Kerbals_of_Steel

Awesome mod, just put a multi- megaton Medusa colony ship through the simulator. I really like that the ISRU is all CRP based, it will blend into my MKS save seamlessly. Now to start strip mining the Mun for resources and beginning global construction of this monstrosity...

Made more progress improving the logistics on my main Mun base: Bill unloading his new engineers scooter, still has that new rover smell... And the main event: The new Scorpion MK I crane arrived with "some assembly required" in order to fit in the dropship, so Bill recruited Jedford to come out and help with the heavy lifting: And a test lift with the fertilizer tanks: It vastly improves my ability to lift big things and haul them over reasonable distances, which is quite handy since the suborbital supply run between the main base and the North Rim has been very busy lately, and I still suck at suborbital hops...

After losing a BUNCH of work on my long term Mun colonization project, it was time for something completely different. I rejiggered my KRV spaceplane for cargo instead of passengers, and designed a cool Russian themed Duna probe based around the newly "invented" Umbra nuclear reactor and some Universal Storage parts: I'd never used the Dessert launch pad, so I sent Frovis and "The Other Val" there with the KRV-C and the Duna Explorer. Dropping the probe off in high Kerbin orbit. The Other Val and Frovis flying off into the sunrise for a semi-sucessful water landing (still working on my piloting skills) And the Duna Explorer firing the xenon engine on its way out of Kerbin. It's heatshielded up front, so the plan is to make a fairly aggressive aerobrake at Duna, then use the remaining DV to swing around Ike and orbit Duna for a bit before a swan dive to the Duna surface. It's reasonably light, so I'm hoping that the two radial parachutes will be enough to land without scattering radioactive debris all over the surface...

Why not just fly it down? Robotics not strong enough to deploy the wings in time?

Something I'd particularly like is a largish lifting body, like a 2.5m MK 2 that doesn't suck.

Is there a tweakable or config that can be adjusted to lower the normal 95% fuel cell output cap? I've got an ISRU ship powered by a combination of solar, stock fuel cells, and an Umbra/MKS nuke reactor. Right now the hierarchy of load is Solar > Fuel Cells > Reactor, and I'd like to drop the output cap on the fuel cells a bit (75-80% or so) so that the reactor is loaded first, and the fuel cell array just picks up the load when the reactor can't keep up. Alternately, I guess, is there a way to adjust the cap on the reactor so it fires up earlier?

Lifesaver!!!!! Thank you VERY much. Edit: There is no joy in Mudville tonight. Apparently I spent too long messing around before I realized I had the wrong save, and too long trying to fix it... It's not all bad news, though, I had rolled a couple rovers I was going to have to repair, and it reverted them to the pre-crash state, and teleportion can take care of most of the rest of it. Still not looking forward to removing a hundred Pegasus ladders again, though. :shrug:

What did I do today? I misclicked and lost about a real week of work when I brought up an old save by accident. I don't use Alt-F12 much, but some stuff is going to get teleported.

Building refineries is hard,man... I am on my fourth time building one with Mega-Miner and I still misjudged the power requirements, and have only barely enough cooling. It might be time to "invent" nuclear power, because 6 gigantor panels, 8 big fuel cell arrays, and a whole stack of z4000 batteries still isn't enough to run it flat out without a bunch of micromanaging.

I went on a serious seek and destroy mission against surplus parts on the surface of the Mun, trying to reduce the amount of Kraken bait laying around. This meant substituting several of the first generation rovers with more compact (and fewer parts) Akita units, and replacing my Auto-Miner ISRU unit, the massive fuel tank stack nearby, the Mobile Mining Command pod, AND the MK II version of my fertilizer plant with one ship/craft/semi-mobile building. Meet Mega-Miner: BTW, did you know that the Kerbal religion includes reincarnation??? Having not killed one, I didn't, until I went to hire some replacements and saw Giesel and Obbo (the Unfortunate) waiting patiently in the lobby for their next assignment. Anyhow, Mega-Miner has a S4-256 fuel tank, mono, ore and fertilizer, tanks two converters, a 250 and a 125 for fertilizer creation, full life support and hab space for two Kerbals for a year, 6 big solar arrays, and no fewer than 7 full size Drill-O-Matics. The cherry red radiators indicate that it's going about 3/4 speed, full throttle brings the heat bars almost to max. Of course, throwing something this size to the Mun required an equally massive booster. My previous Thunderer class 5m booster didn't quite have the lift capacity, and I have a hate-hate relationship with the radial decouplers on the SRBs, so it was time for a new ultra class booster, the Gromoboi: It sports a total of 9 Mastodon engines, 5 on the stock quincrux adaptor, and 4 more on rigidly attached sponsons. For the sharp eyed reader who thinks I had an excessive amount of Delta-V, I simply plead that the stock system didn't really appreciate the elegance of the second stage: With a removable Rhino for the orbital manouvering, and 4 EXTREMELY overworked Terriers for landing engines, the stock system seemed to count the DV in the second stage twice. In the actual event, I ended up on the surface with ~ 500m/s left over. A good margin, but considering the sheer size of this thing, not excessive, IMO. Now it's time for further janitorial work, using Bills favorite cleaning compound, K-4...

Hell, putting them on the Mun isn't a problem, it's bringing them back Welcome to the dark (green) side, my friend

After trying out the K.I.S.S ascender, and helping Bob tidy up around the North Rim base, Jeb and Bill made the trek back to the main base, pulling the final first generation rover behind them as a trailer. Normally Bill packs along a Mechjeb controller for the trailer brakes, but he was in such a hurry to catch up with Jeb's test flight that he forgot, so they had to improvise: Bill wasn't thrilled to have to ride down the North Rim in reverse, but things got worse even before they got to the bad part: Jeb just put the periscope up and the hammer down: And they eventually pulled through the Munar quicksand: Bill isn't talking to Jeb right now...

I landed a workshop at the North Rim base using Kerbodynes patented Paul Bunyan technique: And the Kraken claimed another victim: Warning, Graphic Content

Just a note that this is 1.10 compatible, and has saved me a HUGE amount of re-jiggering now that I've retrofitted Konstruction. Many thanks. I did use Dock Rotate to align things before welding, so I can't comment on how the built in rotate function works, but they all welded perfectly.

The recent outbreak of Kraken attacks has everyone looking over their shoulder, so Bill decided to do something about it, creating a cheap and compact way to commute around the Munar surface, or even up to Munar Station if the situation is desperate enough. Introducing the Kerbal In Space Simplest emergency ascender, the first rocket designed and built on the Mun: Start with the landing rockets salvaged from a MSE-6 rover, add a reaction wheel intended to retrofit on some older rovers, and other parts salvaged from the rover Obbo wrecked and this is the result: Jeb, self proclaimed king of the junkyard rocket, ready for the first test flight, a hop over to see Bob at the North Rim Outpost. Bill, we've got a problem with the controls. Up is left, and radial is retrograde... Yeah, THIS is better!!!: Coming in for the landing: Missed by 300m, but it beats walking, and like Bob said when Jeb finished the hike over, "Suborbital rocket science is still rocket science, It's Hard, man!!!" Bill brought the Watney Mk I rover up the hill the long way around, and threw the new rocket up on the roof rack before dropping it off in the hanger at the base:

How do those hydraulic pistons as leg extensions hold up, do they wet noodle at all being loaded like that?

In Memorium of Giesel Kerman 05-05-2020 - 09-17-2020. Lost during a cowardly Kraken attack upon her post resulting in the complete destruction of the base. Missing, presumed dead. Fly Safe, Giesel. A final picture: (Seriously, this one stings a bit. She was the first Kerbal I recruited, and with my heavy use of engineers, probably the one I played most after Bill. First Kerbal I've lost, too, and it wasn't even in a crash. Pulled up to the site in a rover and it was just gone... Went back a couple real time days worth of saves and couldn't figure out when the attack happened. )

Yeah, I figured it out. Thank, Hans. A combination of not enough coffee and building some specialized components in each scene. PEBKAC, as I suspected.

Current version of KSP 1.10, current version of MechJeb through CKAN, it's been working flawlessly for the couple months or so I've had it installed. Overnight, however, the menu vanished from the build screens in the SPH and VAB. Neither the dropdown on the top tool bar, or the little "MJ" icon on the bottom tool bar (where the messages ,KISpedia, ect are). The parts are still there in the build screens, and the menus and functionality are still fine in the flight screen, but nothing in the build screens, which is where I use the Delta-V helper a LOT.I manually rolled MJ back to the 2.10 version (from 2.11), same problem. Double checked my virus protection exemptions, then disabled them entirely, still has that weird partial functionality. The only thing I've changed recently was a config for KAS, but the game loaded up a couple times after that without issue. Other mods are USI-LS, KIS/KAS, Universal Storage and Easy Vessel Switch. Before I start a bug report, ect, is there some hotkey or simple PEBKAC thing that might be causing this??? Thanks in advance.

Todays work was more productive, if a bit tedious. The USI Life Support mod includes the ability for the Convertotron 125 to turn ore into fertilizer for the greenhouses, though at a conversion rate that is abysmal by even the 125's already low standards. (It's a 1000:1 ratio). It's still worthwhile as a step towards self sufficiency on the Mun, so I built a specialized fertilizer plant and shot it into Munar orbit, along with a ride-share of MSE-6 geology rovers: Once it landed without incident (a first in the career of Obbo the Unfortunate), Obbo was banished assigned to refueling duty at the main refinery, and Bill brought out the welcome wagon to bring Janey to her new digs in the expanded, remodeled and freshly swept science lab: In the meantime, however, Giesel had discovered several flaws in the new fertilizer plant. The designers had underestimated both the electrical draw of the new life support systems, and how much ore would be needed to keep the converter at a productive level. Bill thought he could solve the second problem by breaking out a couple new drills from the spares: But that was only going to make the power problem worse, and the warehouse was fresh out of fuel cells. Bill did have a brainstorm, though, looking out at the horizon where the massive Auto-Miner refinery dominated the view. It had 3 big fuel cell arrays, and certainly it was better to lose power on an automated craft than it was to lose life support on a manned ship. There was only one problem, but Bill already had a solution: But Bill, are you sure this is the best way? It's clearly labeled "Not for Lifting Kerbals"... Ok, FINE!!! We tried it your way, now we are going to do it MY way! (Giesel is a bit of a fireball.) (BTW, I wanted to do it her way the whole time, but Bill REALLY wanted to try out the new crane)

It's necro-inception...

I spent most of yesterday cleaning up after an unprovoked Kraken attack. The North Rim outpost was never intended to be on the North Rim of the East crater, but when the the expedition (Bob, Bill, and piloted by Obbo the Unfortunate) landed, a slight miscalculation meant that they were ~7km from their original landing zone, on the top side of a nearly impassible cliff, and pointing down a ~30 degree slope: The second lander filled with rovers for the Munar suface landed nearby, and everyone just proceeded to make the best of a bad situation. I intended to eventually relocate at least the main base to the plains at the bottom of the slope, some 500m away, but was stymied by how one would reasonably move multi-ton MK3 landers. Then, when I was checking in on Bob in the Munar twilight, the Kraken struck the rover lander, tossing it several meters into the air, where it paused, hanging above the surface exactly the way bricks don't. It then started to spin violently, landed, and began to roll down the slope about 2/3rds of the way to the bottom, ending up facing more or less down hill again. Faced with this unprecedented situation, I decided that if game physics were going to get me into this mess, they would get me back out. I didn't use F12, but by putting some fuel back in the rover lander tanks and firing up the Poodle on minimum thrust, I was able to slowly slide it the rest of the way down the hill, occasionally stopping and getting a steering bump from my heavy refueling rover, Robo-Bowser. The main lander was more difficult, since it did not retain the main engines, but had been built with a large docking port on the backside. Fortunately, Robo-Bowser still has the 4 Twitch landing engines that put it on the surface in the first place. It took a lot of thrust and extra fuel, but eventually I was able to push both landers to the bottom of the slope: The last two pictures were taken at dawn of the next day, it was too dark for good pics during the operation. After that, I spent quite a bit of time working on some heavy equipment to assist during the next cleanup mission. Lucott is testing out the prototype on the runway with a ~800kg concrete weight for the test lift: It works out to about 4.5 tons rated lift on the Munar surface, which isn't too shabby for something this size. Next was the stability test: Well, I guess that is far enough. Still, it failed safe and in an easily recoverable position. To the MUN!!!!: Bill had the job of unbolting the droptanks from the boom, and here he is waiting for the rest of the fuel to burn off before unbolting the main tank and dragging it out from underneath with the winch: I think he likes his new toy:

What fun/cool/wierd little tricks do you use in your gameplay? I've got two that I use a lot. The first is a way to work around the janky stock fuel transfers. I design my logistics ships (tankers, Ore-Bots, Ect) with two sets of fuel tanks. The first tank(s) have just enough DV to land on the target, and the second set makes up the DV difference for launch when loaded, or are just the main transfer tanks for the fuel tankers. This means I can land a ship, fill the tanks with the KAS system, which is Uber reliable if slow for large ships, and then disable the landing tanks before launch. This means that when I dock at the orbital station, I still have the DV needed for landing locked away in those tanks and just need to reactivate them for the next run, so I just empty the payload tank and leave without having to click through multiple tanks. It also means that if I need to refuel in orbit, I can just fill the landing tank to capacity, without needing to remember how many units are required to land, or playing whackamole trying to balance the LF and Ox mixture. There is a mass penelty of course, but I will eagerly pay that to minimize my frustrations with the transfer system. The other one is much shorter and simpler. Universal Storage has a whole number of components in slightly different form factors than stock, but they only mount on nodes, no surface attaching. The KAS sockets, however, surface attach anywhere and provide a building node on the other side. Bam, surface mounted Universal Storage components. If only I had realized that before I scrapped all the batteries and fuel tanks I had sent to the Mun...

I dunno, you are the chemist. I just know how to pull data out of the hanger, lol.

One Unit is 5Kg of LF or Ox, and I think the Ore-LFO conversion is lossless, so Ore is 10Kg per unit.