Cydonian Monk

Thanks! Ritual... ritual....... rite... u.... all........... Maybe that explains what was going on here: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh something R'lyeh something something wgah'nagl fhtagn.....

At least the important technologies survived! Looking forward to this slow sprint into the pits of.... or was that a quick spiral? Something like that.

Today I flew one of those Apollo 50 reenactment mission thingys, this time using the DLC parts. Full report and too many screenshots here:

2013: First of Many on the Mün Six years ago (July of 2013) I sent three kerbals on a not really all that dangerous mission to the Mün. Their goal was to recreate the Apollo 11 landing, using only the parts and skills available to them in the base Kerbal Space Program game. I myself had only been playing the game for two months, so the survival of these three kerbals was not an absolute guarantee. The details of this mission were lost when Google+ shut down earlier this year, but a select few of the images (and some very low-res gifs) have survived. This mission was a complete success, and all three kerbals returned safely to the surface of Kerbin. The landing site was an oft-reused location, within walking distance of the Armstrong Memorial. They were not the first kerbals to land there. (Hmmm......) 2015: The First "Real" Moon Landing Four years ago (July of 2015) I still had a kinda-working Real Solar System / Realism Overhaul install, and decided to fly the real deal. Three more kerbals were enlisted and shot off for Earth's nearest neighbor atop a not great but not terrible very large rocket (the upper half of which was mostly well-balanced FASA parts). This mission was somewhat less successful than its real life counterpart and my previous kerbal-sized landings. The Eagle landed on target (that target being somewhere on the Moon). It later successfully took off from the surface and rendezvoused with the Columbia. Unfortunately the craft and crew were lost to an overzealous Deadly Reentry at the very outer edges of Earth's Atmosphere. 2019: Six Years or Fifty Years? Why not both? This year (July of 2019) I wasn't originally going to fly a reenactment. Life is still super busy, and, well, it's _just_ landing on the Mün. Then I realized I had never really used the new DLC parts from Making History, and decided to sit down and see if I could build a halfway decent Saturn V and Apollo lander mission using the new parts. For the most part I'm pleased with the results. While my first first few attempts and tests met with failure, I eventually put together a working craft and mission plan. (Some annoyingly persistent old bugs such as "stowed parts can't be used even after you've blown the fairings which they were stowed in", an interesting new bug where water had zero buoyancy, and the ever present phantom Unity wobbles did all they could to doom the mission.) I first ran a dry-run Apollo 10 test flight, after which I felt I had a craft ready to carry a crew of three to Kerbin's currently nearest neighbor. Jebediah, Bill, and Bob were fired off into the expanse with the goal of landing at the Neil Armstrong Memorial. That mission follows. The launch and transfer to the Mün went exactly according to plan. Retrieval of the Munar Excursion Module was rather more difficult than I had hoped, in part because neither the MEM nor the transfer stage had anything in the way of reaction wheels. (The MEM is fully monoprop, with the reaction wheels on its tiny probe core disabled.) Eventually I got it all lined up and snicked. It would also have been nice if the "petals" which covered the real LEM could be recreated using Stock+DLC parts without too much fuss in KSP. I _suppose_ that could be simulated using the new robotics parts, but then you lose the drag-shielding from the fairings. So it is what it is. With the MEM extracted, all the crew could do for the next several hours was spin slowly as they spit-roasted their way to the Mün. (Click here for above screenshot at full 2048x1152 resolution) (Click here for above screenshot at full 2048x1152 resolution) The timing of this flight was peculiar. Instead of the usual "Earth Rise" type of view, we get this thin-limn view. Had I waited to land until the surface lighting was correct for the artifact at the landing site, Kerbin would have been even darker, and mostly eclipsing the Mün during the mission. Anyway, after entering orbit, Jebediah and Bill loaded into the Eagle, detached from the Columbia, and made their way to the surface. Jeb was certainly happy to be along for the ride. "Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed. No, wait, we bounced. Ok, now we've landed. Maybe. Wait, now we're tipping. Oh, springs. Uh, hang on." I forgot to tweak the suspension settings, resulting in a few curious and bouncy moments on the surface. Eventually the wobbling stopped when Jeb got out and kicked the lander. Bill followed him, shaking his head. The customary flag was planted, then the two made their way around the site to pay their respects to Neil and all the other Apollo crews. With all the wandering around on the surface done, it was time to pack their bags, climb back into the Eagle, and meet up with Bob in the Columbia. This docking was also a bit on the difficult side, as the Eagle had less than 1 unit of monoprop remaining when the rendezvous was made. Columbia had to jet out and dock with them before the SAS in the Eagle burned up the last of their monoprop.... which didn't happen. So Bob had to move in and dock to a slightly tumbling Eagle. Not the easiest docking ever, but this is a fairly tiny craft. And worst case? The crews could have EVA'd and ditched the lander without docking. Less than half an orbit later they ditched the Eagle anyway and made their burn to return home to Kerbin. The reentry target (the bay next to the space center) was missed by 8 kilometers. Maybe I'm just out of practice with milk run returns from the Mün, or maybe I was half a meter too shallow on the aerocapture. Who knows. Thankfully this version of the Apollo command module doesn't explode if it lands on solid ground... or go crashing through the water like it didn't exist and exploding on the bottom of the ocean after the parachutes cut at the surface because they splashed down... or whatever that weird bug was. The important thing is everyone survived. Even Jeb. (Though his new habit of staring at the Sun might become problematic) Mission Accomplished!

Programming is easy. You've just created a program which can deliver 100 messages a minute. The hard part is finding a use name for it.

The future? Career mode "Funds" will be replaced with real-world currency. You can recharge these through either grindy boring missions like rescue and survey contracts, or through using a linked credit card or social score. Want the final upgrade for the VAB? That'll either require eight years worth of play time or a quick $5k. Science and Sandbox modes will be locked behind a wall until you have finished unlocking everything in a career game first and will require a monthly subscription to use. Or maybe the game doesn't fall into parasitic capitalism mode.... Instead we get a fully reimagined and actually balanced concept of career mode, something more akin to BARIS (either the game or the mod). New official solar systems, either selected from a set of pre-generated ones or on-request procedurally generated. More procedural parts similar to the fairings. Actual bloody cities. Or maybe none of the above. Who knows.

Too much so. I put ~300 hours into it the first week it came out. Or at least it felt like a week, because between work and HOI4 I think I only slept seven times. I rather like how they backported the shipbuilding from Stellaris to HOI4.

American Truck [Logistics Management Company] Simulator, in which I act like I'm management by sleeping in my truck at various motels while my fleet of drivers earn money for me so I can keep buying garages and hiring more drivers so they can earn even more money while I drift from motel to motel while my fleet of drivers earn yet more mad amounts of money for me so I can..... Sleep. American Truck [and Motel Sleeping] Simulator. Sleeping on the job. Capitalism at its finest.

Given the timing of your posts you can probably thank Verizon for your issues. They've made quite a few of us particularly unhappy today.

While, yes, we need first ask if they survived, the answer to this question is simple: Jonbald himself has not been to space since (probably) KSP v0.20.2. He returned to Kerbin at some point after that, likely v0.21.1 as I cleaned up and rescued quite a few stranded kerbals from the same save in that version. So he has already been through a great many Cycles on Kerbin, all without being reset. It certainly has its fair share of haunted corners. I'm not sure I can ever get near Kelgee Station again.... And so many of the landed craft have "legs" that have been through so many different reinventions of the wheel that they either don't work, don't exist, or have become phantom-motion pogo sticks. I gave brief consideration to "rebuilding" a few of the set pieces for the v1.7.* migration (as I had to do in either v1.1.3 or v1.2.1 for the Jool Jester just to get the nukes to work), as useful things such as rigid attach and resource transfer rules have been introduced in the years since many of these were launched. I then decided against it after I found that autostruts do in fact work again, and don't turn craft into balls of spaghetti like they once did. So the ghosts and eldritch deities get to stick around. (Yay?) I'll probably end up fixing a few other engines, but in most cases I can do that with KAS/KIS and an army of behind-the-scenes kerbals. In a way it'll be interesting to see what new bugs crawl out of the woodwork. Ex: What happens to things assembled using KAS/KIS across three different major versions? (Really old pre-split KAS, previous KAS/KIS, and new KAS/KIS.) I'm _still_ stumbling on the odd ModuleManager bug from back when it had a couple nasty glitches. And there are some really, really old RemoteTech nodes and stuff that amusingly started working again in v1.4.5 for Kraken knows what reason. And I've noticed there seems to be a runaway resource node problem with Asteroids, where suddenly all of my captured and spawned asteroids have a couple hundred sets of resources (hence the massively increased save file size I mentioned a while back). Ghosts at every corner!

Thanks! This was a story piece which I struggled with for quite some time as I wasn't sure how I wanted to handle it. I always knew it needed to get here, where Jonbald was denied space, but had so many different ideas on how to approach it. (Including some incredibly out-of-character actions from others, such as Rosuki flying one of Jonbald's old jets into the Titanium at launch, but ejecting herself and using a Vanguard parachute to land.) I eventually gave up and just launched him to orbit. Except.... when I did that the launch failed after "Colliding with a Launch Clamp" at ~20km altitude. That fun old bug. So I said OK, went back and dressed it up, and rolled with what the game gave me. Splashing down at the same island they almost landed on during the Ti-Y-5 reentry overshoot was not originally meant to be a bit of foreshadowing..... Otherwise I might have built more into it. The next large batch of posts will be in v1.4.5, yes. I'm almost done with that, too, and expect to jump direct from v1.4.5 to v1.7.*. If they survived, yes. Any space program that forms naturally following this event would not know Jonbald (or previous instances of Gene and Wernher) existed. Cartina is still there, of course..... and Rosuki is on the loose.

Titanium Sky "All we're saying is it's peculiar to assign all of us to The Mün while your crews get to use Copper Station. The lab situation here is unbelievably primitive, not to mention that we had to pack up and move some very delicate long-term experiments. These are things we could have left behind if our science team hadn't been sent to do maintenance and janitorial work." Jonbald was rapping his knuckles on the edge of his desk. The call with Verly had been going on for too long, and he was silently questioning if he should have bothered keeping communications satellites in Münar orbit all these years. Or maybe he should've sent all the old crews to Dres instead. Of course Rosuki's kerbals would push back against his agenda. They weren't ignorant, and by now understood they had no parts to play going forward. It was nothing personal, really, just matters of business and trust. "Your concerns have been noted my dear. Now..." "I'm not your anything, you old snot. Where's Rosuki? We haven't heard anything from here since she landed. Can you put her on instead?" "No. Your boss is indisposed. As we've discussed repeatedly, until she recovers from her issues there is nothing..." "Right, nothing more you can do except relay my concerns to her, blah, blah, blah. Look, we get it. You took over. It's your show. We can still work together, there's no reason to fight like this, but we at least need to be honest with each other." Jonbald smiled, a gesture completely lost on a radio call. Honesty, of course. Why hadn't he thought of that. Obviously these kerbals would all play along perfectly nicely if he told them that he was planning to abandon them and fly off into the dark between the stars. "As I was about to ask before you interrupted me, what do you need to bring the Münar operations back to full capacity? Food, water, air, laboratory resources? How are your fuel reserves? Monoprop?" The call was empty and filled with static for a few moments, and it sounded as though Verly was shuffling around near her microphone. "I'll have a full manifest sent back, but we could use another fuel depot, or at least a resupply for the ones we have. Especially if you're bringing a bunch of new landers out here to drink from our tanks." "Done. Anything else?" "No, that'll do for the immediate future." "Good. Now if you'll excuse me I have some pressing matters to attend to prior to my launch. We'll continue this discussion once my teams and myself have transferred out to your station." "Understood. Pequoni 2 Out." He turned off the microphone and unplugged it. The handful of papers he had scattered across his desk were gathered up and returned to their file. The file itself was slipped into one of his desk drawers. His office door opened just as he closed and locked the drawer. The members of the Continuum Council walked in and closed the door behind them. Right on schedule. Cartina Kerman, former tourist and the public face of the Space Program, Munlin Kerman, monk and representative from the "The Order of Kerbin World-Firsts Record-Keeping Society", and of course Gene Kerman and Wernher von Kerman, his two most trusted advisors. They each took their place in seats opposite from him. Gene and Wernher were already wearing their flight suits. "You two are certainly eager to go back up." Gene answered in the affirmative and smiled. "Nothing like it." "Indeed." Jonbald folded his hands and let them rest on his desk. "Shall we begin? The plan as it stands now is for our three teams to proceed directly to The Mün. Gene's team will land at the abandoned Pioneer Mün Base and prepare it for habitation, while Wernher and myself will land directly at the site. We expect this expedition to take no less than a full year to complete, excavation and repairs or recovery of the object included. "As such, this will be our last face to face meeting for some time. Once we have secured the crash site, I do not intend to leave the craft or return to Kerbin until we have completed our objectives. Cartina, that will leave you in command of all operations here on the surface. You have proven yourself more than up to the task." "Thank you." "Munlin, you are welcome to remain at the Space Center or return to your order, whatever is needed. We will be in contact when we need your assistance or advice." The monk nodded, but did not answer. Typical. "Well then, let's get going. Three of us have a flight to catch." He chuckled and flashed a half-fake smile. No objections were raised, so he adjourned the meeting and bid Cartina and Munlin farewell. Gene and Wernher made their way back to the astronaut ready room. Once they were gone he paced around his office one last time, making certain he was leaving nothing which would be needed on The Mün. His office was mostly just for appearances anyway, filled with the odd book and random assortment of broken tools, his attachment to anything "real" having been broken many cycles ago. He tried to remember what it was like, back when he was just a regular astrokerb. Landing on the Mün, assembling space stations with his hands and a few simple tools. He stared out of his window at the distant mountains and allowed his memories to wander. Had it really been so long ago? When he turned back from the window he jumped at the sight awaiting him, one of the few times in his life he had been startled by anything. One doesn't expect to see three monks standing in the center of their own locked office. Unnerving, how they always appear out of nothing. Now that he thought about it, it was entirely possible Munlin hadn't left. Yet he was absolutely certain Archibald and this third, otherwise unknown monk were not there before. "Archibald. My apologies, that was rather a shock you gave me." "Good. Perhaps it will awaken you to the danger you face and divert you from the course you have set." "And what course would that be?" Archbald sighed. "We've been over this before. There is no need to twist your words, Jonbald, if that is who you still are. I have already given you a warning as a friend. Now I give you a warning as a gravely concerned monk, as a protector of Kerbin. If you insist on venturing to the crash on The Mün, if you attempt to recover it and use it to press your advantage, you will die." "Is that so?" "Yes. You are messing with things far beyond your understanding and control. Things deadlier than you have realized. For the sake of yourself and those under your command, turn back. Turn back now. This is the last warning I can give." "And if I say no?" "Then I bid you farewell, old friend." Jonbald looked down at the floor under his feet, briefly considered the request. What were keeping from him? All he wanted was help Kerbin escape from its own gravity. To venture out into the void, sail between the stars, leave the cradle behind, all the usual desires of adventure and exploration. To return home. Their real home. To return to the stars. How could that be so terrible as to bring ruin to all of them? No, Archbald was not a murderer. The crash was not dangerous. He looked back up at his old fellow crewmate. "Very well, your concerns have been noted. And I promise you they are unfounded. Everything will be perfectly all right, perfectly safe. You will see." Archibald's eyes carried a heavy sadness, one not hidden by his faint smile. "So be it. I have tried, but you will not see reason." "Oh, I see your reason perfectly clear. You are afraid I might expose your lies, your decades of manipulation. 'Worlds First' indeed. No, I will no longer play along with your game, whatever it is. Do give Rosuki my regards, won't you? And let her know her crews are asking after her." "I will do as you ask. Goodbye, Jonbald." "Likewise, my dear old friend. We'll talk again once I have finished my work on The Mün." "I wish it could be so." Archibald bowed, as did the other two, and they retreated from Jonbald's office. Empty threats, veiled dangers. Shadows and whispers of shadows. Never a direct answer. Nonsense, all of it. He knew what to expect with the crash, he himself had been in the one up North. This one was no different, no more dangerous than a sleeping infant. He gathered his belongings, little as they were, and made his way through the astronaut complex to join Gene and Wernher in the ready room. It would be good to be back in null gravity. Up there, up where everything was perfectly safe. "Nothing like it," as Gene had said. Nothing like it indeed. -- Titanium Y-8 The craft rolled out to the launchpad over night, as had become standard for Titanium launches. It was just now finishing its fuelling, and the ground crews had moved the crew loading gantry into position. The Titanium Y-8 flight would be the fourth full mission for this Ti-Y1 spacecraft, quite possibly the most reuse any spaceplane had ever seen. Jonbald certainly couldn't remember any which had been to space and back four times. And this was to be another routine mission, just with a short year-long berthing for the Ti-Y1 at Copper Station as they all rode Irons out to The Mün. Kadun was once again piloting the craft, the flight computer once more directly commanding the ascent. Jonbald joined her in the cockpit, Gene and Wernher secured themselves into their seats in the passenger compartment. The ground crews rolled back the boarding gantry and gave the signal once they were clear of the blast zone. Jonbald watched Kadun work through the final pre-flight checklist with the controllers in MC-1. It was interesting to see the process from both sides, having witnessed the Titanium Y-6 launch from inside MC-1 and now the Titanium Y-8 from the inside. Once the checklist was complete, Kadun secured the clipboard, gave them all a thumbs up, and flipped a toggle switch on her flight console. The equivalent switch was soon flipped by a controller in MC-1, and the flight computer started counting down from 10. One final callout from their interim flight director, some motivational message Jonbald was too wired to remember, and off they roared. The launch was rather a bit louder than he had expected, especially for a single-engine craft. In all his previous flights the main engines had been at the far end of the rocket, separated entirely from the crew capsule. Nice, quiet rides, if a bit bumpy. He was trying to remember what his last launch was exactly. Obair 2? The mission to build Baile Speir and its hardened communications system? Most likely. Either way both it and his Mün mission launch aboard the Fios 3 were both much quieter and less turbulent than the Ti-Y-8. Maybe it was an effect of pushing their huge fuel reserves in front of the craft as they ascended? No, it was still a winged rocket, no matter where the fuel was. Center of mass was still in a properly engineer place, moving backwards as they burned through their fuel reserves. Just two wings and the most powerful single engine they could build. The turbulence became a rough shake as the craft passed through the sound barrier, then retreated back to just an annoyance. "That's weird." The remark was little more than a whisper in his headset. Jonbald glanced over at Kadun, hoping she would explain herself. That's when he noticed she wasn't wearing a helmet. No wonder he could barely hear her over the radio. Not many kerbals would be comfortable enough to ride a kerbal-built craft into orbit without a helmet firmly secured to their neck ring, but there she was. He'd picked a real winner; cavalier, borderline crazy, and right good pilot, and loyal to a fault. She tapped at some gauge on her console, trying to coax a better reading out of it. He flashed a question handsign at her, open palm facing and motioning upwards, asking what was up. "Off course slightly." She pointed outside to the left. "Might have something to do with...." It had happened fast, too fast. The ringing in his ears was louder than the bang which had preceded it. One second he was listening to Kadun, the next his helmet was pinned to the bulkhead to his right. The loud crack it gave off at impact was drowned out only by the sound of the universe ending. Outside he could see a cloud of thick vapour, its periphery burning a sickly orange colour. Inside, Kadun's neck was cocked at an odd angle, her body pulled to the very limits of her acceleration couch's straps. Her left hand somehow made its way back to the flightstick while her right clawed toward the switch to disengage the flight computer. The computer disengaged itself first, all its screens and alarms and alerts going dark at once. Only the manual and independent systems continued their assault on his senses. It was likely the computer had broken from the g-forces, or even the sheer violence of the event. The bang. The slap. The noise. The spin was lessening, Kadun's neck returning to its proper shape. Kadun absentmindedly finished her sentence while wrestling the craft into her control. "... Something to do with the shimmy we picked up at 5k ASL. What in the world was that?!" He could feel the g-forces subside as the violent tumble became a gentle drift, but his helmet was still stuck to the bulkhead. He could barely move. Acting without thinking he used his hands to release his straps, unlatch his helmet, and then slip free from his entangled headwear. His guts twisted when he saw why it wouldn't move. A shard of some unknown debris had punctured the side of the cockpit, speared his helmet, and even slashed apart the right ear of his headset. It had missed his head by millimeters. Had he not been looking at Kadun... he didn't want to think about it. He pressed his feet up against the bulkhead and pulled his helmet free. Free from the grasp of his helmet, the shrapnel was shot out into memory, the pressure differential between the cockpit and the outside atmosphere propelling it at an incredible speed. A glob of the ship's self-healing gel quickly filled the V-shaped hole it left behind. It was silent now, no engines or turbulence or other disturbances. They were in freefall. The ringing in his ears was starting to fade. The computer screens caught his eyes as they blinked and flashed back to life, showing their default boot message. "Advanced flight instruments for every conceivable occasion." They just as quickly went blank. For every occasion except this one, he thought. The helmet turned over in his hands, and he ran his fingers over the hole in its side. This elicited a surprised whistle from Kadun. "Close shot you took there hoss." Indeed. Too close. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. "Status?" "Not good. At a guess I'd say the main engine exploded, taking the jets and our vertical stabilizers with it. Lots of dead systems back there, bunch of red lights on my board. Hydraulic systems are leaking, so we've probably got a big hole back there somewhere. The good news is we still have both wings, our elevators and ailerons work, and RCS is intact. At least the RCS up here at the front of the ship. The bad news is that won't matter much when we hit the ocean here in about four minutes." "We can glide. Glide back to the space center." "Not with the back half of the craft missing we can't. Too out of whack, too front-heavy. But I think I have enough control and RCS to keep our nose up high enough to make a splashdown survivable. At least for some of us. Maybe even get us near that island." Jonbald slotted his helmet back onto his neck ring and latched it into place. They may not be going to space today, but he'd not want to be without it when they hit the water. Even with the giant hole in the back of it. He gave Kadun a thumbs up and passed her own helmet to her from behind the seat. She slotted it in and latched it without complaint. He motioned again to get her attention, unsure if his headset still worked. "What do you need me to do?" "Right now boss, the only thing you can do is get in the back, get strapped in, and let me wrestle this angry steer into the ocean." "I'd be of more assistance up here. I'm a pilot too, you know." "Not a very good one, sir. No offense." "None taken. But I insist." "You can insist for about thirty more seconds, after that I'll throw you back there myself. When we hit that ocean, these two front windshields are going to come flying into this cockpit at half the speed of sound, with a wall of water chasing after them like a bad shot of whiskey. We both know how that story ends, so no more arguments. Got it? Go, now." He opened the hatch to the passenger compartment to find two scared faces looking back at him. Wernher's glasses were floating freely around inside of his helmet, having been knocked loose from the force of the explosion. Gene's eyes might have been doing the same, based on the dazed look. He turned to Kadun one last time, patted her on the shoulder, and started to say something before she interrupted. "Thank me when you swim up onto that island safe and alive. Now get going before we hit the soup." She shifted slightly in her seat as he turned and made his way into the rear cabin. "Sir? It's been a pleasure." "Likewise." Gene and Wernher both started speaking at the same time, talking over each other on the ship's main channel. He waved downwards to silence them, pointing towards the seats behind them and tapping at his headset while walking past. Wernher looked positively comical with his glasses bouncing around inside his helmet. Finally, once he was strapped in and ready, he asked them to speak slowly and repeat their questions. They both spoke on top of each other again, but soon Wernher went quiet and Gene got in a coherent question. "What happened?" "Nothing good. Main engine exploded. We're going to hit the ocean, and hard. Kadun is going to try to glide us down as best she can. Splash land. Make sure you're strapped in." He checked his straps again before continuing. "Wernher, secure your glasses. Last thing we need is a half blind chief engineer with an eyepatch." His helmet was off and back on again in record time, after which Wernher tried to hand his spectacles back to Jonbald. "What am I supposed to do with those? No, put them someplace you won't lose them. Someplace they won't get crushed." The turbulence was back. They had hit the soup, as Kadun had called it. It felt rougher than normal, the newly-jagged edges of the Titanium almost certainly to blame. Kadun would occasionally lose her wrestling match against the aircraft, causing the nose to drop down violently. Then they would be out of the dive and back to "gliding". At least she was keeping the craft falling in the same direction, and not challenging it into a flat spin. With no tail it would be easy to become a discus. The noise made him think the turbulence would rip the craft into shreds before they got anywhere near the ocean. The airframe must be in better shape than it sounded, the wings must still be fully intact. Otherwise the craft would be pulling to one side or the other. The noises were haunting. Low whistles that slowly climbed into higher frequencies as though they were accelerating downwards. He knew it was just the increasing air pressure and the holes in the hull whistling. Mocking them as they fell to their fates. Jonbald chuckled when he realized they had made the world's most expensive flying flute. No, this wasn't the time to laugh. Was the air mixture getting to him? Maybe. This was serious. Not funny. Serious. As serious as jumping out of a perfectly good spaceplane without a parachute. The idea scratched at the back of his mind. Parachute. Clawed at it. Parachute. Demanded an audience. "Wernher?" "Ja?" The fear in Wernher's voice was palpable. Shaky. Scared. Of course he was. He had every right to be. "I've got an idea. Something new for you to work on when we get to the space center." "It can wait?" "Yes, I suppose it can. Just remind me later, okay?" "Okay." "Prepare for impact." Kadun, her voice projected forcefully into each of their ears. "Ten seconds to ocean." She counted down, maybe even skipping a number here or there. She said "seven" twice, or did she? He wasn't sure. Time stretched off into infinity, ten seconds became ten lifetimes. It all spread out before him, just as in all the movies and stories of near-death experiences. "Six." His first trips to the orbit. His mission to The Mün, landing alone. Baile Speir. "Five." The return to Kerbin after the program had gone silent. The police. The asylum. "Four." The new space program. The monks, older than even himself. The Orbital Sciences Division, his first project for Continuum. The North Pole Expedition. The crashed UFO. Working in the shadows for years. "Three." Kanawha, Elite and her crazy plans. Hiding in plain sight as a flight systems programmer, then a radio technician, then hiding in the north. "Two." Rosuki, the cataclysm, the purge, the Council. All of it. His stomach dropped suddenly, as though it had fallen clear through the rest of him and out onto the floor. Kadun had pulled the Titanium up hard one last time, the airframe screamed in protest. So this was it. Falling, broken, bloodied. Knocked right out of the Titanium Sky. His sky. He looked outside and saw nothing but water. Endless, infinite water. "Brace! Brace!! Brace!!!" Nothing but darkness. Endless, infinite darkness. ==== End Kerbal Space Program v1.3.1. -- Navigation: Next Post

Today I learned that 877 parts in a single kludged-and-space-taped-together ship is _slightly_ more than my computer is comfortable with rendering.

It's a good question. Since I didn't have an immediate answer I went ahead and tested DiRT 1.7.2.0 in both KSP v1.7.0 and v1.7.1. I saw no issues or even console errors with DiRT in an otherwise Stock+DLC install for either version. I haven't tried it with any other mods, or JNSQ specifically, but I don't expect any issues. So I'd say go for it. Let me know if anything exceedingly weird happens and I can build a 1.7.1-specific version.

Two releases today. First, it appears KSP 1.7.* has finally settled in on a stable-ish release, so I've rebuilt DiRT against KSP v1.7.2. No other changes, and, to be completely honest, DiRT versions from 1.5.* and forward appear to work just fine in 1.7.*. The simple replacements this plugin attempts are fairly standard and not likely to break until a new version of Unity comes along. Still, it doesn't hurt to have everything recompiled-rewrapped-recooked-rewhatevered when new versions of the core assemblies come along. I tend to be excessively paranoid about API and library versions and the like, having been burned by a great many weird linker/loader/it-should-work things over the decades. DiRT version 1.7.2.0 is now available on GitHub: https://github.com/cydonian-monk/KSP-DiRT/releases/tag/1.7.2.0 Change Log: - None. Recompiled against KSP v1.7.2 Second, I "backported" DiRT and built it against KSP v1.3.1 for those of you who are still using the pre-TakeTwo versions of KSP and/or RSS/RO/etc. I have no idea if anyone will find this particular build in any way useful, but I figured why not. DiRT version 1.3.1.0 is also available on GitHub: https://github.com/cydonian-monk/KSP-DiRT/releases/tag/1.3.1.0 Change Log: - None. Just recompiled against KVP v1.3.1. Cheers,

Before this week's IPS update (at least I hope you guys updated because the mobile forum now has a bunch of new features), forum notifications would stay "bolded" or shown as unread when first expanding the notifications pane. This no longer happens, and all notifications are automatically "unbold" or shown as read. Is this intentional? Or a bug? Or a new setting I'm missing?

Late edit that wasn't proofread enough. Fixed now. Thanks!

Iron Enrichment The next six launches further reinforced the hardware and personnel needed for the Pioneer Expedition. The space program had built up a stockpile of LV-30 Overture rockets in anticipation of this work, and now had a healthy surplus and a well-established assembly line going. The payloads themselves were the only bottleneck. First up were two lander variants of the Iron Shuttle to add to the two presently at The Mün. (This is the standard Iron configuration, as none of them have been built without legs and ladders.) Unlike Fe-1 and 2 which were launched using their own custom launch vehicle, Fe-3 and 4 used a tried-and-tested LV-30 Overture. Mass at liftoff was a hefty 241 tonnes. Both craft were docked at Copper Station, where they could be prepped for the mission by the New Pioneers. Their orbital modules were retained and refueled, with the intent of using them to perform the initial transfer to The Mün. No reason to waste fuel they would desperately need for ground operations. Iron 3 Iron 4 -- Titanium Y-7 The next Titanium launch brought the last four of this batch of the New Pioneers to Copper Station. This included one new pilot, Maubus; two new scientists, Minidou and Malbro; and the assistant chief engineer of the expedition, Patsey. Much like the previous group, these four kept to themselves, having trained independently of the other two new groups. Kadun resumed her role as Titanium Valkyrie, guiding the four of them into Valhalla. Or at the very least into orbit. This was just another routine mission for Titanium. With Copper Station more than a bit congested, Kadun had to dock the Ti-Y-7 at the very tip of the forward airlock assembly. (The construction tug and the Zinc supply craft were both occupying the docking arms, and should have really been somewhere else. Meanwhile the two Irons were docked at the forward radial airlocks, but were large enough to block the two armatures below them. This mess is something a competent Visiting Vehicle Officer would have been on top of.) With the new crews transferred onto the station, Kadun undocked, backed away, and dropped the craft into its lower reentry staging orbit. Once again she opted to trust her own numbers for the reentry burn instead of those provided by the flight computer, and managed to drop the craft in perfectly to its approach corridor. Another flawless Titanium flight. -- More Irons on the Fire Three more Iron Shuttles followed the two already at Copper Station. Identical in every way to the preceding two Fe launches, these three were just added reinforcements. One of the three would be used to transport the first group of the personnel for the Pioneer Expedition to The Mün, but for the moment all of them were just dropped into a holding orbit above Kerbin. Iron 5 Iron 6 Iron 7 -- The expedition teams could now make the final preparations for their missions. Each had their own crew of four hand-picked kerbals. Team One drew from the Copper Six, launched aboard Ti-Y-5. Team Two from the first group of the New Pioneers. And Team Three from the second group of New Pioneers. Each team was an insular group, isolated from the others with their own objectives and goals. And each was commanded by a different council member. Team One: Copper Command: Wernher Pilot: Kadun Science One: Lemming Science Two: Neloly Science Three: Julwise Team Two: Iron Command: Gene Pilot: Julory Engineer: Lintop Science One: Neding Science Two: Ribbles Team Three: Titanium Command: Jonbald Pilot: Maubus Engineer: Patsey Science One: Minidou Science Two: Malbro This would leave only a small crew of scientists at Copper Station: Haycas, Wildan, and Sherdin. All three of them from Jonbald's list, two from the Copper Six and one from the first group of New Pioneers. More crews were expected to launch to Copper Station on the second Ti-Y series shuttle had completed construction and testing, but that wouldn't happen for several munths yet. With the teams assembled and the hardware for the first phase of the Pioneer Expedition in orbit, the only thing remaining to launch were the three council representatives themselves: Jonbald, Gene, and Wernher. A handful of fuel tankers would later follow them into orbit before transferring to The Mün. But those are stories for next time.... == Navigation: Next Post

You better not mess with Major Tom.

I'll say this: You'll see more of the conversion from v1.3.1 to v1.4.5 than you will of the conversion from v1.4.5 to v1.7.*.

I'm not yet convinced someone didn't go back in time 40 years, kidnap select members from Aerosmith and AC/DC, and force them to be in a band in 2019, but here we are:

Good to hear. (Insert "thumb's up" emoji which is apparently illegal on these here forums.) Still trucking along in v1.4.5 though. (And its anti-gravity problems with landed craft sliding uphill.) Should be fully up to v1.7.1 once I figure out how to get all the faces and maybe even the handful of custom suits remapped. Looks like most of my core mods are updated, and those that aren't I've been silently rebuilding on my own for a couple years now anyway..... Sounds about right. Power moves are best made slowly, but once enough energy has built up in a system things can "snap!" and change very quickly. As teased (what, a year ago now?), we'll be returning to them shortly. (Mildly spoilerish hint: Sieta and Hallock are the focus of Volume 2 Sequence 8.) I've been using them as an avenue for playing with KIS/KAS as much as anything, with mixed but mostly positive results. If I keep to my schedule, we'll get to them in three, maybe four posts. I think there's a one-post interlude that'll get inserted between current events and their bit of the story.

It's an emotionally intense show. And structured expertly to maximize its abuse of your emotions, too.

"Bridge on the River Kwai." And really anything by David Lean, who was a master of so many technical aspects of the art. But Bridge is a movie I can watch any day.

Science has yet to find the secret to solving the flea problem.