Beamer

I wonder if Mr. Musk reads these forums. He stole my fluid exchange joke! You're welcome Mr. Musk, let's make this happen!

My Moho mission arrived. I've set up the package of relays I sent - a mission with some relays I sent earlier lacked sufficient deltaV for proper orbits, this time I got the maths right. According to the crew, bandwidth is great but latency leaves something to be desired: The core of the operation are these miners, I've sent 2 pairs of them that will be stationed at high ore concentrations on opposite sides of the planet. Unlike at other locations, rather than sending a big monolithic miner rover, I chose to go the small, cheap and redundant route for Moho. This means I can run everything on solar which kept the size and weight of the miners down. Here I'm discarding some tanks during the deorbit burn: After a text book landing at the minor craters on a nice flat area I detached the miners from the lander. Don't worry, this is fine: And we're open for business! Time to bring in my surface-to-orbit tanker, Mobus and Trasy chose to ride along on the balcony: Time to hook up the miners and fill up this S3 tank: While Mobus and Trasy get busy setting up the nearby field lab: After going up and down that long ladder half a dozen times, Mobus was getting a bit hot, but 500K is no reason to worry for a brave explorer! Of course there was time for some R&R while waiting for the tanker to fill up. Fore! Finally, delivering the fuel to the orbital station. I can carry up around 13-15K Lf and matching Ox per trip, just 2 more trips will fill the entire station: With this operation completed I now have sustainable refueling at all inner planets and moons (up to and including Dres). Meanwhile my Pol & Bop resource scouts are slowly moving into position, next transfer window to Jool I should be able to send a mining operation there too.

I had a day with lots of boring mid-transfer course corrections. 5 ships to Moho, burn to impact trajectory, decouple transfer burn fuel tanks, burn to desired periapsis, rinse repeat. I will announce my arrival with a rather heavy bombardment of empty tanks. Ultimate Gilly 6 arrived at Duna from Eve, for fly-by of both Duna and Ike and sent on it's way only 4 days later for a Duna-Dres transfer window, great timing. It refueled at Eve/Gilly, refueled at Duna/Ike, and will refuel at Dres for final impact course back on Kerbin. Single nuke engine probe that cost me 86K total to launch and will net me close to 2.5 million on the contract. Then I'm setting up a triangular wide relay net at 500 Mm over Jool, 192 day orbit, it will take more than half a year to set up. All in all I felt like some explosions. I mean science. I always get stuck with those seismic research contracts because I tend to re-use everything I launch so I have nothing to crash. Those Moho fuel tank impacts will happen before I arrive, and the mission has everything I need there, so any next mission I send will likely be a single stage tourist transporter. I figured I needed a device to help the seismograph along a bit. Meet the Kernetic Missile Launcher: Deploying... Built of sturdy octagonal struts and Mite SRBs, because I saw people say those were useless: Launching... Of course I will use a more controllable Lf engine stage when delivering from orbit: MECO, get ready to deploy... Who needs those firework launchers anyway? Hmmm, maybe we should take cover... For science! I'll have to test if the 12 Kernetic Missiles are enough to max out the seismograph yet (or at least get the 50% needed for the contracts), but it will be easy to add a few extra layers if needed.

Of course, the bigger your sample, the lower your error margins. It's probably a good idea to try some different types of cheeses too, and maybe throw in a bacon sarnie as, you know, "control group".

I don't really remember where I heard or saw about it first, possibly from a former colleague of mine who is a fellow sci-fi and space nerd. I habitually keep up with astronomy and rocketry news though, so it might have come from anywhere, it tends to be a favourite tool for demonstrating some peculiarities of orbital mechanics. What I mostly remember is how long it really took for me to get the game, even though I knew I would like it (I strongly tend to gravitate to space/sci-fi games and games that involve building things and/or are moddable, KSP obviously ticks all of those boxes). I had it on my steam wishlist for more than 2 years before I finally bought it at a sale, I think at 40% off. After putting nearly two thousand hours into the game I made up for it by buying the anniversary coin, the flag and a couple of T-shirts from the official merch shop

I believe you'll find the difference refraction makes to your end result won't significantly affect the accuracy of cheese-based measurements.

Fun (and not so fun) facts about microwave ovens (MWOs). A MWO works by bouncing around electromagnetic waves in a box that create a standing wave pattern. Where peaks overlap with peaks and valleys overlap with valleys, the water molecules are excited and become 'hot', whereas where peaks and valleys overlap, the waves cancel each other out and the water molecules are not excited. This is what causes the 'hot spots' in microwaves and why they all come with a rotating platform, to make sure your meal is evenly heated. Here's a fun trick: take out that rotating platform, and put in a big plate with something that melts, like a plate of the kind of cheese you would use to make cheese toasties (go ahead and put some toast under it too, you know you want to). Run the microwave for a while until you can clearly see the pattern of hot spots, take the plate out and measure the (shortest) distance between the hot spots. What you've just measured is the distance between the peaks and valleys of the standing wave pattern, i.o.w. half the wavelength of your MWO, so multiply it by 2 to get the full wavelength. Since cheese is not the most accurate measuring tool, I suggest making multiple measurements between different adjacent hot spots and averaging them. Now look at the back of your MWO, there should be a little plate attached to it that tells you what voltage to run the thing on and not to expose it to open flame, etc. This little plate should also tell you the frequency of the microwave. Now multiply the frequency with the wavelength you found earlier. Congratulations, you've just experimentally measured the speed of light using a kitchen appliance! (Note to physics pedantics: yes I know that technically you have measured the duration of a second, but let's not bother budding kitchen-based scientists with that!) Incidentally, the first table-top MWO was built to defrost hamsters. Yes you read that right. In a research lab where they were doing cryogenics research, hamsters were frozen to find out to what extent they could be brought back to life after defrosting them. They initially used heated paddles to massage and defrost the hamsters with, but this would often cause bad burns to the poor animals. One of the researchers knew about MWOs that at that point were only used on industrial scales, and scavenged a microwave generator from a nearby lab to build a kitchen-appliance sized hamster defrosting box. Supposedly it was a big improvement compared to the heated paddles.

I've done a lot of 'housekeeping' the past few days. I opened up my new orbital parking lot. It filled up nicely with 3 tourist transporters, my class E asteroid catcher and a generic tug-with-grabby-claw-thingy for orbital cleaning duties: I flew my new "KerTank!" orbital station design to Minmus to replace the old Minmus station, which was the very first refueling station I launched in this career game. We all know what's happening here, fluid exchange! I undocked all the ships first to reduce the chance of Kraken effects. Here's the final picture with the new station in place. Note that the engines and 2.5m-Mk3 adapters at the bottom will eventually be removed, but I attached the fireworks for the grand opening to them and I still need to program the KAL controller for a nice fireworks show, so that will have to wait a while: Due to its historical significance, unlike NASA I didn't waste time thinking what to do with the old station, and rather than deorbiting and crashing it I sent it to a mothball orbit at 500km over Minmus where it will serve as tourist attraction. Here it goes off on its final voyage: With the shiny new station in place I decided it called for a nice shiny new STO tanker to replace that orange monstrosity poking out of my new station. That tanker is so old it only has pro/retrograde hold support even though I completed my science tree a long time ago. So I made a nice new one based on the S3 tank with a Sr port for docking to the station: Again, historical significance (and the fact that the poodle engines means landing on Kerbin for a little bit of scrap value just won't work) made me decide to open up a museum site on Minmus near my colony there. Here's Raylong, one of the permanent residents of Minmus City and a valued employee of the local Jeb's Junkyard, taking a stroll along the freshly created tourist attractions: Aside from the tanker, I also placed my first asteroid capture ship here, it served its primary purpose of grabbing and redirecting asteroids well, but it turned out to be a horrible Kraken lure whenever I docked it to anything with the regular docking port, which is placed at the center of the ring of nuclear engines. Aside from that it has simply been superseded by better technology in my later ship designs: Finally, I created a new unified lander design, the KerbHerder 21Kvac. This is meant to server as a lander for up to 21 Kerbals that it capable of landing on any stock body without atmosphere except Tylo. If it performs satisfactory I will eventually station one of these at all of my orbital stations to assist in tourist operations. For its maiden voyage I stuffed my latest 15 rescues inside for a quick hop to Kerbolar orbit and a team-building flag planting activity on Mun and Minmus: With all of that out of the way, I can now fully focus on my Pol/Bop resource scouting mission that entered the Jool system some weeks ago and is up for its retro-burn in a few days.

A picture might help. This is my typical collision-safe and wobble-free design. The important parts: Radial decouplers attached a bit above the center of mass of the big SRBs. (Red oval) Bottom of the large SRBs is strutted to the core tank, this will eliminate any wobbling. A single strut can handle it but I tend to use 2, one on each side, to even out any drag effects. (Green ovals) Sepratrons used to push the boosters away from the core on decoupling. Notice the staging, the Sepratrons have to be in the same stage as the radial decouplers. On detaching these will fire and push the boosters away from the core. I typically put 4 at the top (2 on each side of the SRB) and 2 at the bottom (1 on each side of the SRB), this will push them away with the nose outwards, creating that nice Korolev Cross effect. When you decouple a SRB it will naturally move on in the prograde direction, which means that if your core is not aimed exactly prograde too, there's a big chance of collisions. The Sepratrons prevent this from happening. Make sure you point the Sepratrons in the right direction, the black exhaust nozzle needs to point towards your core rocket

I have 4 fuel cell arrays on it at the moment, I may look for a way to add a bunch more but I cannot make the 'base' of the extension much higher or the original drills and the pistons won't be able to reach the ground anymore, so space is limited. Also, I have bad experiences with hinges, they often get stuck when unfolding even when launchpad tests worked fine, so I don't want to attach too much to the moving parts. Perhaps I'll go the in-the-field construction way for the fuel cells, there's room for about 8-12 of them under the top platform. As for assembling in space, I'm worried about the strength of it all and how it would behave under acceleration once unfolded. It would probably stay in one piece but it would be a very wobbly construction, making it hard to control. Also I believe (perhaps wrongly) that auto-strutting is one of the things that interferes with the hinges operating properly, so I don't want to use that. The gravity at Gilly being so forgiving, it's all fairly easy to move around on the surface anyway, and that way I only have to unfold it once it's properly landed and secured to the ground anchor, reducing the chance of pieces being knocked off.

This is my Gilly Mining Rig. I was in the process of designing an Eve mission when the ground clamp was released, so I jumped on the chance to use it. The central core is a Sr docking port with a Mk2 lander can and a rockomax jumbo-64 stacked on it, it's docked to a Sr port that is anchored to the ground. The pistons are lowered to the ground and locked to prevent the structure from flexing when ships dock to the 4 docking ports on top: It has a problem though. It only has 4 drills which is not nearly enough to keep the 4 refineries going, so I've been testing out some ideas to expand it. Tests show that at the local ore concentrations, with 8 more drills I can run 6 total programs consistently. That will do for now, it's meant as a hands-off design, it doesn't have to be super fast, I just want to be able to dock and get filled up without any further interaction in a reasonable time. 8 extra drills requires 4 large radiator panels, and I'll also need to have 4 additional solar panels (in sunlight) to power all that. Of course on Gilly you can famously get to orbit on a can of beans. An engineer can lift 25t without breaking a sweat in its 0.0(0?)5g so I could go the easy way and just strap all those things to the side of a tank, add an engine and probe core, land it close and wrestle with the camera and alignment controls in construction mode for a few frustrating hours to end up with something like this: Well... a little less neatly because of the lack of symmetry tools, probably. This would be the safe and sensible way to do it I guess, there's not much that can go wrong in terms of procedure or construction, I've done some in-the-field building and am confident enough I can make it work. It has the drills, it has the radiators, I'm not all that happy with the placement of the solar panels, there's too much overlap, but I could probably clean that up if I moved the current panels around a bit. But... I haven't seen any expansion called "KSP: Safe and Sensible", so I figured I could go with a crazy idea: I can put that in orbit on Gilly. I can undock and move the current mining rig to the side for a while. I can then dock this to the ground anchor, remove the top tank, get awkward with the 8 hinges, 8 pistons and 4 servos to unfold it and look like this: And finally, dock the entire mining rig on top of that again so I end up with a complete build looking like this: This has so many single points of failure in the procedure and construction I didn't bother to count. I love it, 100 days to transfer window, I can't wait.

Congrats, you just beat me to it

I sent off a 5 vessel mission to Moho today and something odd happened to one of the ships. This is a lander that is meant to ferry fuel from surface to orbit. It has a nice little 'balcony' below the top cabin which is built with equilateral triangles in 6-way symmetry. On it I placed 6 external command seats and above each seat a light, again using 6-way symmetry. I then removed the seat and light directly below the cabin hatch from symmetry and deleted them to make room for a ladder. So far so good: The weird thing is this, after launching it, I noticed that the lights were not straight above the command seats anymore, where I placed them. They had moved and were now offset to the seats. While camming around to see what happened I suddenly saw this: Somehow, my 6-way symmetry with 1 item removed bugged into a perfect 5 times 72 degree angle 5-way symmetry, something that's not even possible to build with angle snapping turned on. This only happened with the lights - the floor, safety fence and command seats are still exactly where I placed them, at 60 degree angles with 1 empty spot. Only the lights moved. I think it looks pretty cool, but a weird bug it is.

Moho is at a pretty steep inclination so your plane change can cost a lot, it all depends on where exactly Kerbin and Moho are in their orbit. In general if you have to spend more than around 4.5K deltaV for transfer burn from LKO plus orbital insertion to low Moho orbit I would wait for the next transfer window, they come by fairly frequently for Moho. You need about 2.5K to get into low Moho orbit from your transfer, and you probably want to take some extra for plane changes since you're liable to end up at a big inclination, although if you're landing you can probably just skip that step. So add 2.5-3K to whatever burn will get you there (which can be anywhere from 800 to 3K+, but you can find that out before leaving by creating the node for it) and you should be safe. That's excluding what you need for landing which adds another 1K with a bit to spare. Moho is pretty much the one planet I always do a complete test run for because it has betrayed me a few times with the amount of deltaV needed to get into a nice orbit. The fact that it has no atmosphere or moons means that there is no way to get any 'assistance' on slowing down, it all has to come from the engines and it also has to be delivered in a fairly short time, a high TWR is recommended. Aiming for a polar orbit can be cheaper, so if you're going to land that might make more sense. Gravity assists from Eve can change the whole game but if you're going for that you don't need my help!

I visit all planets Of course I don't need to bring any roids in orbit of Dres as it provides its own supply. I currently mine Ike but having a few E class asteroids in orbit of Duna would be much more convenient. Mining Gilly is dirt cheap but its orbit is cumbersome and besides, with Eve's atmosphere getting an asteroid in orbit should be easy so why not hehe. I definitely want a stash around Moho. The problem with tracking only a few is that most will never have an encounter, you have to track a lot of them to find one that does. The above screenshot is 90% E class, with a handful of D class and comets thrown in, I find A-C class really aren't worth chasing down for mining purposes so I never track those.

I rely a lot on asteroids for orbital refueling, but with 200+ tracked asteroids things are getting a bit unmanageable. Even at lower numbers, finding out which asteroid is going to enter the SOI of a planet can be a right bother because it will only show the SOI-change icon of the asteroid that is currently selected. The only method I have found is to click each asteroid, one by one, and using Eyeball Mk-1 to spy for a SOI change icon on the map. What I'd really like is a mod that just gives me a simple list of tracked asteroids that are going to hit a SOI change in the upcoming months or so (or marks them some way in the tracking station). Over the years I've done many increasingly imaginative google searches to look for a mod that could do that, without luck. Does anyone know of a mod that can do this? Failing that, how do you kerbonauts handle this yourself? Do you just untrack any asteroid that doesn't hit a SOI change in its upcoming orbit to keep the numbers down? Have you trained your muscle memory and eyes to hotkey through hundreds of asteroids in 3 minutes flat? Is there some config trick to show SOI changes of asteroids in the tracking station when they are not actively selected? Any pro tips are welcome. To be clear, I am specifically NOT looking to change asteroid generation, cheat orbits and encounters, or anything like that. Just a better way to manage large numbers of stock asteroids on Kerbol orbits.

If you mean the ambient music, look for the "SoundTrack Editor" mod, I don't think it has been updated recently but it works without problems for me on the latest version. The instructions also contain some useful info on valid sound file formats, locations and such. As for effect sounds, I think at least some of them are in GameData\Squad\Sounds. Waterfall changes the engine sounds to be a lot more impressive (and improves the plumes) so you could have a look at that too.

For some time I've been wanting to replace some of my Kerbin system crew stations as they were all launched before I had access to things like the Sr docking port and large fuel tanks. In cooperation with Maxo Construction ToysTM who have agreed to foot 90% of the bill, I am now testing a new design that is meant to replace my Minmus station. Launchpad tests are currently in progress: True to their core business, Maxo Construction ToysTM have been kind enough to provide some R&R areas decked out with state of the art entertainment systems for our kerbonauts: On the top deck, Jeb is enjoying a cup of triple java while watching the latest episode of the hit show "Green is the new Black" with one of his novice colleagues: On the lower deck, two crew members are having a cup of tea and some peanuts as they listen to the summer hit "I'm Green da-ba-di da-ba-da" on the 8-track: Valentina complained about the proximity of the high-gain antenna near the recreation areas, but according to Jeb "Every time there was a brightly lit scene, my fillings were sparking... it was awesome!" Initial flight tests suggest atmospheric behaviour is akin to a brick with a bottle rocked attached. To the side. At an angle. But Jeb assured us he would get this puppy to where it needed to be, if he had to drag it up there himself. Which he'll probably have to.

I did experience the same and found some post on Steam that mentioned you only get Solar orbit experience when your orbit after leaving Kerbin SOI doesn't enter the SOI of any planet (not just Kerbin). If it does, Solar fly-by is all you get. In my experience, this is correct. While flying tourists to Duna and encountering this I did some tests and found that even if I changed my orbit after leaving Kerbin SOI so that it didn't intersect Duna SOI anymore, it still didn't give my tourists/kerbonauts the Solar orbit XP, which I found a bit odd. Based on this I would guess that the only check that happens is when your SOI changes from planetary to solar, and if at that point your orbit is intersecting the SOI of another planet you will not get the XP for Solar orbit until you leave (and thus first enter) a planetary SOI again.

PC, Samsung SSD 870 QVO 1TB, after a fresh reboot: 1:38 to menu, 23 seconds to load my current career game. All expansions. Mods:

I always play career and never have money issues. I never do observation contracts. Here's my general way of starting up a new career game: - Combine your station contracts! For example get a contract for a Kerbin, Solar, Duna and Ike station. Launch your station in Kerbin orbit, 1st contract completed. Set it on a course to Duna, 2nd contract completed when you leave Kerbin SOI. Enter orbit of Duna, 3rd contract completed. Transfer to Ike orbit, 4th contract completed. That's a couple of million worth from launching a single 5 Kerbal craft with antenna, solar panel and docking port. - Take all rescue contracts. The financial rewards are low but more than sufficient to cover the costs of a LKO rescue craft (to cut costs further combine multiple LKO rescues per launch until you have a station in LKO to launch your rescues from). The real reward is the money you save on hiring. In my current career game I have 78 Kerbonauts, only 2 of those were hired from the astronaut complex. That's a saving of ... dunno exactly as the price of hires ramps up, but tens of millions. - Set up orbital refueling ASAP. There are more ways to re-use hardware than to land it back on Kerbin (which technically isn't even re-use, but scrap value, unless you actually set up a refueling operation on Kerbin surface). Virtually all my 1st stage cores double as planetary transfer stage after refueling in orbit. Start with a Minmus refinery paired with a tanker to lift the fuel off Minmus and put fuel depots in LKO, Mun and Minmus orbit. If designed appropriately this can support all your Minmus/Mun/Kerbin operations until you get a few asteroids in LKO. Once you tow in a few asteroids you're off to the stars. Almost everything I launch is refueled in orbit and only a few side boosters are discarded, if any. Note: the cost savings here is not the price of fuel, but the fact that you halve the weight (and thus costs) of your launch vehicles. In my experience saving costs is all about setting up infrastructure. I have set up sustainable refueling around every planet up to Dres (and aiming for Jool soon), which means a craft only needs the fuel to get there, which again halves the weight/cost of a craft that needs to bring along all the fuel for the return trip. Once you have something like that set up, tourist contracts are a goldmine, but that's end-game stuff really.

Anything with a lifting surface. I love rockets, it's vector math and orbital mechanics, it's physics, it's beautiful. Heat Shields, retro burns and Parachutes are fine for landing in atmospheres. Aerodynamics on the other hand is some sort of evil Harry Potter witchery that is outlawed in my Kerbal universe. The runway is meant for rover tests.

I tend to Kerbalize my ship names, with suffixes to indicate versions and/or capacity (Mk-1, Mk-2 etc for version. K8, K16 etc for crew capacity). For crew transport in the Kerbin system I created a line of ships called "KerBus". By the time I went interplanetary and had access to nuke engines, obviously the continuation of that line had to be called "NuKerBus". To celebrate the Parker Solar Probe kissing the Sun I made a Kerbol-diving station which is called the "Kerman Kerbolar Station". A design for high-G adventures was called the "Kerballistic". Some cheap impactor probes I made for seismic research were called "KerBomb". I refer to the escape/return pods for my orbital stations as "KerSplat". And on and on... As lame as it is (or maybe because it is) I still get a giggle out of it

This is my career game, latest version, all expansions, stock/expansion parts and bodies only. Using some 'QoL' mods (MechJeb2, Kerbal Engineer Redux, Docking Port Alignment Indicator, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Tracking Station Evolved) and a bunch of visual enhancements. Year 5 day 71. All science completed, 91% reputation, 33.33 million credits in the bank. I mostly run tourist trips and rescue missions in between putting more hardware in various orbits. Total personnel: 26 pilots, 31 engineers, 21 scientists. Aside from the 4 veterans and 2 early hired scientists, all of them are rescues. Known tourists: 109 - 59 served and 50 currently in transit or waiting for transfer windows. Infrastructure: Asteroid refueling stations around Kerbin, Mun, Dres. Mobile surface miners/refineries with STO tanker support on Minmus, Gilly, Ike and soon Moho. Personnel and Tourist accommodations around Kerbin, Mun, Minmus, Eve, Duna, Ike, Dres, soon Moho. A surface city on Minmus (Garage with rovers, fuel depot, lab, high-rise living accommodations). A low orbit Kerbol station that survives a sub-100 Mm orbit. Relay constellations around all planets and in 2 shells around Kerbol. My Kerbin orbit is getting a bit messy: 5 of these are a convoy waiting for a nearby Moho transfer window, but a lot of them are just inter-planetary buses and asteroid tugs waiting for their next job, sometimes for months or years. I have a (very old) station with ample docking facilities at 200km, but if I dock more than this to it the Kraken tends to pay a visit: Then there's my much newer orbital tourist hotel at 100km which houses up to 192 tourist and 25-ish staff (including escape pods for all 192 tourists). Needless to say, using this as a long-term docking station for heavy ships isn't a good idea: So today I decided to put up a long-term parking facility at 150km. It's intentionally left simple and fairly low on the part count, it can house 14 Kerbals, offers 8 regular docking ports and 4 Jr ports. I will dock my KerBus and NuKerBus lines of ships to this as they wait between transfer windows: It was fairly easy to put up, 2 launches, bit of docking, but hopefully it will ward off the Kraken from my more complex stations as I move a number of ships to this facility.

Bit late, but got creative for KSP's 10th anniversary.