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Current version: 0.12.4 Download at Spacedock: https://spacedock.info/mod/1805/Whirligig World Download at GitHub: https://github.com/GregroxMun/aWhirligigWorld/releases If you want to support my work, check out my Patreon. If you want to discuss my work and more, check out my Discord. Around 1300 years ago, explorers from the far off planet Kerbin left their home to colonize other star systems. One such ship embarked on a journey to Kerbmun, an oxygenated moon in the Kaywell star system. There was just one problem. They hadn't counted on Mesbin being much wider than expected. Unable to correct their course due to piloting error, the U.S.C. Manifest Destiny crashed into the massive, 70 Kerbin Mass planet Mesbin. Luckily, Mesbin spins. Once every twenty eight minutes it completes a rotation, and the centripetal effect pushes the equator outwards and negates some of the gravity. The 13 gees of gravity at the poles is reduced to a tad under 1.3 gee at the equator. The payload of the ship survived, but the engines and fuel tanks were reduced to a lot of metal rubble along the surface. Unable to find somewhere else to go, they buried themselves underground and set up a stable ecosystem and environment. It took nearly two millenia, a few wars, and the re-invention of the steam engine, but eventually the colony was sufficiently industrialized to start looking up again. Welcome to Mesbin. MESBIN MASS = 3.777e24 kg = 71.38 MKerbin POLAR RADIUS = 1,392,609 m = 2.32 RKerbin EQUATORIAL RADIUS = 2,367,436 m = 3.95 RKerbin MEAN DENSITY = 136 g/cm^3 = 2.344 ρKerbin POLAR GRAVITY = 13.2 G TRUE EQUATORIAL GRAVITY = 4.58 G APPARENT EQUATORIAL GRAVITY = 1.286 G ROTATION PERIOD = 1701 s (28 minutes.) List of objects: (Descriptions intentionally vague.) Kaywell: A white main sequence star. Limnel: A red dwarf star in a close binary with Kaywell. Shol: A Hot Jupiter orbiting close to Kaywell. 2 Wolda: A small asteroid orbiting terrifyingly close to Shol. Tyepolbynar: A warm Jupiter that gets more light than Venus. Jifgif: Small minor moon. Imterril: Big blue moon. Tannor: White moon. Etrograd: Gray, retrograde moon. Aerious: Small minor moon in a potentially chaotic orbit. 1 Wers: A large asteroid, or perhaps a small dwarf planet. 1 Vizea: Wers' moon, which is so bright compared to Wers that' it's been argued Vizea was discovered first. Mesbin: An oblate airless world with a rotation period of 28 minutes, gravity of 13 gees at the poles, and 1.3 at the equator. Statmun: Tiny, dense moon in a Mesbin-Stationary orbit. Thresomin: MINor moon in a THree to one RESOnance. Graymun: Gray moon. Kerbmun: Very Kerbin-like moon. Troymin: TROjan MINor moon of Kerbmun. Derbin: Superterrestrial-mass planet in a distant binary orbit with Mesbin. Derminmus: Largish minor submoon with a similar spectral type as Minmus. Valyr: Superterrestrial-mass ocean world. Denna: Greenish minor moon. Plaph: Brownish minor moon. Oshan: Large, cold, white and red. Manonam: Distant cold moon. Didd: Subsatellite of Manonam. Egad: A medium-sized desert world. Yeerbor: Captured asteroid in an eccentric orbit. 3 Rik: Main Belt asteroid. Reander: A jovian-type gas giant. Lito: Enormous earth-mass ice moon. Yalthe: Little hot moon. Yokane: Little warm moon. Dakkon: Little white moon. Totoöa: Little atmospheric moon. Mally: Trojan of Totoöa. Yawer: This moon seems to blink on and off every hour or so. 1P/Fophie: A short period comet rising high above the plane of the Kaywell system. Gememma: A red dwarf star. Ammenon: Little planet close to Gememma. Lowel: Planet known to be in Gememma's habitable zone. Ollym: The massive binary companion of Lowel. Gannovar: Icy world in an eccentric orbit of Gememma. G1 Gallant: Large asteroid. Mandrake: A large blue giant planet. Rutherford: A small blue giant planet, binary with Mandrake. Lozon: You must face the little moon. Beagrid: A mother's little moon. Jancy: Dirty little moon. Tatian: I see a little moon. Pragnik: Dwarf planet in Plutino-resonance with Mandrake & Rutherford. Astrophotographs of the Planets: As seen through some of Mesbin's finest observatories... but not as good as going there yourself! In-game Images (There are a few spoilers for those who may want to only see planets up close by visiting them.) Design notes: Asteroid Changes: Career and Science mode notes: Delta-V Tables Kaputnik Mk0 Electronic Program Executor Behold the Kaputnik Mk0 Electromechanical Program Executor and Four-Function Calculator! A start-level probe core designed by me and modeled by NovaSilisko that is 1.875m diameter (1.25m mounting points), very heavy, and contains all SAS levels. However, there's no transmitter/reciever, so the probe core can *only* use SAS. This control lock functionality comes from SeveredSolo's ModuleCommandLimitedControl. Known issues: Homeworld swap: Absolutely Required, Strongly Recommended, and Supported mods. Kopernicus and its prerequisites (Download here). Kopernicus comes with ModularFlightIntegrator and ModuleManager, both of which are required to run any Kopernicus pack. Scientific Revolution (Found Here). Absolutely required for science experiments to function. This mod also comes along with WW's download, make sure you install it! Distant Object Enhancement (Download here). Custom colors for all planets. PlanetShine (Download here). Custom colors for most planets. Note: Turn down your in-flight ambient light in the settings! The mod looks so much better without it, especially in the Gememma system. Poodmund's Deep Star Map Skybox (Download here). This skybox is absolutely gorgeous and you should all be using it all the time. Requires TextureReplacer. Sigma EditorView (Download here). This replaces the sky as seen from the VAB and SPH with a snapshot of the real sky seen from the space center, including the skybox, moons, and stars. Great for improving the look of the planet outside... and I just realized that the Kerbals will be suffocating now, so if you really want that extra bit of immersion removed/improved, you should turn off ground Kerbals in the editor in the settings. Scatterer. (Download here). Support for scatterer atmospheres for all relevant worlds except Derbin and the Gas Giants. Environmental Visual Enhancements (Download Here). Includes clouds for atmospheric planets, most importantly on Imterril and Derbin. Only install E.V.E., not BoulderCo. (The plugin, not the configs) ResearchBodies (Download here). Delays the discovery of certain celestial bodies during the game. Kronometer (Download here). I have developed my own basic calendar/clock (Actually, five of them) for WhirligigWorld, since days and years don't exactly have the same meaning anymore. Community Tech Tree (Found here.) Tech tree modifications are safely applied to the CTT. Interstellar Consortium (Found Here.) With the IC Plugin, you can play from Kerbin and fly a starship to Kaywell! Or fly a starship from Mebsin to Kerbin, or Mesbin to Alternis Kerbol, or SLIPPIST-1, or any other mod which is compatible with Interstellar Consortium. Sigma Dimensions (Found Here.) Support is a little finicky, some rescale factors completely break the game. Remember to set the rotation period/day length scale factor to be equal to the square root of the rescale and resize factors, or Mesbin's spin will be wrong. Mostly tested this on just 10x scale. If you play on 10x scale you're a monster, but you're an impressive monster and you deserve my sympathy and admiration. Community Resource Pack (Found Here.) Atmospheres use realistic compositions with CRP resources. DMagic Orbital Science (Download Here.) Currently only supports asteroid compositions and a few science experiments. Other Useful Mods: Discussion: I encourage you to post your mission reports on the mission reports forums and/or the KSP subreddit. For real time discussion, go to my discord server at https://discord.gg/ffzJqEs where you can find prerelease builds and development updates. I'd love to see someone do a youtube or twitch career mode series with this mod. If you make a video of this mod or see a video of this mod, let me know! GitHub Wiki (Work In Progress): https://github.com/GregroxMun/aWhirligigWorld/wiki by @Adstriduum Bug Reports: Please follow standard bug-reporting procedures as outlined here: And to add to that: Please describe in detail what the problem is. If possible, provide steps for replicating the bug. Make sure it's not a known issue. Credits @Thomas P. @Sigma88 Kopernicus Expansion Continued @NovaSilisko Testing, feedback, and the Kaputnik Mk0 model. @Pkmniako Biome map for Lowel. @SnailsAttack Testing and feedback, biome maps for Mally, Yeerbor, and Totooa, Mally terrain. @Tutur Testing and feedback. @severedsolo ModuleCommandLimitedControl plugin. Davidson16807: I used his Tectonics.js model to develop realistic continental maps for some of the worlds, including Mesbin. SnowfallTheCat for the current placeholder Derbin cloud map. Pythania for the loading screen art. And a special thanks to @Ultimate Steve, who is Conquering Whirligig, and @Shamash who used to livestream his Whirligig World playthrough, and @Cupcake... who has had an Interstellar Adventure. LICENSE: Whirligig World art assets and config files: Copyright Gregory Brannon (GregroxMun) 2018. All Rights Reserved. Kopernicus Expansion Continued: GNU General Public License. Derbin cloud map: Copyright Snowfall-The-Cat 2018. "Use this however you like, just give me a credit if possible for assembling." Data from JAXA's Akatsuki spacecraft. Whirligig World heightmap files Ellipsoid.png, Prolate_Height.png, and deprecated Triaxial_Ellipsoid.png: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Explanation for separate licensing found at this forum thread post.

Extremely relevant music to set the scene Well the kerbals did it again! Or rather, aspacecephalopod did it again and started a new savegame without finishing some projects in the others RSS and OPM explorations are still happening, but I thought it would be fun to take a break with something more... spinny. Enter... Mesbin! Where a sorry lot of kerbs have been stuck for ~1700 years, living sadly in battered old underground tunnels. But, they have recreated the space program they once had on other planets, complete with a KSC that features a runway that will have to be used sometime, despite the distinct lack of any way to generate lift here on this spinning ball of rock. In fact, they have developed some very advanced tech along the way (as in, sandbox with a fairly large suite of mods-everything from Laythe Space program and Restock/Restock+ to make things look nice). As such, this won't really be a career but more an adventure into the very cool Kaywell system, looking for fun exploration sites and homes for the kerbs that are more hospitable than Mesbin itself. Chapter 1: Dead or Alive?

Back in March, while playtesting my Whirligig World planet mod, I had a bit of adventure. This is the story of that adventure, retold to the best of my recollection, with the help of the discord chatlogs I made during that playthrough. Please note that the Kerbmun terrain shown here is old, Kerbmun looks almost nothing like this anymore. PROLOGUE The Mesbin System. Mesbin has a mass of 71 Kerbins, and spins once every 1701 seconds for an equatorial gravity of 1.28 gee. Kerbmun orbits around three Munar distances out and has a mass of 1 Kerbin. Kerbmun atmospheric pressure is identical to Kerbin, though oxygen is only roughly 1/4th of Kerbin's. Troymin is in a trojan orbit permanently 60 degrees ahead of Kerbmun in its orbit. Every 14 of Mesbin's rotation periods is a "fortnight" and is approximately as long as a Kerbin day. By this point in the Mesbin Space Program, several re-usable spacecrafts were in semi-regular use in the Mesbin System. The Troymin/Kerbmun fuel tanker was launched from Mesbin to Troymin, and brings four medium size-5 tanks of fuel (minus a bit for manuevering) to a Kerbmun space station. Troymin Fuel Truck approaching the tiny satellite. The fuel truck would carry fuel to the KerbMun Orbital Station (KMOS) Which at this point was quite simple, just a few habitats, a laboratory, and five docking ports. The Trans-Kerbmun Orbital Shuttle (TKOS) ferries up to nine Kerbals between Low Mesbin Orbit (or the Mesbin Low Orbit Space Station/ MLOSS) and the KMOS. That orange-tanked NTR ship was the return section of a Graymun expedition that had some leftover fuel. I figured it might come in handy some day and so kept it attached to the LMOSS. Aerobraking was necessary for the ship to work. Getting between Mesbin's surface and Low Mesbin Orbit is done with the Mesbin Space Shuttle. Here it is, landed at home. It can be used in single-stage-refueled-at-station mode or lifted into space on a booster. The general mission plan for exploration missions was that instead of the exploration ships and ferry ships carrying a return pod (which is fine when the air can slow you down, less so when you have to spare 2 km/s to slow down), they would simply park in Mesbin orbit, and would either catch orbital ferries down to low orbit (or if delta-v allows, park in low orbit) and then the crew would be taken down by these space shuttles. After a successful but uneventful robotic mission to the asteroid 1 Vizea, the space program needed something really exciting. They had planned only to start exploring Kerbmun when the space station was complete and when there was a better understanding of winged aerodynamics, but they figured an ol' fashioned Flags And Footprints mission would tide the public over. Part One: Launch and Landing of the Kerbmun Lander The entire lander craft was the conical section at the front, which the engineers calculated would have enough delta-v combined with the engines chosen to launch from Kerbmun and enter orbit, where the crew would be taken to the KMOS and eventually ride home on a TKOS. After a near miss with the tiny low-orbiting Statmun, the crew burned their rocket towards Kerbmun. Our brave Kerbonauts: Valentina, Bob, and Virmund, were on their way. After several aerobraking passes, among which we got a really good look at the highlands of Kerbmun, the spacecraft entered orbit. The spacecraft's engines were hidden away by the heatshield, and would only be usable after it was detached. Unfortunately the drag-to-weight ratio was not properly calculated--Mesbin engineers of course do not have much experience with atmospheric aerospace. The spacecraft splashed down hard into the ocean. (Yes they're floating above the water disregard this please) Only the command pod survived. Valentina tried to radio for help, but received no signal. Upon further inspection, it would seem that the only long-range transmitter was on the part of the ship that exploded. The astronauts were not only stranded at sea, but they were lost, unable to contact home! What will our intrepid Kerbonauts do? What will happen to the Mesbin Space Program? Find out in the next thrilling part!