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Starman When you look up into the sky at night, there are hundreds upon hundreds of little points of light glittering above you. Each one is a star fusing elements, supporting planets, and maybe other forms of life. But some of those points of light are a bit bigger, and they aren’t just stars that might as well be forever away. They are the planets of our solar system. Mars, glowing just enough to see it, with an orange-ish hue, sits above the horizon. It's sat there for billions of years. We’ve looked at it first with our own eyes, and then through telescopes. Now, we can look at Mars through the camera lenses of our spacecraft. None of these spacecraft more extraordinary, than the ones heading toward the Red Planet right now. Magellan 1 is just hours from entering the orbit of Mars, and there is controlled chaos back on Earth at JSC in lieu of this moment. You would be forgiven for thinking that they had just discovered alien life with how many people flooded in and out of each building. Press vans zip through the parking lots, reporters rushing to affix the right lenses to their cameras as they are hurriedly ushered inside. For them they had waited months for this opportunity, it took almost a herculean effort to get press access to Johnson Space Center on this day, the 2nd of May, 1993. Some had waited outside since before sunrise to get a front-row seat at the coming press conference. The press weren’t the only ones being eroded away by the stress and monumental nature of the day. The controllers at JSC had nearly pulled an all-nighter as a series of errors with the MMETV’s star trackers nearly made it forget its own location in space. The primary star tracker had been improperly targeted onto the star Canopus, which nearly resulted in several errors during an attitude control adjustment. On top of this, one of the computer units in the MMETV had experienced an integer overflow as it was trying to assume the spacecraft’s rotational velocity. This took some time to resolve, and the other 5 Redundant Computing Units (RCUs) had to take over during that period. With all of the drama and stress, the press and those working in the control room at JSC were awaiting some good news as the Orbital Insertion Maneuver began at 1:23 PM. It would last a total of 11 minutes, as the series of nuclear thermal rockets on the MMETV slowed the behemoth craft down enough for it to be captured into an orbit around Mars. This orbit is different from the intended future ones, as future missions aim to have flybys of Phobos and Deimos, which are not objectives for Magellan 1. The seconds slowly ticked by at JSC, everyone sitting in utter silence as they watched the expected velocity change graph be followed by the real time telemetry line. Closer, and closer to a nominal insertion. 11 minutes felt like 110, if it had been any shorter amount of time some in the room may have tried to hold their breath all the way through. But alas, they wouldn’t need to. At 1:33:24 PM, the MMETV sent back a telemetry packet that perfectly correlated to the expected orbital velocity. Everyone in JSC erupted into cheers and applause. Those in the control room who had been working for hours and hours felt victorious and liberated from the seats they had been glued to since yesterday afternoon. 3,388 days had passed since Ronald Reagan and John Young announced the Magellan Program on the steps of the National Air & Space Museum. In those 3,388 days, NASA had achieved insurmountable progress and put themselves a lot more than one small step closer to landing humans on Mars before 2000. This was simply the beginning. But the mission was far from over, a herculean effort to demonstrate the critical components of a successful crewed Mars landing lay ahead. A few weeks would be given for a dust storm on the surface to clear, and then the automated landing demonstrations of the Ascent and Descent Vehicles would begin. Those few weeks would prove to be rather uneventful, and as the dust storm cleared, the Ascent and Descent Vehicles had arrived in their joint pairing just a few days before the MMETV (they were launched on a higher velocity trajectory) and had stayed linked together until the dust storm cleared. The Ascent Vehicle undocked and made its way to the surface without issue, and the Descent Vehicle performed a rendezvous with the MMETV as it would on crewed missions to retrieve the crew for the landing on the surface. The components that were not to be demonstrated on this mission, the rover and the habitat, would also be landed beforehand on future missions. Once the Descent Vehicle docked to the MMETV, a “simulated” crew transfer would take place. Essentially just waiting an amount of time that was predicted based on crew training would be needed for a full crew and equipment transfer. Once this was complete. The Descent Vehicle undocked, waited another orbit, and performed a de-orbit burn to land on the rocky plains of the Martian equator. "2,000 feet, nominal descent rate." "1,000." "800." "500." "200." "50." "25." "10." "CONTACT!" "CONFIRMED LANDING ON THE MARTIAN SURFACE." On this descent, there would be some issues that had been seen during the landing of the Ascent Vehicle that were also seen on the Descent Vehicle. Most notably, the landing legs. They had to be deployed individually by an emergency command from the guidance system (with a 20+ minute delay to Earth, the guidance system has to be as redundant and self-regulating as possible, as any commands from Earth will be practically pointless) after the altitude trigger did not work. Then, upon a thankfully successful landing, the landing pads did not level out to the terrain and stayed at a rather uncomfortable upward angle. The cause of this was unknown, but it may lead to a new landing leg design for Magellan 2. Despite these landing leg issues, it was still a successful landing, and NASA could breathe easy that the guidance system performed beautifully and handled issues quickly and effectively. The successful landing was met with thunderous applause and cheers in Houston, and the pictures of the surface from the landing cameras covered the front page of TIME the next day. NASA had at last, reinvigorated itself, with a new bold spirit that was determined to put people on Mars and to push beyond what it had already achieved. NASA was finally, truly, ready to go beyond Earth with humans. Even further beyond, NASA’s deep space robotics program finally had some funding freed up with the completion of the Mars collection, and they were ready to make some headlines. On October 3rd, 1993, at a JPL press conference, the Pluto Fast Flyby mission was announced. The mission would be targeting a 2000 launch window, with a backup in 2001. It would be a quite small and light spacecraft so the launch vehicle required would not be the same one required by components of the MMETV. The spacecraft was intended to carry two cameras, a high-resolution black-and-white alongside a lower-resolution color camera. On top of a suite of spectrometers, a magnetometer, and a small mapping camera. The instruments would actually be a significant portion of the weight of the spacecraft. Pluto Fast Flyby was truly intended to be a bang for the buck mission, and NASA’s new leadership wanted bang for the buck in many areas to preserve funding for human exploration. With NASA under the new leadership of Administrator Ken Mattingly, who had retired from the Astronaut Corps in the late 80s, and was selected by President Bush upon his inauguration to replace John Young, who had finally taken his long overdue retirement from NASA. Young had steered NASA through one of its most tumultuous, controversial, and successful eras. He had preserved the integrity of the organization as contractors and internal feuds threatened to pull it apart. Mattingly would be facing similar challenges, alongside balancing and preserving the international partnerships Young had built. But Mattingly was more than up to the task, he had garnered the same respect from astronauts, the higher-ups, and the public alike. He would be the man who would bring NASA to Mars at last. On top of Pluto Fast Flyby, NASA’s flagship Iapyx mission received a 5-year mission extension at the same press conference. It has uncovered dozens upon dozens of details about Saturn and its moons and was still operating in good health with plenty of propellant, so the extension was given. With all of these developments centered around beyond-Earth exploration, 1993 caps off as a truly exciting year. 1994 will see a return to normal operations for Orpheus, the return of Magellan 1’s MMETV to Earth, and perhaps… The beginnings of America’s next manned spacecraft.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t much care if we’re on either - and I don’t recall mentioning Bezos at all, so the point is moot. But what I meant is that, whilst IFT was impressive and a big step forward over IFT2 and IFT1, there’s a way to go yet before it’s a workable disposable rocket, let alone the fully reusable, chopstick landing (or whatever method ends up working), in-orbit refuelling, Artemis landing beast that it’s intended to be. Yes, yes, test flight, iterative improvement etc etc. I’m well aware of all that. And, with their track record, I’m certainly not betting against SpaceX to deliver all of the above eventually. But what I don’t give a damn about is Elon vapourware about the next super-duper-double-the-payload rocket, because it doesn’t make much difference if your rocket carries 200 tons or 400 tons if you can’t get it to point the right way. Frankly it feels like a distraction tactic and judging by the shift in comments on this thread it’s worked beautifully.

This, also being able to do an capture burn inside the SOI but that is hardly an problem. This require splitting the burn up into multiple parts. Been thrown stuff all day at Eve. an .3 twr nuclear engine looses less than 200 m/s over doing must of the burn on an mammoth 2 core stage. one single burn. For landing KSP 2 nodes give us an tool who can have you moving slowly at low attitude, make an braking burn but also with an up vector who end your burn 1-2 km above surface. Move at some speed as the Tylo moves you need to adjust for this at end of main braking burn. But again the tuba will loose against nuclear engines but it might be restrictions on them in future like radiation and getting uranium. But its not like you use up an nuclear thermal engine unless its designed for an short lifespan. You don't design jet engines for cruise missiles to last for thousands of hour

Thanks for that. An expendable SH/SS could get in the range of 200 to 250 tons to LEO. That would be well more than enough to do its own single launch mission to the Moon or Mars, no SLS required. Keep in mind such an expendable launch is only in the $90 million cost range. While not at the $10 million aspirational rate Elon wants for full reusability, considering the amount of payload it could loft, it still would be a major improvement over what we have now, and literally orders of magnitude cheaper than the SLS. By the way, suppose as a SpaceX exec once suggested the Starship HLS would need “10ish” orbital refuelings. At the $10 million per launch rate for a fully reusable SH/SS that’s still $100 million. Then the single launch expendable approach would actually be in the same cost range as the fully reusable approach, anyway. See the calculations here: SpaceX should explore a weight-optimized, expendable Starship upper stage. https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2024/03/spacex-should-explore-weight-optimized.html Bob Clark

Imho we will see the V3 reach 160 meters of total stack: 90 for superheavy and 70 for Starship, with 5000 gross tons for superheavy and 2500-3000 tons for starship ( in normal and tanker configuration respectively), at 10k tons of thrust that's still a respectable 1.3 of TWR at liftoff. Utter insanity, and we are all here for this. In the end SH will have something like 20x350 tons raptor boost and 13x 300 raptor SL that gimble, and the starship will have 6x350 tons raptor vacuum fixed and 3x300 tons SL gimballing raptors, for a total of 11k tons for SH and 3k tons of thrust for starship. This will give a 1.5 TWR for normal starship stack and 1.2 for Starship in particular, and 1.4 and 1 for the tanker version. Let's do some math: So, assumptions: - Isp avg of raptor 2 sea level during ascent: 350 ( it's 330-360 at sea level and vacuum respectively) - Isp of starship during ascent: 370 ( sea level is at 360, raptor vacuum at 380). - starship empty weight 150 tons - superheavy empty weight: 300 tons - remaining props and deltaV for starship to deorbit and land: 950 m/s aka 50 tons prop at 350 Isp, and I'm being very conservative. (100 meters/seconds for deorbit like Shuttle and 800 m/s for landing) - remaning props and deltaV for superheavy for boost back and landing: 400 tons, good for 2900 Ms/s of DV - payload: 200 tons - so total mass that has to reach orbit: 400 tons (150+50+200) - DV needed to reach orbit : 9.2-9.4 km/s of DV ( probably even lower for starship because it has a lot of thrust so way less gravity losses, but it is a good ballpark). - total mass of 2nd stage: 2700 tons (2350 tons of prop, 150 starship, 200 tons payload) - total mass at stage separation: 3400 tons (2700+ 300 SH +400 SH prop for boost back and landing) Total weight of the stack: 7500 tons, 4500 tons are props for the 1st stage, of witch 4100 will be burnt before staging. So: 1st stage gives the 2nd stage 2700 Ms/s of DV ( if you want to calculate with a DV calculator: full mass 7500 tons, dry mass 3400 tons, Isp 350) 2nd stage DV with 400 tons of stuff ( 200+50+150) with 2300 tons of props burnt , 2700 tons full mass and 370 of ISP: 6900 Ms/s of DV Total DV: 9.6 km/s of DV total, way more than needed. I would say that that if they can make the raptor really to 350 tons for the fixed/vacuum ones and 300 tons of thrust of the gimballing ones, we are golden, and 200 tons of payload might be conservative.

I like to use prop cars. My best one can go about 200 m/s.

Ok I got the Dev MechJeb 2....when I get the "non Dev" build, PVG runs perfectly, but I do a little better with my classic ascent program...minus 100 to 200 DV !

Y2, D187 to D213 - First crew at Minmus base Y2, D187 - After studying potential production supply chains, it was decided that the Midlands had more potential in the short-medium term. It had Minerals which could be converted into Fertilizer (more efficient than trying to make Supplies directly from Substrate and Water). Minerals, Metallic Ore, and Substrate could be refined, then combined into Material Kits, which are used to fill inflatable modules with equipment. Material Kits are also one component of Machinery (needed to keep resource converters running) and eventually being able to build and launch vessels from the shallow gravity well of Minmus instead of Kerbin. (The other component being Specialized Parts, but the resources for those were in another biome.) Castor Base had enough propellant for a short hop to a higher elevation, and so it was relocated near the edge of a plateau overlooking the Lesser Flats. Y2, D192 - A Red Dwarf 2-4L (which hasn't been launched in almost a year) launched Denebola 19, an autonomous double rescue of Leelorf and Megan Kerman in low Kerbin orbit. Y2, D194 - The Gemini 26 propellant depot, which had five docking ports for incoming and outgoing vessels, was launched to Minmus orbit. The Tejat 3 lander docked to it and refueled on Day 203. Later that day, Algieba 6 launched the first crew to live on Castor Base (Jebediah, Handorf, Bob), docking with the depot on Day 213. The crew transferred into Tejat 3 and landed less than 200 m away from Castor Base, deployed experiments, then entered the habitat. Systems were activated, including the small nuclear reactor keeping everything powered and the radiators that dissipated its heat, as the skycrane jettisoned and softly landed about a dozen meters away (it could be disassembled into Material Kits, but they would need storage for that). The next step was to increase the habitation space and provide a way for the crew to grow food.

Adding shorter 1,25 m methane tanks as in the FL-T100 and 200 but with 0.5 and 1 ton methane. Very nice for small SSTO and make it easier to adjust how much extra methane you want. For an LKO SSTO you need much less than on an plane exploring Laythe and then return to orbit. Add an drain valve so you can drain exec oxygen or methane. You want to drain all exec oxygen then entering the atmosphere. Also useful then your interplanetary ships carry extra metalox for landers, but here engines works better as they add dv and trust.

Wait. You went to laythe with a 100t payload? Did you record any of that? Would love to see it that must have been a pretty big transfer ship! I tried to make a ship with a 200 ton payload in ksp 2 the other day and my computer did NOT like that... i got 2 fps on the launchpad. It made me rage quit haha. In my duna mission in ksp 2 i used 4 stumpy medium hydrogen tanks soaking up all the heat. That went great! I'm glad we don't need heat shields there.

I landed on duna last week without heat shields. I did use some fuel to slow down a bit. Maybe 200 m/s? I'm not sure though. Just enough to not burn the craft to a cinder haha I noticed that the heat model in ksp 2 is less forgiving than in ksp1. I once travelled to duna in 120 hours and used aerobreaking to land (in ksp1). I don't recall the exact speed I entered the atmosphere...but it sure was at ludicrous speed haha. In this case I did use a heat shield, but hardly any ablator was used! I don't know if I could do this in ksp 2 though haha. I should try!! I made a small video of the mission if you're interested.

My issue isn't that there is a restriction. My issue is that it's too restrictive. Sorry, but not all of us are adept or even capable of designing airplanes. I've got 1000+ hours in KSP1, and more than 200 in KSP2, and I can't build a craft to fly in the atmosphere for 2 minutes. Now go tell a new player to do that. Make it less restrictive. The amount of time it takes is too long.

Ok finally done with Duna landings, well has one left at the monument and just radiation readings so unmanned and waiting with is as seriously bored of landing on Duna. Now as most of the "dry" mass of the Duna ship was metalox 32 ton for lander, lander took 5 ton but I tended to only use 4 and lander was fully fueled so 8 landings who was the number needed. Now as the last landing will be unmanned it need less than 200 m/s to deorbit and land. but dropped fully loaded. Who left this with this. 10 km/s dV, lets get home fast Unfortunately its an bug in KSP 2, who messes up your trajectory if you leaves the sun SOI. But less than 80 days is decent from Duna, overtake the previous missions, the large nuclear engines rocks. Final trajectory. Might not be able to circulate at LEO but not like I will use this ship again having unlocked the big round tanks so probably drop capsule and aim for the mun. Also seen is the first Moho mission ship on eternal patrol, second going to Moho, the 300 ton lander for Duna, first Duna mission and in the back the 4 ships heading for Jool.

new fanart lets go this time jeb makes the reentry profile a bit too shallow (-200 km or so) and they burn up in the atmosphere hilarious

Any capsule or probe has a range of 200Mm, but the communotron 16 and communotron 16-S antennas only have a range of 500Km. Shouldn't it be the other way around? As they stand now, communotron antennas are useless. Or I'm wrong? 500Km = 500,000 meters and 200Mm = 200,000,000 meters.

Someone did here's the https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/07/1041420/spacex-starship-rocket-solar-system-exploration/amp/Article, ( and there was a open letter by some people at NASA talking about using starship and that NASA need to start to dream big). Just to give an example: a deep space fully refueled V3 starship can give a 9KM/s DV to a 150 tons payload. And if that payload is a 15 tons probe, and 135 tons fuel with an engine with storable propellant that has 300 seconds of ISP, this gives the 15 tons probe 7 km/s, enough for a direct transfer and propulsive brake to Neptune. With a probe 20 times heavier than voyager. But transfer time with a Hohmann is 30 years to get there. If we could speed up and down 0.5km/s (1km/s total) the travel time get cut to 12 years, and we would probably still talk about a 10 ton probe. And numbers get even more stupid if we start to refuel starship to a tanker that is fully fueled on a highly hell optical orbit, like getting a 500 ton probe to Jupiter orbit, or 200 tons to orbit one of it's moon, all done with only propulsive method.

Part 6: Need for Speed: Tylo Flying Christmas Tree 2 drops Tamarromobile on Tylo. It's a completely different experience than it was with Dancing Porcupine, with sustained speeds between 150 to 200 km/h. As Tylo is big, this piece of report only covers the first half. The second half of the circumnavigation is still underway. Two pictures to get a clear view of the western emisphere of Tylo. Flags are 90 km apart Meaning that between flags 10 and 11, as well as 15 to 16, I crossed 90 km in 28 minutes. It gives an average speed of 193 km/s (53.5 m/s, close to the maximum of the wheels at 58 m/s), but the time includes planting a flag. 6.1) I thought docking issues would be a thing of the past 6.2) Beautiful desolation 6.3) Mountains ahoy! 7.4) Bonus: Back to El camino de muerte

A person is a bag of water, so their hydrostatic pressure would balance with the outside pressure. It would be similar to deep-sea diving, without a hardsuit. The recreational dive limit is 100', with heliox mix 200' and more is possible. So at 9 gees, being under 1' of water would be like being under 8'-9' of water, which is easily doable although it gets painful on the ears without equalization (a skill I never mastered; I even have difficulty popping them during an airliner descent). As to how practical or effective it is, I don't know, I ran across the concept while reading Arthur C. Clarke's (with Gentry Lee) Garden of Rama (unofficially aka Rama III in the Rendezvous With Rama series)

Well that's actually not bad, although it's not the same as what you said before. Regardless of that, when I'm looking at an initial TWR of 0.15-0.4 on LKO, which is usually how it is for my long-range transfer stages and space planes, I'll generally divide the dV required to get up to just short of Munar capture (~830 m/s) into at least 3 separate periapsis kicks of 2.5 minutes or less. If you divide those evenly across your point of ideal instantaneous ejection, i.e. where you'd place the node in KSP1, your cosine losses up to that point are pretty trivial. If you're going to Duna or Eve, you can set up a Munar assist from there that will get you an intercept for less than another 100m/s. If you're not going to bother with that, you can do the rest for a little over 200 with just another final kick, still losing very little from boosting off prograde. If the destination is further out however, requiring more than ~400m/s above a minimal Kerbin escape trajectory, there are other things you can to reduce wasted dV on the long final burn that's required. One of these is to raise your PE to 500-1000km from your distant AP, which costs you a little in dV terms due to Oberth losses, but more than pays for itself with the reduced cosine losses you'll suffer doing that long burn out of a slightly slower and significantly higher-radius orbit. If you're doing a Munar assist, you can also divide your final burn into two shorter ones at your Kerbin and Munar PEs, taking maximum advantage of the Oberth effect in both places. As I said before, I have done a whole lot of this sort of thing in KSP1, and planning such maneuvers under that system is something I can do in my sleep. In KSP2, I have still not figured out how to do it anywhere near this precisely. Lastly, for Tylo or any other vacuum body, the most efficient possible (theoretical) landing plan is to set your PE to zero and do an instantaneous retrograde burn of exactly your surface velocity at exactly that point. As this is of course impossible, the best physically plausible approximation of that is to plot a purely retrograde, continuously full thrust "suicide" burn, starting at whatever point prior to that tangent PE that will bring your velocity to exactly zero when you reach the ground. This is not an easy thing to do, especially for Tylo, and definitely not something you want to attempt with a marginal TWR, but to the extent you can approximate that descent profile, you will make it more efficient. TBH, I never really use a maneuver node to try to set this up, because neither system will have you boosting in the most efficient, continuously retrograde manner. So I usually just seat-of-the-pants it, giving my F9 key some exercise if I come in hot or stop too short. On that score, I'd say that stopping at 2km up on Tylo would probably be a do-over for me, as even a near-instantaneous braking burn near the ground from there will cost you over 210m/s, and in practice you'll probably spend closer to 400-500 to put yourself down safely.

Issue with this is that they have to have radio or they could not hear the satellites. Radio is just 125 year old, much less in practice as in able to communicate with an satellite even if pretty powerful. Assuming we do this in 200 years. The alien will be less than 300 year behind us or ahead, so ahead is much much more likely and we are likely to could talk directly to them, but sending an probe with data would make sense. If not they could not get anything from the satellite and you have to land, if they are doing agriculture you should probably be able to spot that from orbit. Send down an lander. If they don't have fields with crops they would be hard to spot. Named this image first contact, an cat like alien trying to eat an small rover. We did not know of them before she spotted the rover and went to investigate.

Y3 D325-Y4 D169 - Jool Explorer So, hot on the heels of the departure of Draco, we have another historical event taking place: The arrival of Jool Explorer at the Jool System! If you recall, Jool Explorer was launched all the way back in the middle of Year 1, almost two and a half years ago! Heck, that was all the way back when Jerry here was an intern! Ha ha! What's that, Jerry? You're still an intern? Oh. Well. Talk to KR about that. In any case, as Jool Explorer is approaching its goal, this is a good time to review its mission objectives: Minimum Objectives (If we don't accomplish at least this much, we'll wind up sitting in front of a Kongressional hearing.) One flyby of Jool One flyby of Laythe Primary Objectives (These are the objectives that the probe has been designed to achieve.) Two flybys of Jool Two flybys of each of Jool's large moons: Laythe, Vall, and Tylo Deploy one atmospheric probe on Jool and one on Laythe Secondary Objectives (Once the Primary Objectives have been completed, if the probe has any capability left, we will attempt to accomplish these additional objectives.) Flybys of Jool's minor moons: Bop and Pol Additional flybys of Jool and its large moons. So, this morning, Jool Explorer crossed over into Jool's SOI. Our first task is to adjust its trajectory coming in to the Jool system. The folks over in Orbital Dynamics have worked up a plan for us that will let us use a gravity assist at Laythe to capture Jool Explorer into the system rather than burning fuel, which will help extend the life of our propellant load. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of gravity assists...well, go ask the guys in Orbital Dynamics. There's a reason I'm in management. This maneuver will also check off our first minimum objective with a flyby of Laythe. So Jool Explorer burns at the very edge of the Jool system to set up its capture maneuver. However, as we all know, the Jool system is huge. It's going to be almost sixty days before the Laythe flyby. So, back to work, everyone. We'll get back to this in a couple months. ---------- Well, here we are back with Jool Explorer on Day 384. The Science team has been hard at work over the last several weeks getting preliminary readings from the experiments on board Jool Explorer, and they've already been releasing some stunning photography. Today is the day we discover if our burn two months ago was good. Jool Explorer is rapidly approaching Laythe. And, so far, it appears that we are right down the middle of the slot. Science has all of their instruments and cameras ready to go for our first flyby. We'll be passing about 140 kilometers away from the surface. And we have our first successful flyby! Flight just got back and let me know that their numbers indicate that Jool Explorer has successfully captured into an elliptical orbit around Jool. Excellent work! So now Orbital Dynamics is getting to work on plotting the next burn, which should be at JEs first apoapsis in a couple of days. ---------- Day 387 now, and Jool Explorer is getting set to burn at its Jool apoapsis. This burn will set us up for releasing our first atmospheric probe into the atmosphere of Jool. The burn was successful, so Jool Explorer is now on a sub-orbital trajectory for Jool. We'll get back to it in a couple of days for the probe separation and burn. ---------- And now we're back on Day 389. Jool Explorer is about an hour away from entry to Jool's atmosphere, which we obviously would like to avoid. So, first up, we trigger the separation of the Jool Atmospheric Probe. Then Jool Explorer immediately turns and burns to increase its periapsis above Jool's atmosphere. This would not be the time for an engine failure. <nervous laugh> But, thank goodness, that burn was successful. Now we can turn our attention back to the atmospheric probe. This is an important milestone of the mission, so obviously we hope that the periapsis was set to the correct height to ensure proper entry. <glances nervously over at the Orbital Dynamics folks sweating in the corner> The probe enters the atmosphere and is almost immediately enveloped in plasma, entering radio blackout. It's a long five minutes. But eventually, radio contact is restored. The probe survived atmospheric entry! It immediately begins radioing back data from its instruments. When it reaches about 200 kilometers below entry, its parachute deploys. It continues to sink deeper into the Joolian atmosphere, sending back pressure, temperature, and spectrographic data as it goes. However, although the probe is tough, it is not indestructible, and the Joolian atmosphere is unforgiving. Finally, after sinking an amazing 500 kilometers into Jool's clouds, the probe stops transmitting. That was an incredible outcome, and I'm sure the Science team will be parsing through that data stream for a long time. Meanwhile, Jool Explorer's instruments have not been idle, and they have recorded their data from their first flyby of Jool, meeting our second minimum mission objective. So, we have met the minimum mission requirements! Now JE is headed back up to its apoapsis above Jool, and OD will be plotting our next move. ---------- Back at periapsis on Day 393, and Jool Explorer is burning prograde this time to set up another flyby of Laythe. This is a pretty major burn, but it will set us up for the release of the Laythe Atmospheric Probe, which is a major milestone of the mission. So the fuel expenditure is justified. See you back in five days for the flyby. ---------- Back now on Day 398. Jool Explorer is approaching Laythe once again, this time on a suborbital trajectory. An hour away from entry, the atmospheric probe is released. Jool Explorer immediately burns to raise its Laythe periapsis...and its Jool periapsis? Or so the OD guys tell me. I don't get it either. I just keep pressing the "I Believe" button. In any case, Jool Explorer is safe now and recording data from its second Laythe flyby. Meanwhile the atmospheric probe is burning its way through Laythe's atmosphere and we're all holding our breath. The probe hurtles tantalizingly over a couple of major land masses... ...deploys its parachute... ...and settles into the ocean. That's fine. The probe floats. We'll probably get better data from Laythe's liquid water than we would from dry land anyway. In any case, another successful probe deployment, and a second Laythe flyby checked off of our primary mission objectives. Jool Explorer passes out of Laythe's SOI and then sweeps down to its Jool periapsis. The probe's orbit is very low now. The good news is that this gets us a very close flyby of Jool, which marks our second flyby of Jool itself and makes the Science team very happy. However, the low orbit will make it very difficult to perform flybys of the other Joolian moons. We could just burn to raise our orbit, but the Orbital Dynamics wiz kids have a better plan. They want to use another Laythe flyby to raise the probe's orbit with a gravity assist. So, here we are now, just a couple of hours out of Laythe's SOI, and we're burning at Jool periapsis to set up another Laythe flyby. I guess we'll see how that turns out in a couple of days. ---------- Well, Day 400 now, and Jool Explorer is swinging by Laythe again. After the flyby, Flight confirms that the gravity assist has raised Jool Explorer's orbit by a considerable amount. And Science has collected their data from Jool Explorer's third Laythe flyby. So now JE is back on its way to Jool apoapsis and we're setting our sights on the rest of the moons. ---------- Four days later now, Day 404, and we're back at Jool apoapsis. Orbital Dynamics has another burn scheduled that should set Jool Explorer up for its first Tylo flyby. Exciting! ---------- In other news: As Jool Explorer is coasting down Jool's gravity well, Draco reaches its mid-course correction burn on Day 406. The crew of Draco have been following the progress of Jool Explorer with great interest. (Because, let's face it, they don't have much else to do.) As they look out their windows and see Jool as a sparkling green gem in the sky, the Kerbol System doesn't seem so large after all.... ---------- Three days later, Jool Explorer is approaching Tylo for the first time. The probe swings by in a close pass and collects its data. It then exits Tylo's SOI and carries on. The next day, 410, Jool Explorer is back at Jool apoapsis. Orbital Dynamics assures me that a small burn here will set it up for another flyby of Tylo in a week or so. ---------- Day 419. We're back for our second Tylo flyby. This, unfortunately, is a more distant flyby. Science is disappointed. But OD assures me that there is a method to their madness. After Jool Explorer has exited Tylo's SOI, the probe burns again. And this burn sets it up for its first flyby of Vall next week. As an aside: Once this burn was completed, Flight sent me a notice letting me know that Jool Explorer has reached 50% of its initial fuel load. Good to know. ---------- It's Day 425 now, and we're excited that we're passing through our first Vall flyby! Science has all of their data, so Jool Explorer is just going to keep coasting for now. ---------- It's Year 4 Day 4 now. Happy New Year, everybody, hope you all had a good holiday. Jool Explorer is approaching Jool periapsis, and OD has a burn planned that will bring it back for its second flyby of Vall. That went well, Flight tells me everything is in order. It's a long haul back to Vall, but we'll see you back in a couple of weeks. ---------- Okay, Day 24, and Jool Explorer is flying by Vall for the second time. So, for everyone who hasn't been keeping score, this means that Jool Explorer has successfully deployed both atmospheric probes, and completed two flybys of Jool and all three of its major moons. This means that Jool Explorer has successfully completed its primary mission objectives! Since we still have almost 50% of our fuel load remaining, we've given the go ahead to start into the secondary mission objectives. Orbital Dynamics should be getting us some flight path options for those any day now. Right? <Orbital Dynamics guys look startled for a second, then run back to their offices.> ---------- Day 27. Jool Explorer is back at Jool apoapsis today. And Orbital Dynamics has given us a flight path that is...ambitious. The plan is this: Jool Explorer is going to make a minor burn at apoapsis today that will put it on a course to flyby Vall. It will get a gravity assist from Vall that will put it on a course to flyby Tylo. It will get yet another gravity assist from Tylo that will put it on a course to flyby Bop. I am pounding that "I Believe" button today. So Jool Explorer makes its burn. ---------- Day 28, we have our third flyby of Vall... ---------- Three days later, we have our third close flyby of Jool... ---------- Four days after that, on Day 35, we fly by Tylo for a third time... And after we exit Tylo SOI...well, I'll be damned. We will need a course correction burn, but not a major one. I guess that worked. Good job, folks. ---------- Now on Day 40 we have our course correction burn for Bop. We're right on target. Things move even slower here in the outer reaches of the Jool system. See you all back in two weeks. ---------- It's Day 54 and... Heerree'ss Bop! Science is very excited, although all it appears to be is a captured asteroid. Jool manages to look small from out here. So our next target in the extended mission is Pol. Unfortunately, there are no large moons out here to provide gravity assists. So we will just have to burn for it. Orbital Dynamics is working on a plan for that. ---------- So, did I mention that things move slowly out here? It is now Day 131, two and a half months since we left Bop, and we have finally reached the burn for Pol. Now we have to wait more than two weeks for the flyby. All for just another captured asteroid. <yawn> And Flight has just informed me that this burn brings Jool Explorer below 25% of its initial fuel load. ---------- So, it's Day 148 and we're getting the first pictures and data back from the Pol flyby... ...aanndd...that is not just another captured asteroid. I will be very curious to see what Science has to say about that one. ---------- So, after the Pol flyby we have some hard decisions to make concerning Jool Explorer. The probe has accomplished all of its primary mission objectives, and all of its secondary objectives. It has roughly 22% of its initial fuel load remaining. It is in the outer limits of the Jool system, with no gravity assist targets available, so any destination we pick for it will require a large expenditure of fuel. And there is a possibility that if the probe is allowed to orbit uncontrolled in the Jool system it may crash into Laythe, possibly contaminating its surface with the radioactive contents of the probe's radiothermal generators. So KSP management have decided that the probe should use its remaining fuel to achieve a controlled disposal in the atmosphere of Jool. Day 155, a week after the Pol flyby, Jool Explorer performs its final burn. ---------- Two weeks later, Day 169. Jool Explorer is a couple of hours out from entry now. Still sending back data. The probe is hurtling towards Jool's atmosphere at over 9,000 meters per second. This is the closest it has ever come to Jool, still getting good data on the planet. And as the probe enters the outer limits of the atmosphere...end of transmission. What a mission! Atmospheric probes deployed on Jool and Laythe! Four flybys of Jool, three flybys of Laythe, Tylo, and Vall, and flybys of Bop and Pol! A staggering amount of data! We'll be turning our attention to Draco and Duna here in just another week, but after this it will be hard not to be imagining what a kerballed Jool mission would look like. Eh?

As far as I can tell, this part does not seem to work properly, at least for transmitters built into command pods/probe cores. They all seem to have a range of 200 Mm, which sort of invalidates the Communotron 16 and 16-S for any application that is not heavily reliant on bandwith. Is that something on my end acting up or something not quite working as intended?

So I managed to learn enough in Visual Studio to modify this mod. It can now automatically switch resolution and UI scale based on scene. All it needs is a config file with the scene name (e.g. 'EDITOR', 'FLIGHT', etc.). Each setting config now includes a "scale" attribute in addition to name, height, width and fullscreen. Bonus, now you can set the UI scale beyond the slider limit of 200% which is VERY nice. Let me know if you @linuxgurugamer are accepting pull requests. In the meantime... https://github.com/KerballOne/AnyRes

I just skip those missions. You're right. For the trouble you take to do this mission at this stage of the game, you're far better off just flying to Dres or something. I honestly thought 200 tons was a typo the first time I saw it.

We have the issue with items especially docking ports and probe cores overheating inside fairings if they are the front item who docking ports often is. So lots is going on on launch, aerodynamic, heating and of you use side boosters its additional forces in play. On top of this takeoff is also graphic intensive. It had been nice to be able to seal an fairing or cargo bay. Sealed it get the loaded weight and center of mass but is one item until opened. Obviously anything inside would not be usable until opened, this would be nice if you brings lots of probes or rovers. Having said this once in deep space I have no issues even during burns with ships with +200 parts.