is, of course, not a terribly exciting thing. Nonetheless, my burgeoning station program needs something to replenish supplies, and thus, the LARV (Leo Autonomous Resupply Vehicle) was born. I would have thought of a more articulate acronym, but I was seriously out of ideas. Given its name, the LARV is based off of the Leo spacecraft. They share nearly identical service modules, albeit with the removal of the rear docking port and the addition of a 'tail'. Originally, the design featured wing-like solar panels, but instead I opted for the tail, attempting to distinguish the LARV from any other mundane resupply vehicle. But at the end of the day, it's still a can, just with the addition of a tail. Here it is in action, and the main reason I wanted to post this - in orbit, the LARV lays on its side instead of facing prograde. Initially, I had it facing prograde but that often obscured the solar panel, so instead it's more efficient to have it going sideways (pointing normal). Combine that with a slow barbecue roll and it is just incredibly silly to me, for some obscure reason.

Thanks! I had some terrible luck writing this chapter, but I hope we're back on a more consistent schedule now. Yep, that's it. I had a massive brain fart, but yes, I am referring to 10/24 hours a day. I should probably go back and edit that, thanks for catching that.

A blink of an eye, and it's suddenly been nearly 3 months now since the last post. The missions themselves were completed nearly right after the last post, but alas, due to the perfect mixture of procrastination, more pressing matters, and pure bad luck, the writing part (that's this!) was never completed. This is, in fact, the fourth time I'm typing up this post. The first two times, nearly fully completed posts were deleted thanks to the whims of the forum editor, while the last time I mustered the motivation to type this up, about a week ago, my laptop decided it would be a good time to restart and install the new OS update. Tragic, yes, but what more could you expect out of the 13th chapter? Chapter 13 "Neither a space station nor an enlightened mind can be realized in a day." - Dalai Lama

In my past saves, I would just chuck a couple of satellites with a bunch of dishes on them into a medium/high Kerbin orbit and hope for the best, and it worked, most of the time. Any time I had connection issues, I would chuck some really high power dishes (thanks to Near Future Exploration) near the outer edge of Kerbin's SOI and any connection problems For another body, I would also just toss a satellite around a target body and use that as a relay. But of course, the signal can be strong enough to melt pigeons and still not get to you if it's on the wrong side of a planet, especially if you only have one such relay in orbit which is quite annoying. Recently I've just been placing a few strategic relays into a geostationary orbit into a classic triangle, and it's not really as much of a hassle as I expected. The precision of mechjeb is quite useful sometimes. Since this save is still relatively new though, my whole network is just around Kerbin.

The crew of Spacelab-4 (actually the first mission to the station, Spacelab 1-2 were failed launch attempts) launch aboard a Vanguard booster.

Continuing to work on my totally not cursed paraglider concept, I think I've finally settled on a workable design. Pathfinder re-enters like a normal capsule, utilizing a conventional heat shield. Here's the most critical phase. With the capsule still aligned retrograde from the reentry, a drogue chute is deployed not from the nose, but from the rear to slow it down. By deploying from the rear, this allows the capsule to reorient into a position for paraglider deployment while not completely killing off all velocity, and allowing for a smooth transition to occur. Once in the correct orientation, the paraglider is deployed and the drogue chute is cut. While I was originally aiming for a runway landing, I ended up reentering short and had to make a landing in a random field instead. Oh well, any landing you can walk away from...

That's a very intriguing idea, I never considered a solution like that. I'll definitely have to try something like that, but that sure sounds like kraken bait.

A while back, I was messing around with a Gemini paraglider concept, but due to flight instability issues, I gave up. But nonetheless, it's now a few months later and the idea has still not left my head - I'm back at it again. A huge issue last time I made this design was the lack of control - the 'steerable' paraglider (from Knes, an amazing mod) has a misleading name. Essentially, it's just rigid so you can steer with it. I didn't realize that, and ended up making some abomination using jet engines for some semblance of thrust (and thus, 'control'.) But this time I think I've figured it out. Since I can't really make anything to shift the center of mass for control as in real life, I have basically made a flying reaction wheel. The design is still very difficult to fly and needs a lot of refinement, but I now at least have semblance of control. Also, it's eyecandy, for sure. If I can get it to work slightly more reliably, maybe it'll see the light of day again one day.

Speaking from experience as a Mac user (I own and play KSP on a 2020 Macbook Pro) The M1 should be able to handle KSP perfectly fine - it's a lot more powerful than most people think, but you'll want to stay away from super intensive graphics mods, not because of performance, but because of lack of RAM. However, you should be able to run something like spectra + maybe scatterer (with slightly lower settings) and a full Near Future suite fine, not a real issue. But the RAM isn't actually the biggest issue - the Macbook Air lacks a fan, so once the CPU gets too hot (since KSP can be quite intensive on the processor), the CPU will automatically throttle giving you less performance, which sucks.

ShuttlePilot

That looks amazing! Just wondering, are those boat hull parts part of Buffalo 2?

Yeah, as much as I call it a 'monstrosity' there's a nice place for it in my heart. I'll probably use it to fling a probe or two towards Eve or Duna when the time comes. I agree, I think I like the look haha. I left two docking docking ports on the Leo for a reason...

Chapter 12 "I don't know what what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets." - John Glenn

I do be a Misguided Kerbal. @Watermel00n melon.

Turns out that putting even a tiny little satellite into Geostationary orbit was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Originally, I put the Courier (a new class of relay satellite, basically just a QBE probe core with some antennas and an engine stuck onto it) onto the same launcher as my Pioneer probes bound for the Mun and Minmus, with only 6 SRBs strapped to the core stage. However, I underestimated. I assumed that if a probe had more than enough delta-v to get to Minmus with extra to spare, it would more than suffice for entering a Geostationary orbit (after all, Minmus is a lot further from Kerbin!). Well, it wasn't enough (I assume, due to the expensive circularization cost.) So I built.. this monstrosity. Going full Delta here. 10 Shrimp SRBs mounted onto the side, the true incarnation of MOAR BOOSTERS! A ring of fire. One ring... one ring to rule them all. (Terrible, I know.) After much pain, a Geostationary orbit is achieved at 8968.11 km, which is the GEO height of JNSQ Kerbin. Gsync is 9 milliseconds away - yeah, I can't do anything about that. I just don't have that type of precision. I made a cool gif, too! I spent a lot more time watching the world go by with time warp on high than I'd like to admit. Certainly worth it though!

Sorry for the hiatus - with school starting, I've been caught up in a whirlwind of classes and homework, so while I'll try my best to keep this updated, my posting schedule will probably be somewhat erratic. Nonetheless, the space program continues to march on. Chapter 11 "Flight, we are docked. It was a real smoothie." - Neil Armstrong