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HSP: Mission complete.


Hotaru

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  • 2 weeks later...

Getting this update done turned out to be a bit of an adventure, partly because I wanted to get in the return of Daring 4, which kind of turned out to be further off than I thought, and partly because I wasted a few more days experimenting with my 1.3.0 setup for my still-hypothetical next career. (See boring stuff for more on that.) With the end of Daring 4 and the departure from Jool of Daring 6, I've now pretty much finished all the "easy" targets--only Laythe, Tylo, Jool and Eve remain. Preparations for those missions will probably start in the next update with test flights of the Laythe and Eve landing craft, but the actual missions might take a while to get underway, since I'd like to send a few more unkermanned missions to those targets before risking kerbals on any of them. The current plan is for the next major kermanned expedition to be Daring 7 to Laythe, but that may change.

 

Boring stuff:

Spoiler

A few smallish mod changes this time: I've (reluctantly) uninstalled SVT and Kopernicus--they looked great, and were perfectly playable most of the time, but they just made surface ops too laggy to be practical. I may run into this problem again if/when I install OPM, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I also installed Slingshotter, which predicts the future positions of ships and planets, mainly to help with the Philosophy 1 series of Eve flybys. (And then uninstalled it, because it was causing weird amounts of lag in the tracking station, but I'll put it back in if I need it again.)

And of course I'm still thinking about the next-save question. One idea I've been kicking around would be to have two space agencies competing against each other in a kerballized space race (I believe @NotAgain is doing something a bit like this). They'd be in the same save and use the same career mode resources, but have differing agendas and possibly incompatible hardware. Might make things a little more interesting, since I'd be able to come up with two different solutions to the same problems. With this idea in mind I've been messing with KSC Switcher configs for GPO, so the two agencies could have separate launch sites.

Two mods I'm especially looking forward to in the next save are BARIS (which I'll most likely use instead of KCT for both ship construction and part failures) and Kessler Syndrome (both for the titular effect and for the orbital decay function), which I think will make things a lot more interesting, especially paired with the two-different-space-agencies idea, an unfamiliar planetary system, and a life support mod (probably Snacks!). This should make the new save a little more exciting than HSP where, let's face it, most mission reports have boiled down to "everything pretty much went to plan," with only a few notable exceptions (one of which is in this update, as it happens). In the new save I should be able to take my time and have fun dealing with things going wrong.

TL;DR: Uninstalled SVT (too much lag), installed Slingshotter, still thinking about ideas for next save.

 

 

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Dauntless 2101 takes off on its first full crew rotation.

 

Sanity, Philosophy, Lucidity: the Eve probe fleet.

Spoiler

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Of the three unkermanned probes launched to Eve at the last window, mapping orbiter Sanity 4 was the first to arrive; it returned data on subsurface ore deposits that may be used to refuel future kermanned landers.

 

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Philosophy 1 completed the first of three planned flybys of Eve which will lower its periapsis to near-sun space.

 

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Lucidity 4, the Space Program's first attempt to land on Eve since the Circumspection program more than a decade ago, entered an eccentric orbit before jettisoning its transfer stage for atmospheric entry.

 

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The entry, descent, and landing went mostly smoothly and the probe set down on the surface of Eve only about ten kilometers from the targeted site.

 

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After the sun had risen over the landing site, Lucidity 4 deployed its solar arrays and transmitted the first science data and images from Eve's peaks.

 

Station Permanence: exploration of Duna.

Spoiler

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Starbus Elizabeth arrived at Duna station Permanence with the crew of Expedition Permanence 5.

 

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After the station was refueled by Super Aqualung 15, the crew boarded LC-2 for the first landing on Duna in several years. Engineer Chris performed an EVA to repack the lander's parachutes.

 

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Melxie, Chris, Laselle, and Debty explored Duna's Eastern Canyon before returning to Permanence.

 

Daring 6: departure from Pol.

Spoiler

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After two short hops to visit nearby biomes, Vasya and Darina lifted off and returned to Exceeds Expectations.

 

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The landing craft was powered down and left in Pol orbit; the orbiter performed a short departure burn to put in back in orbit of Jool.

 

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A second burn a few weeks later set Daring 6 on its way back to Kerbin; it will return in about two years.

 

KS-3: an unexpectedly interesting crew rotation.

Spoiler

(OOC: In future I don't expect to give these more than a cursory mention--the whole point of the passenger Dauntless was to save time spent on crew rotations--but seeing as this was the first one (and turned out a little more exciting than planned) I'm going into some detail just this once.)

 

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Dauntless 2101 took off on mission KS-3, the first full Kerbin system crew rotation.

 

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With 21 kermen aboard--20 passengers and veteran pilot Burmin--the Dauntless nearly doubled the old record set by the Vorpal/Valiance system on Hotaru Star Lines Flight 5 many years previously. (OOC: I can't be absolutely sure without sifting through thousands of old screenshots, but I believe this is a personal record across all my saves--I did once build a Mk 3 SSTO in sandbox that could have carried 4 crew and 32 passengers, but I don't think it ever flew at capacity. A "stretch" version of the Dauntless could probably match that, but I don't foresee ever needing to orbit 37 kerbals at once.)

 

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The first stop was Kerbin station Immutability; the Dauntless picked up the old crew and dropped off Expedition Immutability 5: P3 Gemliana, E3 Mitrie, S3 Tangel and S3 Wenmy.

 

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2101 then rendezvoused with Starbus Valerie and Super Aqualung 9; Burmin and the passengers for the Mun and Minmus transferred to Valerie while the returning Immutability crew stayed aboard 2101.

 

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Valerie, operating at capacity for the first time with 16 passengers and pilot Burmin, departed Kerbin orbit for the Mun.

 

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This was scientist Agalinne's departing view of Kerbin; except for Burmin, none of the kermen aboard Valerie will return for two years.

 

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Valerie stopped first at Mun station Persistence, where it dropped off P3 Lemlock, E1 Gergun, S2 Addan, and S1 Addon and picked up the previous crew.

 

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While Valerie waited for the sun to rise at base Constancy, a Vorpal II lifted off with Super Aqualung 17 and additional fuel for its round-trip to the surface. (And showed off our nifty new pad lighting system.)

 

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After refueling, Valerie met rover Brevity II on the surface to swap crews for Mun base Constancy, dropping off P4 Janbe, E3 Jochelle, S4 Agalinne and S2 Temy and picking up the previous crew.

 

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It then made a five-day transfer to Minmus, where it dropped off the first crew of station Perpetuity: P2 Eiliel, E1 Crisdia, S4 Gledia and S1 Jenra.

 

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With Perpetuity activated, Valerie disengaged and began its descent to base Tenacity.

 

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While the landing at Constancy was only roughly targeted for the Munar Farside Crater, the plan was for Valerie to make a precision landing at Tenacity. Everything went well until, in the final meters of the descent, Burmin set the guidance computer for landing.

 

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He insists he pressed the same button he always did--the one at bottom-left--but because Valerie's computer was set to target the base, that button set the ship into Target mode rather than the intended Radial mode.

 

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Burmin says the KSC engineers need to read up on things like "mode confusion" and "kerman factors engineering" and "making #$%@ buttons not all look the @#$% same." The engineers say that a veteran kerbonaut should be fully capable of the relatively simple task of pressing one button instead of a different one. In any case, Valerie was wrecked beyond any possibility of repair, although thanks to sheer dumb luck epic piloting skill, the station was not damaged in the collision. (It's worth mentioning that the only other tipped-over-lander incident in the Space Program's history--Intrepidity 20--was also commanded by Burmin. Apparently he doesn't get along with ladders or buttons.)

 

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Fortunately, Valerie's sister ship Starbus Phoebe was available in Kerbin orbit; it rendezvoused with Dauntless 2101 and Super Aqualung 9 to take on fuel, while pilot Virlina and engineer Corrick (of the returning Immutability crew) were shanghaied into kermanning the rescue mission.

 

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Five days later, Phoebe touched down smoothly just a few meters from the wreck of Valerie, successfully demonstrating the precision-landing and correct-button-pressing capabilities that were meant to be proved by the previous attempt.

 

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Engineer Daphthy collected Valerie's valuable radioisotope batteries for return to Kerbin (OOC: using KIS, which isn't exactly stock but I didn't want them cluttering up the base site and adding to an already laggy situation).

 

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Burmin, the Transience/Tenacity crew, and Valerie's stranded passengers transferred to Phoebe for the trip back to Kerbin, while P2 Jate, E4 Erithis, S3 Alvis and S3 Erigee stayed at the base. (OOC: Good thing there weren't any tourists on this trip...)

 

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Phoebe lifted off, made a final stop at Minmus station Perpetuity to drop off some science data from the surface, and departed for Kerbin.

 

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The crew and passengers transferred to Dauntless 2101 in low Kerbin orbit, and Burmin piloted the shuttle to a safe landing back at KSC.

 

Brevity II: circumnavigation of the Mun.

Spoiler

With Mun base Constancy running low on science data, the KSC engineers proposed a more ambitious rover expedition than usual to collect more--a full surface circumnavigation, including visits to several previously-unexplored regions. The PR department was in favor of squeezing a little more publicity out of the old Brevity II rover, and the finance department pointed out that it wouldn't require any expensive new hardware, so the administration approved the plan.

(OOC: This wasn't a true Elcano mission because it was 99% with Bon Voyage driving the rover. I have done a surface circumnavigation of the Mun in the past, and though I'm glad I did it once, I have no particular desire to repeat the experience.)

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So the crew of Expedition Constancy 6 boarded the rover and headed east to their first destination, the nearside East Crater.

 

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They then turned south to visit the previously-unexplored Twin Craters...

 

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...traveled to the north polar region to visit a rugged highland crater...

 

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...made a stop in the Farside Basin...

 

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...on the way to their final objective, the East Farside Crater.

 

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They finally returned to Constancy after a roughly week-long expedition covering approximately 1600 kilometers.

 

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Jochelle, Janbe, Agalinne, Temy: first kermen to circumnavigate the Mun!

 

Daring 4: return from Eeloo.

Spoiler

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Four years after its departure from Eeloo, Daring 4 finally approached the Kerbin system. After a final data transmission, Are We There Yet?'s orbital module was jettisoned into kerbolar orbit while the crew prepared for arrival in the command module.

 

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With its single remaining LV-N motor, the Space Program's first nuclear vvessel took nearly half an hour to burn into a wide elliptical orbit of Kerbin, leaving just enough fuel for a deorbit burn at apoapsis.

 

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The crew had their first view of Kerbin in nearly six years as Are We There Yet? coasted away from the planet after the insertion maneuver; this was pilot Lodald's view from the command module.

 

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Reentry was relatively gentle by interplanetary standards, since the spacecraft was traveling at less than 3 kilometers per second (compared to 5 km/s during Daring 3's reentry from Dres).

 

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The command module splashed down safely in the ocean; mission commander Kerzer watched the sun rise from its inflatable heat shield as the crew awaited recovery.

 

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(OOC: Four check marks in four updates, not terrible. Of course it'll be hard to beat three checks in ONE update when Daring 6 gets back.)

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Hotaru said:

(I believe @NotAgain is doing something a bit like this).

I am indeed. I'd reccomend not letting your list of agencies get out of control, like mine has. Also, a little bit of backstory/plot to the two agencies would probably be great, like the friendly (but highly politicised) rivalry between the KSA and Metkosmos, which I should honestly expand upon. *Goes and starts writing*

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Project Daredevil test series: Eve ascent vehicles.

Spoiler

With the completion of Daring 6's mission to explore Vall, Bop and Pol, the administration turned its attention to the four destinations left unvisited in the kerbolar system: Laythe, Tylo, Jool, and Eve. The former two the engineers believe to be relatively straightforward challenges, although they will require larger landing craft than the LLC series used by Daring 3 through 6. Jool and Eve are more difficult problems, requiring much higher combinations of thrust and impulse than have so far been demonstrated.

The engineers proposed several possible solutions to the Eve/Jool problem, including a massive nuclear-powered vehicle that would have returned four kermen from the surface of Eve or the deep atmosphere of Jool and options involving refueling a lander on the surface of Eve. In the end, the concept the administration approved was, unsurprisingly, the cheapest one: Project Daredevil, a bare-bones vehicle distantly descended from the old Manxome VI launch vehicle, equipped with new engines, a new second stage, and (for the kermanned version) a single seat inside fairing at the top.

 

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The prototype, Daredevil "Annabelle," was rolled out to the pad and surprised everyone by successfully standing up under its own weight.

 

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Unfortunately, it then proceeded to surprise absolutely no one by turning out to be completely unstable; it crashed into the ocean shortly after liftoff.

 

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The second prototype, "Bonnie," with added fins, was more successful.

 

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It achieved orbit without difficulty and the upper stage made a powered reentry and was recovered near KSC as planned.

 

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Of course, getting it to go up (at least on Kerbin) was the easy part; now the engineers had to find out if it could go down. So the third test vehicle, "Charlotte," the first to have landing hardware installed, was rolled out on a Vorpal II rocket.

 

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"Charlotte" survived reentry, but the engineers weren't satisfied with its performance: it showed a disturbing tendency to yaw during the highest period of deceleration, exposing the upper parts of the vehicle to reentry heating.

 

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It also had to start its engines and burn a considerable amount of fuel in order to make a safe landing, although the engineers were satisfied with its ability to settle onto a slope without toppling over.

 

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After a successful landing, "Charlotte" lifted off again, becoming the first vehicle ever to launch to space twice without refueling; again, its upper stage was deorbited and recovered near KSC.

 

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Although the finance department wanted to leave it at that, the engineers figured that "kind of works" on Kerbin would translate to "doesn't work at all" on Eve, so they rolled out another one, "Daisy," with more airbrakes and parachutes.

 

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That didn't help at all! "Daisy" also landed safely, but the engineers were forced to come to the conclusion that the only way to make the thing stable would be to add more heat shields at the top.

 

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So, much to the annoyance of the finance department, they rolled out "Emily" on yet another Vorpal II.

 

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To the engineers' surprise, the complicated system of girders they had rigged up to support the rear heat shield actually worked, and "Emily" remained stable through reentry.

 

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They were less satisfied by the performance of their system for jettisoning the rear shields; "Emily" wasn't damaged, but they didn't like the idea of just assuming the rocket would be sturdier than the jettisoned girders.

 

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So they modified the system slightly and, with the finance department breathing down their necks for having already used up a million spacebucks' worth of Vorpal IIs on test flights, rolled out what may be the most kerbal vehicle the space program has ever conceived: Daredevil "Florence."

 

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The idea was that they could simulate the environment in which the heat shields were deployed by dragging the upper section of a Daredevil vehicle into flight backwards and then activating the system.

 

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To their astonishment, it worked smoothly; the heat shields and their supporting girders were all jettisoned without hitting the vehicle.

 

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They all started to celebrate, and then immediately stopped when they realized they hadn't given any thought to what would happen to "Florence" after the test was complete.

 

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With no ability to either steer the vehicle or stop its engines, they commanded it to deploy the parachutes on the (fully-functional) Daredevil nose section.

 

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Bizarrely, the parachutes turned out to be both fireproof (!) and big enough to overpower the four solid rockets; "Florence" landed mostly intact, which is more than could be said for the launch pad, and was recovered.

 

Daredevil "Ginny:" first unkermanned Eve ascent.

Spoiler

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With the engineers finally satisfied that the Daredevil system would probably work (and the finance department flatly refusing to fund another test flight), a Vorpal III was rolled out to the repaired pad with Daredevil "Ginny," the space program's first attempt to return a payload from the surface of Eve.

 

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A few weeks after launch, the stretched Vorpal second stage delivered the 40-ton "Ginny" into low Eve orbit.

 

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Entry went as smoothly as the engineers could've hoped for: there were no signs of overheating or instability (although they were slightly concerned that the G-meter spent a good twenty seconds off the scale).

 

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The heat shields were jettisoned, parachutes deployed, and "Ginny" set down smoothly on the surface of Eve.

 

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It collected science data (to be retrieved from orbit by a future kermanned expedition), jettisoned its parachutes and airbrakes, and lifted off shortly after landing.

 

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A few minutes later, the upper stage was safely in orbit--the Space Program's first vehicle ever to return to space from the surface of Eve! (The parachute was unnecessary, but was left on from the test vehicles because it approximates the weight of a space-suited kerman.)

 

The engineers were more than satisfied with "Ginny's" performance--it took off from the relatively low elevation of 1400 meters, followed a very inefficient ascent profile, and still achieved orbit with 800 meters per second worth of fuel remaining. Plans are underway for a kermanned version to go to Eve with Daring 8 at the next launch window.

 

Edited by Hotaru
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@NotAgain@eloquentJane Thanks! It's definitely efficient by my standards, considering one of the other options involved basically landing an entire Vorpal II rocket on the surface. Mass on the launch pad is 1327 tons, in Kerbin orbit, 250 tons, on Eve surface, 40 tons, and returned to low Eve orbit, 0.64 tons, of which about 0.1 t is the actual payload (parachute on this one, Kerbal on the next one). I could probably shave off a few tons if I landed at higher elevation, flew a more efficient profile, and cut the margins a bit closer--especially if I used the EVA jetpack as a third stage, which in practice I consider only an emergency option. I could also probably get a better payload fraction by doing the same things and maybe adding another set of boosters; it does have some TWR to spare.

Edited by Hotaru
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A 40 tonne Eve ascent vehicle is pretty good in any case. And your landing method looked pretty effective too. I really need to work on landing tall things on Eve, I've never been too great at it and my Eve ascent vehicles have often been sub-optimal because getting them through the atmosphere and also having them stay standing after landing is so difficult. And it's especially important to be able to do that now because the next time I do an Eve mission I'll be doing it in 4x scale (which means delta-v costs are approximately doubled) with two kerbals per ascent vehicle (probably four kerbals total) and I always use a capsule for landing/ascent vehicles.

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  • 2 weeks later...
4 hours ago, cratercracker said:

This deserves way more appreciation in y opinion.

Thanks! Although right now what it deserves is more appreciation from me; I've been off on a variety of wild goose chases for the past week or two and haven't touched HSP. I do have some screenshots from stuff that was happening at the same time as the Eve tests, though (including the first unkermanned Laythe landing), so maybe I'll try and get a sort of half-update posted tonight.

PS. @eloquentJane 40 tons is good, by far the best I've ever done, although I believe it can be done with more like 20. Most of my early designs were based around the idea of using an actual capsule rather than a command seat, but between part count limitations (even this version has almost 300 parts on the pad), the necessity of using aircraft wheels for large landers cause stock legs are too wimpy, and just wanting to get the damn thing finished some time this century, I decided to punt on that particular requirement.

Edited by Hotaru
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Boring stuff:

Spoiler

Not much of an update this time because I've been wasting time in 1.3.0 experimenting with mods for my next save (among other things). At the moment I'm looking at DangIt for failures and USI for life support and colonization systems; I'm also still going back and forth on which sets of part mods to use. Unfortunately, it's also starting to seem like Gameslinx's planet overhaul is just too detailed for my computer to run with anything like acceptable performance (and I haven't tested but I suspect the same is true for Galileo's). I've learned my lesson recently about giving modders around here any kind of feedback (don't), but I may experiment with making higher-performance EVE configs for GPO myself. If that doesn't work out I'll probably end up in the regular stock system with OPM, which oddly doesn't seem to cause too much lag. 

All this is bad news for my notional new save but probably good news for HSP: at this point I may not bother about a new save at all, and instead just go straight to installing a few mods in this save and carrying on exploring the stock system, and possibly OPM. 

TL;DR: the usual.

 

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Lucidity 5: the surface of Laythe.

Spoiler

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A year and a half after its launch on a Brillig rocket, Lucidity 5 arrived in the Joolian system. (The KSC scientists are bewildered to discover that the rings of Jool have vanished as mysteriously as they appeared.)

 

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Whereas previous missions had performed several gravity assists first, Lucidity 5 captured directly into Laythe orbit. 

 

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It then fired a retro burn, entered the atmosphere, and parachuted to a landing on one of Laythe's small continents. 

 

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In addition to transmitting a considerable amount of useful data, Lucidity 5 successfully demonstrated the capability for precision landings on Laythe. Accordingly, the administration has given its tentative approval for a kermanned mission to explore the satellite, Daring 7. 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Boring stuff:

Spoiler

So I'm finally getting a new computer. My vintage Mac Pro has served me well over the years but the fact of the matter is it's nearly a decade old and it wasn't exactly a gaming computer to begin with. Upgrades and patience have kept it marginally able to run modern games in spite of often being well below their minimum system requirements, but 300+ part ships in modded KSP are turning out to be just a little too much for it. Its replacement (already ordered) will be a nice modern gaming machine that should be able to handle better graphics settings, more visual mods and higher part counts in KSP without too much trouble, to say nothing of being able to play other games at a nice smooth 60 fps instead of a stuttery 20-30. On top of that, with both machines running side-by-side it'll be nice to be able to get some drawing done on the old Mac without having to wait twenty minutes for it to shut down Windows and boot up OS X.

For HSP, this means at the very least I anticipate the return of Stock Visual Terrain in the next update, as well as higher graphics settings and probably higher-res SVE textures. In the long run it may also mean more elaborate missions and more surface ops. I don't know what the practical part-count limit of the new machine will be, but I'm pretty sure it will be a decent improvement over my current machine's upper limit of around 300. (If I remember correctly, the Eve rocket is my current record-holder at 277, but I usually try to stay under 150.) On top of all that, I'm hoping less lag will mean routine missions like crew rotations will be a lot less tedious and I might not have to put quite as much effort into avoiding them--which may mean less frustration, more frequent updates and generally quicker progress.

For my future projects, this reopens a lot of possibilities I had pretty much given up on. I'm giving thought to GPO/OPM, GPP, and SSRSS for my next career, as well as installing OPM in the HSP save after the last flags-and-footprints Daring mission in the stock system (which will actually probably be to Jool and therefore not actually involve either flags or footprints). I've also got some other ideas beyond standard mission reports (which I'd rather not say too much about right now, in case they fail to materialize) which would involve the stock system but higher part counts than my current machine can reasonably handle.

In the meantime, now that I know I'll be getting a shiny new computer (hopefully) next week, I just can't face continuing to struggle along at 15 fps on the old Mac Pro, so I expect I'll be putting KSP down for a while till the new machine is set up. The upshot of all this is, there probably won't be another HSP update for at least a couple weeks--but when I do get it up, it should be a lot prettier than the stuff I've done so far, and I should be in a better mood to boot.

TL;DR: Next update--new computer!

 

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The eighth kerbonaut class with Dauntless 2101. Left to right: Heidi, Kevin, Jantrice, Sonburry, Asrine, Urjorie, Debina, Eriby, Piper, Milotte and Grathy.

 

KS-4 and Starbus Arnold: crew rotation and a new passenger rocket.

Spoiler

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Lemlock and Addon took LC-1 from Mun station Persistence to collect data from the flats and midlands of Minmus.

 

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Mission KS-4 delivered the next crew of Duna station Permanence (P2 Virlina, E0 Jantrice, S4 Rodnard, S0 Debina) to Starbus Phoebe in Kerbin orbit; they departed for Duna while Dauntless 2101 waits in orbit to retrieve the returning crew from Starbus Elizabeth.

 

While the finance department is extremely happy with the Dauntless system, its crews and passengers are not. On both of its most recent flights, 2101 has shown alarming instability during the final stages of its ascent as well as a worrying tendency for its nose cone to overheat. As a result, the engineers developed the Starbus S110, a passenger rocket distantly descended from the S100, which may supplement or replace the Dauntless for passenger and light cargo operations.

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The new vehicle, Starbus Arnold, completed two unkermanned test flights without trouble, although the engineers redesigned its landing gear after the first flight to give it a wider base for landings on uneven ground.

 

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Officially a replacement for the lost Starbus Valerie, in practice Arnold will be used initially only for operations between KSC and low Kerbin orbit. Proposed Kerbin orbital fuel depots and Mun and Minmus surface mining rigs may allow ships of this type to deliver passengers directly between the surfaces of Kerbin, the Mun and Minmus in the future, effectively replacing both the Dauntless and Starbus S100 classes for Kerbin system passenger operations.

 

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While previous concepts for vertical-launch, vertical-landing SSTOs generally relied on tail-first reentry, the S110's fins allow it to reenter sideways, resulting in a quicker deceleration and substantially less atmospheric heating. They also let it double as a comically-oversized surface-to-air missile in a pinch.

 

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At the end of its second test flight, Arnold successfully demonstrated a precise landing at KSC, the first time this had been done with a vertical-landing spacecraft.

 

(OOC: Starbus Arnold is almost exactly a one-for-one counterpart for Spacebus Arnold, a similar--though larger--passenger rocket from my old 1.0.2 save; the reuse of the name was not accidental. The new Arnold is quite a bit more efficient than the old one though, not least because it uses three Vectors rather than a single Mammoth and lacks monopropellant tanks.)

 

Philosophy 1: Eve and Kerbol.

Spoiler

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Several years after its launch, Philosophy 1 completed its third and final flyby of Eve.

 

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The encounter dropped the probe's periapsis to within a million kilometers of the surface of the sun, where it collected the first scientific data from near-sun space. It also established that the thermal environment at this level is survivable; a kermanned mission is under consideration, but currently considered a low priority.

 

Daring 7: next stop, Laythe!

Spoiler

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A Vorpal III rocket launched the propulsion and command modules of Daring 7, the Space Program's first kermanned mission to the surface of Laythe. Aboard was the seven-kerman crew:

 

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Mission commander P4 Hayberta, veteran of eight space missions and pilot of Daring 5, the first mission to land on Moho. Well aware that she's only commanding this mission because Burmin is still in the doghouse after the Starbus Valerie accident. Thoroughly annoyed about this. Also annoyed that she was the first kerman to drive a rover faster than 100 miles per hour on another planet and nobody noticed.

 

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Chief engineer E4 Carena, on her seventh mission. Was one of the first kermen to visit the Jool system aboard the Bravado 6 orbiter and as such is the only crew member to have already seen Laythe up close. She was also the flight engineer of Intrepidity 5, the first kermanned mission to land on Minmus, and Intrepidity 7, an early Mun landing.  Has somehow avoided being the first to do anything important in spite of being one of the Space Program's most experienced kerbonauts. Always ends up in bottom seat of Mk 1-2 pod, has never complained about it.

 

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Chief scientist S4 Kathelyn, veteran of four missions including the Space Program's second landing on Duna, Bravado 3, and its first mission to Eeloo, Daring 4. Likes space and ground, dislikes part in between. Has concerns about the landing craft.

 

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Pilot P2 Chadgan, on his fifth mission and first interplanetary. Wishes the PR people had remembered to take the publicity photos before launch. Has a spaceship to pilot, after all.

 

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Engineer E2 Corrick, on his sixth mission and first interplanetary. Dislikes complications. Thinks Daring 4 Eeloo "landing" doesn't count, convinced he could've gotten enough delta-v out of that lander if he'd been there. Is glad Deblian isn't on this mission.

 

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Scientist S2 Ribnard, on his fourth mission and first interplanetary. Excited to be doing something other than orbiting the Mun for four years. Possibly too excited. Only reason he doesn't look excited in the picture is cause Kathelyn snuck up on him and took it while he was thinking about lunch.

 

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Scientist S2 Vertine, on her second mission and first interplanetary. Likes toruses, rovers and ground bases, is disappointed none of the above is on this mission. Misses Transience already.

 

 

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A series of Brillig and Vorpal launches assembled the orbital module and brought additional fuel for the landing craft.

 

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Once the ship was assembled, the crew prepared for departure.

 

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Daring 7 underway. The orbiter is virtually identical to Daring 6 except for re-positioned radiators; the landing craft, LC-4, is derived from the old Bravado type (cf. LC-1 in the first picture two spoilers up), with aerospike engines, revised landing gear, and an extra fuel tank replacing the passenger cabin.

 

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A small navigational error during the departure set Daring 7 on a slower-than-intended trajectory; it will arrive in the Joolian system in just over two years.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not so much of an update this time, but it's been a week or two and I wanted to get something up for the occasion of the H. S. P.'s first anniversary. This is also the first update from my new computer, which is performing just about as well as I could have hoped for. Funnily enough, since I've always tended to prioritize visuals over performance the only major differences in the screenshots (other than slightly higher-resolution clouds) are the return of Stock Visual Terrain, Scatterer water effects, and terrain scatters. In the long run though, it's the increase in part-count limits that will make the biggest difference by allowing for much more elaborate missions than I've done so far.

 

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LC-1 returns to Mun station Persistence with the returning crew of Base Constancy.

 

Duna system ops.

Spoiler

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Starbus Phoebe arrived at Duna with Expedition Permanence 6.

 

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The new crew took LC-2 down to the surface to explore the Midland Sea region, not visited since the first landing on Duna by Bravado 2. (Yes, we're still using the same lander 20 years later. Shut up.)

 

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Back at the station, rookie engineer Jantrice performed an EVA to re-pack LC-2's parachutes.

 

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Meanwhile, Starbus Elizabeth arrived back in Kerbin orbit with the previous crew.

 

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They returned to Kerbin aboard Dauntless 2101.

 

KS-5: crew rotation.

Spoiler

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The engineers suspected that at least some of the Dauntless's stability problems at high speed were due to a combination of adverse yaw (the tendency for the tall rudder to cause the ship to roll in the opposite direction when commanded to yaw) and the lag constant of the universe, so they disabled the rudder at high speed, upgraded the universal constants to allow for an ascent in real time, and launched 2101 under the command of veteran pilot Melxie, just back from Duna, on mission KS-5.

 

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Whether due to the changes in the rudder or the universe, 2101 showed no sign of the instability it had demonstrated on the previous two missions. Its first stop was Kerbin station Immutability, where it dropped off P2 Gilbree, E0 Grathy, S3 Leeuna and S0 Kevin and picked up the previous crew.

 

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2101 then rendezvoused (again) with Starbus Elizabeth to transfer passengers for the Mun and Minmus.

 

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Elizabeth brought P1 Madette, E2 Gwenlanna, S4 Valcee and S0 Milotte to Mun station Persistence. It then remained at the station while Madette and Gwenlanna took LC-1 down to Base Constancy.

 

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P1 Mike, E0 Eriby, S3 Debty and S1 Munvan transferred to the Mun base while the previous crew returned to orbit on LC-1.

 

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After a week-long trip to Minmus, Elizabeth dropped off P1 Virella, E3 Statha, S3 Tambe and S0 Urjorie--along with some science data collected by LC-1 on the Mun--at station Perpetuity.

 

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Elizabeth then landed at Base Tenacity, where it dropped off P1 Gregger, E4 Deblian, S4 Johndo and S0 Heidi. The passengers aboard Elizabeth who had visited the base before remarked that it looked... better, somehow. And none of them could remember there being boulders on the surrounding terrain, although the returning crew swore they'd been there all along.

 

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On the trip back to low Kerbin orbit, Elizabeth performed a series of aerobraking passes to save fuel; although the Starbus class was not designed for the maneuver, it was completed without trouble and will probably be adopted as standard procedure for future missions, given that along with the use of LC-1 for access to the Munar surface, it allows the Starbus to make the Kerbin-Mun-Minmus run without refueling.

 

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After aerobraking, Elizabeth transferred the returning crews to Dauntless 2101 for the final leg of the trip back to KSC.

 

Daring 6: back from Jool.

Spoiler

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Two years after its departure from Jool, Daring 6 jettisoned its orbital module into kerbolar orbit as it approached Kerbin.

 

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Without the orbital module, Exceeds Expectations had just enough fuel to circularize in a 170x170 kilometer orbit, allowing its science data to be transferred (via Super Aqualung 16) to station Immutability for processing.

 

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Once the data had been transferred, the crew returned to Kerbin in the Daring 6 command module.

 

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Edited by Hotaru
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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Well, it's been a couple months and I honestly don't know when I'll be getting back to KSP. Some of the things going on elsewhere in the community have, to be perfectly honest, put me off the whole enterprise. It's still one of my favorite games ever, and you guys in this thread have been a great motivation, so I can reasonably guarantee I'll get back to it at some point, but it might not be for a while yet.

However--I did get one last mission in before I put down the game back in September, and I never got around to posting the results. Here they are.

 

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Erithis: first Kerman on Eve!

 

Daring 8: Eve mission.

Spoiler

With the success of the Daredevil test series (as well as a quick series of tests of the Eve surface hab), the administration finally approved Daring 8, the Space Program's first attempt to land a kerman on the surface of Eve.

 

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The first launch was the Eve ascent vehicle, Daredevil "Harriet," on a Vorpal III rocket. "Harriet" was virtually identical to the successful "Ginny," except for the addition of a pilot's seat to the final stage and ladders to enable the kerbonaut to board the spacecraft from the surface of Eve.

 

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Next was the landing craft, ELC-1, aboard a Vorpal II.

 

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With the surface hardware safely underway, the crew of five of the Space Program's bravest and most experienced kerbonauts prepared for launch aboard a Brillig VI rocket: Mission commander P5 Geneming, veteran of nine space missions and commander of the Space Program's first missions to Dres and the moons of Jool, flight engineer E4 Lizdrien, veteran of ten missions including Daring 3 to Dres, scientist S5 Ziggy, veteran of six missions and first kerman to set foot on Duna, scientist S5 Laselle, veteran of ten missions including the first kermanned landing on the Mun, and engineer E4 Erithis, veteran of five missions and first kerman to set foot on Gilly.

 

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The Brillig VI rocket lifted off with the Daring 8 orbiter, a more compact version of the standard Daring spacecraft featuring a number of improvements over previous marks, including a new launch escape system, lab module, and streamlined comms array and instrument module which did not require the usual on-orbit assembly. (The finance department was particularly happy about that last part.)

 

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Once in orbit, the crew collected preliminary data and set a course for Eve.

 

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Half a year later, Daring 8, unofficially Famous Last Words (PR dept. memo: optimism, people, optimism!), burned into Eve orbit.

 

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The crew's first objective was the recovery of the surface data collected two years previously by Daredevil "Ginny;" Famous Last Words rendezvoused with the tiny orbiter and Ziggy performed an EVA to collect the data.

 

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Next, Daredevil "Harriet" began its descent to the surface.

 

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It landed safely, albeit at a worrying angle, and, with visible reluctance, the administration gave its final approval for the first kermanned descent to the surface.

 

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The Vorpal second stage brought the landing craft alongside Famous Last Words, and engineer Erithis transferred to the lander. There had been some debate prior to the mission as to exactly who would make the landing--Geneming and Erithis having been the only two volunteers (OOC: badS's--seemed appropriate) available at the time of launch, but in the end Mission Control decided an engineer would be safer to send down to the surface than a pilot in case of broken landing legs or rover wheels, so Erithis got the job.

(OOC: I'm a little bit partial to Erithis because she was my first Kerbal to circumnavigate Minmus back in 1.0.2--the same name came up again in 1.2 by complete accident, although I did switch around her textures to match the old one. I didn't make her a badS though--that was a coincidence. In fact her original incarnation wasn't one.)

 

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The lander made a gentler reentry than anticipated; whereas the ascent vehicle and previous probes experienced prolonged periods of 15+ G's, Erithis didn't even lose consciousness.

 

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ELC-1 landed safely on the surface of Eve, and Erithis got out to plant the Space Program's first flag on the kerbolar system's largest terrestrial planet.

 

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Erithis boarded the rover--an improved model of the one Deblian had driven on Eeloo several years earlier, although it proved to be short on power for operations in the high gravity of Eve--and set off on the twenty-kilometer drive to the ascent vehicle.

 

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She found it in good condition with its ladders deployed, though still sitting at an alarming angle--not least because the ladders happened to be on the downward-facing side of the rocket!

 

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The long climb up the ladders had been tested many times back on Kerbin, but always with the rocket sitting on a level grade (and of course never in Eve gravity), so everybody at Mission Control was relieved when Erithis made it safely into her seat at the top of the rocket.

 

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In spite of the awkward angle, "Harriet" jettisoned its parachutes and ladders and lifted off smoothly.

 

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A few minutes later and Erithis was safely back in Eve orbit, ready to be picked up by Famous Last Words to await the transfer home.

 

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(OOC: And now, back to XCOM. But one of these days I'll come back for real and finish off this project--I promise!)

 

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