What did you do in KSP1 today?

[RocketSimplicity]

I turned on every liquid-fuel rocket engine at once (using realplume)

I made a reusable sounding rocket with a liquid-fuel first stage and a capsule with scientific experiments on top. Made with 0.675m parts using a spark engine. The first stage is reusable and nothing is thrown away on the capsule. Unlike many other reusable first stages, you can land the first stage and capsule at the same time. I forgot to screenshot it.

Oh yeah, and this happened:

 

[JadeOfMaar]

I created a very practical /sensible system for refilling Ablator on trans-atmospheric vessels that don't dump their heatshields. It revolves around an upgrade-able furnace installed in one of the unused decks of the stock science lab, and a pseudo "(EVA) work" resource consumed by converters installed into parts that hold non-transferables like Ablator or CRP radioactives. It requires the presence of a high level engineer and the lab connected to the ship in question in order to be effective.

This will be a new Extras (optional) patch in Rational Resources.

[Nezclaw]

i made it into orbit in a spaceplane. took a few tries and some tweaking, but it was done. one of the test flights made it almost into orbit but not quite, so i had to land. and the trajectory ended up with them heading for the night side of kerbin. over land. in a spaceplane. with no chutes.

 

 

 

they landed safely on some grasslands.

[capi3101]

Had a reasonably interesting past 24 hours, but it got started mundanely enough (apparently 'mundanely' is indeed a word) with a visit out to the Nostromo 7 ore hauler I put out in a very high orbit over Jool a few months ago. Having dug up and gotten credit for drilling 450 units of ore at the Bohai 2 outpost on Bop, the visit to Nostromo completed a contract to 'haul' said ore into Jool orbit. Got better uses for my time, thank you very much...

(Didn't really get credit for the drilling, BTW. I had dug up the required ore, but the game said I hadn't, so I had to hack the persistence file. It's one of those things about Pathfinder's GoldDigger/Claim Jumper modules that I hope gets fixed one of these days).

That taken care of, I went out to the Vermilion Block 380 outpost on Vall and had engineer Ludvis Kerman take a quick EVA report, which was then transmitted back to Kerbin to clear another contract. With three contracts done over the last two days (including the recent EVA survey mission out on Bop), my next stop was to Mission Control, where two new contracts were offered and accepted - one a two-kerbal tourist mission to Bop, the other for orbital sci at Gilly. Both can wait for later days.

The meat of my day began next with the arrival of the Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane at space station Munport. As feared, I had never set up the necessary infrastructure to support a spaceplane docking at Munport like I had at space station Minmusport. To make matters even worse, I had never upgraded the station's Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander with the adapter module to accommodate 15 passengers, and I discovered that I hadn't refueled the station after the last expedition there to boot. Making the most of the situation, the Crater Maker departed the station to offload the first eight of the plane's passengers.

Thus begins a twenty minute real-time pain in my backside...at least I had the Crater Maker available. Without it, I'd have had to do yet another set of docking maneuvers to get everybody over.

The Crater Maker docked without incident, offloaded eight passengers and took them over to Munport, again docking safely. At that point the station's Spamcan 7a 4-passenger lander departed to pick up the remaining four colonists, docking to the plane and then returning to Munport safely.

I was beginning to lose my light about the time the Spamcan was putting back into dock at Munport; figured I'd take one final screenshot of this whole operation.

With the passengers offloaded, Lusitania departed from the station and delivered a Jumbo 64 fuel tank's worth of fuel to the plane, bringing it up to about 78% of its normal maximum fuel capacity, which should be more than enough for it to safely return to Kerbin and land. Lusitania then returned to her berth at the station, docking safely. With its delivery job complete, the Auk conducted a return burn for Kerbin nine-and-a-half minutes later; it should arrive at a 47.5 kilometer periapsis over Kerbin in just over seven hours. In the meantime the colonists bound for the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun's surface are all at Munport and the Non Caseus Yards have begun printing up a Crater Maker Heavy 7 15-passenger lander (i.e. the Duna-rated model), which will be complete in just under 24 hours. I have other things I need to do, so I don't mind the delay all that much. Those colonists might mind though, especially once they find out that Jeb clogged up all the toilets on his last visit...

While I was dealing with the Auk debacle, LSV House Corrino in orbit over Kerbin completed its print of the TBD 7e Moho base-seeding rover with lander. After a seventeen minute delay, the finalize button was pressed and the new craft came to life in Corrino's drydock. Supplies of fuel, Xenon Gas, replacement Rocket Parts and Equipment for the TBD were shot up via mass driver from the South Base outpost near KSC to Corrino. At this point, Corrino is ready to head to Moho for deployment of the TBD. All that's missing is the go-ahead to land - that and final crew selection for the Moho expedition.

Closed out the day yesterday with the arrival of J. G. Backus at LSV House Harkonnen high over Bop.

This is the way we use our monoprop, kids.

Backus docked safely to Harkonnen without incident.

Might have to make this one my new wallpaper. House Harkonnen providing a glamour shot...which is a sentence you definitely never read in the novels or heard in the screen adaptations for sure, not even with Sting portraying Feyd-Rautha...

This morning with no more excuses for delay, LSV House Atreides broke orbit over Eve and warped to a flyby position over Moho. The G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft she had printed while still in Eve orbit was released at that point and maneuvered to a point five meters off of Atreides's last available central docking port, at which point engineer Stelgard Kerman EVA'd from Atreides and jetpacked over to the G-LOC.

I've considered the magenta squares to be more of a nuisance than anything up to this point, but this time around it proved to be quite the hindrance, blocking my view of the G-LOC's hatch - I was lucky to get Stelgard into the pod...

Once Stelgard boarded, the G-LOC docked up with Atreides and the ship proceeded to warp to Kerbin, arriving at 12,235 m/s. 39 warp-backs later, the ship settled into a 505.7 by 384.8 kilometer, 2.73° inclined orbit to close out the session.

So today is liable to be a red-letter day. I have Strange Cargo docked to Atreides with passengers aboard; they need to get to space station Kerbinport where an Auk XI 10-passenger spaceplane has been awaiting their return for some time now. The landing of that plane with the passengers aboard will clear out two tourist contracts and one rescue contract. The G-LOC also needs to be de-orbited, which will clear Stelgard's rescue contract and go a ways towards finishing up the current exploration contract - I did get credit for a crew transfer near Moho and the G-LOC should clear the requirement to return to Kerbin from Moho flyby, but the contract explicitly states that the spacewalk be in orbit. So the plan at this point is to go ahead and have House Corrino head to Moho orbit and conduct a spacewalk upon arrival. A warp to Moho orbit is likely to take quite some time since bleeding off the speed will have to be done high enough over Kerbol so as not to cook the craft, so I may get started with that process first thing next session. Assuming I get Corrino to Moho orbit I'll probably get House Harkonnen over to Tylo for the next phase of its mission, but at that point I'll probably have to stop and get a lander for Tylo printed - I'm pretty sure I don't have one yet. I'm also liable to clear out that Gilly science contract today; I can easily transmit a crew report from the Samwell Tarly Yards or something to get that done.  Longer range plans see the beginning of a colonization mission to Laythe with 20 kerbals heading that way, and I'm liable to piggyback those two kerbals headed to Bop while I'm out that way. Plenty going on at the moment. Hoping to have some good news to report to y'all tomorrow morning.

[Jart]

 

It has been a few years since I have posted in here and I am playing my first stock play-through of "Making History".   Throwing a lot of iron into orbit is fun and an object of pride but sometimes you have contracts to fulfill and comms to set up.

I was really proud of Twitchy's three polar orbit performances:

Two High Altitude Kerbin barometric readings.

Four high/low altitude Mun temperature readings.

Twitch engine test on Mun escape.

Sepratron Test orbiting Minimus

Four high/low altitude Minimus temperature readings.

And finally but most important, a soon to be needed Comms link in a Polar orbit of Minimus.

/ delta-v is set to sea level

polar orbit Kerbin transfer to polar orbit Mun transfer to Polar orbit Minimus

 

 

 

 

 

[Pipcard]

Y59, D388 - The Negi Maru takes 16 Kerbals to explore the Urlum system (Outer Planets Mod)

The ship will arrive in ~4.5 years

[Nezclaw]

when your spaceplane refuses to nose down and instead keeps spinning around, pointing retrograde, then you may need to go back and fiddle with the CoM.

still, they survived that landing too.

[RizzoTheRat]

14 hours ago, Jart said:

sometimes you have contracts to fulfill and comms to set up.

I was really proud of Twitchy's three polar orbit performances:

Two High Altitude Kerbin barometric readings.

Four high/low altitude Mun temperature readings.

Twitch engine test on Mun escape.

Sepratron Test orbiting Minimus

Four high/low altitude Minimus temperature readings.

And finally but most important, a soon to be needed Comms link in a Polar orbit of Minimus.

I really love managing to fulfil multiple contracts in a single launch, especially when you can  piggy back your own stuff like a KommSat on the same launch for free. 

[SecondChance]

Getting back into the swing of things after taking a break over Christmas trying out the breaking ground dlc (ps4).

Got my first gravity ring attached to my station truss:

25m diameter

6rpm 

0.5 (ish)g

stabilised with reaction wheels.

Comms dishes on the ends of the truss also spin, I haven't came up with a reason for that yet 

currently 203 parts

I have a second double ring ready (still working on a reliable booster setup) which will sit level with the current ring (docked to the bottom) The Rings are launched as one piece which has been .... entertaining?

[Mars-Bound Hokie]

I did some canyon jumping on Dres.

 

• Donfurt Kerman flying over Dres Canyon.
• He reported that it was the most fun he had since his time in Jack Mobile Base on Duna.

 

• Frocal Kerman, inside the canyon itself.

[capi3101]

5 hours ago, Nezclaw said:

when your spaceplane refuses to nose down and instead keeps spinning around, pointing retrograde, then you may need to go back and fiddle with the CoM.

still, they survived that landing too.

This is one of the reasons why I try to design my planes with a NCS Adapter up by the nose. Being able to pump some fuel mass forward mid-air has saved many a plane of mine in the past...

But I digress.

 

Well, I had hoped yesterday would've been a red-letter day for me, and for the most part it was. Knowing that I'd have to bleed speed off over Kerbol to get to Moho from Kerbin, the day began with the departure of LSV House Corrino.

Bookending my screenies today, you see...here's Corrino heading out. When she comes back to Kerbin again (insert spoiler warning), she'll be down at least another four crewmen...

The ship settled into a position 1.285 gigameters over Kerbol to begin a velocity ramp-up (what with Moho traveling faster than Kerbin and all), taking the opportunity to deploy panels and refuel her Exotic Matter tanks while in close proximity to Kerbol.

That job done, I turned my attention to LSV House Atreides freshly arrived at Kerbin from a recent tourist expedition to Eve, Gilly and a bunch of other flying about. Strange Cargo docked to Atreides departed first, burning to intercept with space station Kerbinport; flight time to the intercept point was nineteen minutes, during which she aligned to within 0.85° of the plane of the station's orbit. The G-LOC 7a return-to-kerbin craft carrying rescuee engineer Stelgard Kerman departed Atreides next after a slight delay, with the capsule burning down to a 114.4 by 82.4 kilometer, 0.24° orbit. After Strange Cargo burned to set up a rendevous with Kerbinport at her intercept point (flight time to rendezvous was 47 minutes), the G-LOC circularized its orbit around 82 kilometers and then proceeded to conduct a deorbit burn to attempt a landing at KSC. 

So close...and yet, so far...

The G-LOC landed safely in the Grasslands 6.3 kilometers west-northwest of KSC, completing Stelgard's rescue contract and finishing up a criterion on the current exploration contract to bring back a craft from Moho flyby (Atreides having visited Moho on flyby immediately before returning to Kerbin). Only conducting an orbital spacewalk remained between me and finishing up the current exploration contract.

Shortly afterwards, Strange Cargo put into her assigned berth at Kerbinport.

Please make sure your tray tables are up and in their locked position before our arrival. Not that that would matter much in space...

Upon docking, the eight tourists aboard Strange Cargo joined rescuee pilot Thomlas Kerman aboard the awaiting Auk XI 10-passenger spaceplane (he'd been waiting for their return specifically), which then departed the station. The de-orbit burn was delayed for one orbit; the Tradidit Lestum Yards over Laythe reported that they had finished up their print of an Auk XVII 24-passenger spaceplane scheduled to deliver 20 colonists to the C. P. Baker outpost on the surface. Going out there, though, I discovered a bit of a hiccup.

I mean, call me wrong, Jubald, but I'm pretty sure the wings are not supposed to go through the sides of the drydock...

With the plane unusable and unsafe to release, I reluctantly had Jubald begin the teardown process. It will take just over 39 hours - the same length of time it took to build it in the first place - to finish. To make up for the delay, though, I decided to bite the bullet and have the crew at Baker begin printing up an Auk XVII down on the surface instead. The outpost has more available staff, so it will take quite a good deal less time - just over five hours - but I was hoping to avoid the hassle of a second ground launch...

That out of the way, the Auk over Kerbin landed. Owing to the fuel distribution though, the plane blew the landing by nearly 300 kilometers and had to circle back to KSC 27.

Absolutely nobody was screaming at this point, as you can tell by the looks of unrivaled joy on the passengers. The guy behind the controls certainly wasn't nervous at this point either....

Landing was a little bumpy but otherwise uneventful, bringing two tourist missions and one rescue mission to a successful close. A subsequent trip out to the Samwell Tarly Yards over Gilly for the transmission of a crew report for contract happened next, with my day ending at Mission Control and a selection of five new contracts, three of which were accepted (the two that weren't were ones for a new orbital station over Duna, which I don't need, and to move a communications satellite, which I really don't want to do...).

This morning, I wrapped up the last piece of business I had hoped to accomplish yesterday, which was to get House Corrino to Moho. The ship had finally achieved a relative velocity slow enough for direct entry into Moho orbit.

Bookends, like I said at the top of the post. One of these days I really have to get around to installing radiators on my warp ships, not that I imagine they'd help much near Kerbol...

Corrino arrived at Moho at a speed of 635 m/s and rapidly established herself in a 1,527.7 by 251.1 kilometer, 7.24° inclined orbit. An orbit is an orbit; ship's engineer Gemlorf Kerman got out and I got credit for the orbital spacewalk, closing out the exploration contract. Went to Mission Control and...

It's about bloody time. I went ahead and accepted that colonization contract while I was at it, too.

I had a little bit of time left for my pre-work session, which I spent beginning conventional maneuvers to put Corrino into a slightly better orbit for deployment of the TBD 7e Moho base-seeding rover/lander currently in the ship's drydock. Right now she's at 404.4 by 223.6 at 4.94° inclination; my hope is to get her down to a 125 kilometer equatorial orbit prior to TBD release. I've also completed Operation Baked Alaska, which was basically just crew selection for the Moho ground base - the crew will be pilot Neilrey Kerman, scientist Pasted Kerman, and engineers Anemy and Gwenuki Kerman, with Anemy slated to become the station engineer aboard the eventual Moho-orbiting shipyard. The remaining four Kerbals slated for ground assignment aboard Corrino - pilot Shepry Kerman, scientist Lageremy Kerman and engineers Necale and Sigzer Kerman - will ultimately crew the forthcoming Eeloo expedition, which will be the final set of bases anywhere in the system (Moho and Eeloo - Baked Alaska, get it? Yeah, it's stupid...).

So y'all can probably guess at my itinerary for the day, but here it is anyway: I have a Hellhound 7 rover and skycrane in orbit of Moho already. It will conduct the initial landing at the set of coordinates previously targeted(0° N by 98.261719° E near a Midlands/Highlands boundary) in order to verify the orbital resource readings. Assuming the area checks out, the TBD will release as soon as Corrino is in position and land, and then it's base-establishing time. This will be the first time I've done a base in 1.8.x and with the latest version of Pathfinder, so hopefully not too many surprises await me when I get to Moho's surface. I also need to do some refueling shots for House Atreides and Kerbinport (especially Kerbinport since there are no planes docked there at the present time). The plane I sent with the colonists out to Mun is almost back to Kerbin, so I'll likely have to deal with landing it, and Baker's plane doesn't have too much longer to go, so I'll likely be dealing with its flight up to space station Laytheport later today. LSV House Harkonnen has been waiting for a window to proceed from orbit of Bop to orbit of Tylo, so I might do that as well today presuming I have time to do so. I still have yet to design a Tylo landing-capable passenger lander other than what I've got written down in my notes, so I might take some time to get that out of the way (because I definitely need to get started printing the stupid thing). Longer term there's the plane coming home from Minmus and the Crater Maker Heavy 7 under construction at the Non Caseus Yards over Mün that will take 12 colonists now at space station Munport down to the Piper Alpha outpost on the surface. 

Beyond that, there's all the new contracts I've signed on in the past 24 hours. The vast majority of these are tourist and colonization missions, with destinations now at Bop, Dres, Vall, Pol and Laythe. I was already worried about how I was going to haul twenty kerbals out to House Atreides for the next run; at this point I've got 38 kerbals all wanting to head out to their various destinations. My largest spaceplane design - the Auk XIV - hauls 36 passengers, so getting everybody up is already going to be a hassle. Atreides herself can hold all of ten kerbals at maximum, my large ferries can do nine (I can get two docked) and my small ferries do six (again, two docked). That's forty kerbals maximum and the part count will be stupid high... 

That said, I do have a plan...which I'll let y'all know about it when I get it underway.

[Retro Starship]

 

Very cool mission here @capi3101

Please excuse my noob-ness here tho but what is that reddish glow around your rocket. I see there is some very tiny text underneath it that may explain it, but having this on my small tablet on my lap, I cannot read it.

[capi3101]

36 minutes ago, Saturn5tony said:

 

Very cool mission here @capi3101

Please excuse my noob-ness here tho but what is that reddish glow around your rocket. I see there is some very tiny text underneath it that may explain it, but having this on my small tablet on my lap, I cannot read it.

That's the warp bubble being generated from the 2.5 meter Alcubierre Drive amidships; it's engaged and the ship is at warp at full throttle in this screenie (House Corrino is just getting underway).

The text you're seeing is from Kerbal Flight Data (different mod). At the tick in which this screenshot was taken, I was 2 minutes and five seconds from a 958 kilometer periapsis over Kerbin with apoapsis at 2.47 megameters.

Edited January 30, 2020 by capi3101

[RizzoTheRat]

I've spent most of this evening frustratedly watching not a lot happen.

It turns out trying to debug the kOS script for my Duna mid course correction is a bit of pain when there's a 20 second communication delay (RemoteTech).  I think in future career firsts out in deep space are going to involve sacrificial Kerbals!

Oh and I'd forgotten how much of a pain the %&$£ Ike is!

[DStaal]

1 minute ago, RizzoTheRat said:

I think in future career firsts out in deep space are going to involve sacrificial Kerbals!

There's such a thing as non-sacrificial Kerbals?

[RizzoTheRat]

What's that you say Corley?  No parachute?  Yeah well I don't think it's going to be a problem

 

Take 2, MOAR snacks!

Edited January 30, 2020 by RizzoTheRat
Adding snacks

[Angelo Kerman]

I finished my new "MOLE White" and "DSEV White" texture options for various parts in MOLE and DSEV:

I also added in MOLE's new SPF-3 solar array (that's a size-0 core) as well as DSEV's new adapter pieces. Drakken Palace is inspired by China's Tiangong 3 space station:

[Cavscout74]

Finally tried to get some time in KSP after being overwhelmed by the real world for a week or so, only to have my laptop start acting up - or at least the power supply was acting up.  But I did get a nice shot of my MMV-ER-3 doing a course correction on its way to Minmus with its experimental Restock+ " Schnauzer" engine.  Beautiful work @Nertea and the rest of the Restock crew - this was my first chance to use that engine, and I love it!!

EDIT:  After restarting my laptop, KSP ran better & I got a little more done in my Out of the Sands career.  And came ridiculously close to killing Jeb - as in, he survived by means that probably had more to do with a game glitch than anything I did.

 

Edited January 31, 2020 by Cavscout74

[Warmachine]

Today I have sent out the third part of an experimental 4-part exploration plan. This "Menthe" orbital station primarily exists to process the science collected on the surface. On the surface sit a "Cadmus" rover and "Beachhead" base station capable of supporting the scientist and engineer sent to the surface of new worlds to actually conduct the experiments. The Beachhead has supplies and agroponics, as well as resource processing to fuel the yet-to-be-finalized light shuttle that moves the crew (and experiments they gathered) to and from the surface for processing/crew rotation.

Theoretically, the Menthe can be expanded with fuel tanks, habitation modules, and additional science equipment to fill more roles, but below is the base configuration. It is powered by a single MX-0 150kW nuclear reactor on the ventral side of the service module (top left), to simplify and stabilize power generation during dark side transits.

[RocketSimplicity]

So, I started a new career save, and so I did a contract which involved basically just walking around the KSC and doing EVA reports from the surface. For 50,000 . I, of course, being in the early game, accepted this contract. While walking around, I stumbled upon something I never expected to appear in KSP:

Spoiler

A TARDIS!

It's located in the level 1 R&D building.

 

Wow!

[Hotel26]

Who knew there is a cross-runway at KSC: R18-36?!!

Jack Kerman (despite the acrid protestations of the KSC Tower Controllers) spotted what he thought was R18 and landed...

Luckily, he had chosen to borrow one of @purpleivan's brilliant craft, the Boxo, which proved itself eminently capable for the task.  What fun!!

                                                                                                  

Meanwhile, I'm struggling a bit with my first-ever Science career.  Not enough OP parts.  And I may have spread my kerbucks(?) too widely across the tech-tree.

Fortune has smiled on us, though, with the timing of Kergarin Aerospace's recent video post, "KSP Career"!

"Kopy Kats R Us is on the job"...

 

Edited January 31, 2020 by Hotel26

[Mortimer Kerman]

I make a map. Really. I’m the first.

 

Edited January 31, 2020 by Mortimer Kerman

[KerikBalm]

Made a new cargo deploying lander with BG parts. Tested on Mun, but meant to be further adapted for 3x Duna.

My previous Duna lander was meant to use aerobraking, and still be aerodynamic, through the use of hinged wings:

Spoiler

 

But it had a problem with it landing vertically, and then doing a controlled tip over to have the cargo bay flat on the ground:

Spoiler

So I made a system to rotate and lower the cargobay, while the rest of the craft retains a vertical orientation forlaunch and landing:

Spoiler

 

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

I'm attempting an Jool-5. During ascent we had an rapid unplanned disassembly (side boosters got staged a second too early, the collided into the central booster), resulting in most of the first and second stage destroyed.

By some chance, the third stage (six reliants) survived and were able to push the habitation modules/lander into orbit.

And somehow just as I was going to upload an image of the ship in orbit, the image uploading website I always use got blocked by China's firewall. I hate my life.

[capi3101]

Well, I had hoped to be able to report the safe arrival of an intrepid crew on the surface of Moho this morning, but things in RL assured that that didn't happen. Main cause is a sick child, because of which I got dropped off at work after my other children got dropped off at school, effectively eliminating my early morning session entirely. Seriously.

So yesterday turned out to be more of a design and construction day than anything else. I had mentioned at the tail end of my last post that I had 38 kerbals in various colonization and tourism contracts that were now heading out of Kerbin's SOI and that I had come up with a plan to transport them all at once. That plan was a simple one - I would put three Mk3 Crew Cabins back to back to back and have engineer Jergar Kerman aboard LSV House Atreides recently returned to HKO from Eve build the resultant module in the ship's drydock. When finished, Atreides would be able to act as a high capacity passenger warp ship. The design is just those three parts and when the mission's done the module can either stay in place or be recycled in the drydock as needed. The dubbed Bus Module was easily assembled in the SPH and Atreides was ordered to begin construction, which will take 19 hours and 5 minutes. While I was at it, the South Base outpost near KSC sent up replacement fuel supplies first to space station Kerbinport and then to Atreides, with a shot of Rocket Parts also heading to Atreides. SL Shai Hulud in HKO also shot over supplies of Xenon Gas and Exotic Matter to Atreides, so she'll be ready to go as soon as the module's print is completed. I will have to send up more Rocket Parts to finish the print job, but that's not that big of a deal. I am a little concerned about the fact that I used the SPH and not the VAB to build the module - there's the chance it could come out sideways and either get stuck in the side of the drydock or stick outside the warp bubble and get blown off next time Atreides goes to warp, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Push comes to shove I'll lose nine hours in construction, de-construction and re-construction.

Next on my agenda was figuring out how to get all those kerbals up to Atreides. My largest spaceplane - the Auk XIV - is designed for 36 passengers and as already mentioned, I have 38 heading out. I also don't particularly like flying the XIV; she handles like a pig, especially when time comes to dock. For some reason, my brain said "two flights of a twenty-passenger plane would work", but as I didn't have a twenty-passenger Auk (16 yes, 24 yes, but not 20) and it'd been a while since I'd done it, I went ahead and built a new design - the Auk XVIII.

Take an Auk XIV, replace one of the passenger cabins with some forward fuel tanks, cover up the windows so the passengers don't freak out, add many, many, many more RCS thrusters and this is the sort of thing you wind up with.

I'll be sending up the passengers to Atreides in these. FAR does report an unstable sideslip condition at Mach 4 and 20,000 kilometers altitude though, so a test flight is in order; I'll attend to that when I can. I try not to yaw much as a rule under those conditions but it if proves to be a problem I can always increase the length of the tail fin.

I also went ahead with designs for a new lander rated for Tylo. The craft - ultimately designated as the Spamcan 7e although I'm pretty sure it should've been the 7f - has about 5,000 m/s of delta-V all told with a Skipper engine and can ferry six passengers. Not sold on the design though; its TWR is a bit on the low side for a lander. With only 5k of delta-V, it's also a one-way craft only; all landings will have to be at the Usumacinta outpost on the surface for refueling prior to launch back to space station Tyloport. Again, I'll probably need to do a test mission before I begin using it for general service. And to do that, I'll need to start building one at the Nomina Perplexa Yards in orbit...I knew there was something I was forgetting to do...

Design work done, I next ordered up a series of landers across the system in anticipation of the arrival of passengers at their destinations; in many cases, no landers were available at all yet, or the ones that were there were low capacity at best. The Nullus Recogitet Shipyards over Dres began work on a Crater Maker Crew Adapter while the Sleipnir A outpost on the surface began work on a matching Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander proper. Sleipnir will have the lander ready in just over three hours, with NRS's construction time expected to be just under four hours, so the composite lander should be able to be put together fairly quickly. The Non Pollinis Grano shipyards over Pol also began work on a Spamcan 7a 4-passenger lander, which should be done in about five-and-a-half hours. All told, the infrastructure for this mission should be in place by the time House Atreides arrives at its various destinations. Going to be a big mission, that's for sure.

But enough talking about that - meanwhile, over Moho, LSV House Corrino had recently arrived hauling a TBD 7e Moho base-seeding rover and lander, and after engineer Gemlorf Kerman had gotten out of the craft to wave at everybody, landings there had been green-lighted. I didn't want to just dump out the TBD though - I wanted Corrino to be in a fairly decent orbit first to maximize the TBD's available landing fuel. To that end, Corrino burned to a 404.3 by 131.6 kilometer, 0.31° orbit over the planet; she'd have gone lower but I didn't want go below the failsafe altitude for the ship's Alcubierre Drive. Additional maneuvering would've taken place at that point, but I was delayed by the arrival of the Auk XVI 12-passenger plane at Kerbin from its delivery mission to Mün.

Do you mind? I'm trying to land on Moho here...lousy planes and their bad timing......

Aerobraking there didn't go as well as it could've - the plane got down to 711.5 by 38 kilometers, so I knew it would likely enter on its next pass and cause delays at Moho, and sure enough it did exactly that. I did have enough time to get Corrino into a 137.7 by 131.4 kilometer orbit, at which point pilot Shepry Kerman, scientist Pasted Kerman and engineers Anemy and Gwenuki Kerman transferred over to the TBD and the craft was released.

"Hey, wasn't Neilrey supposed to be in charge of this mission?" "Yeah I think so." "So where is he?" "I think he was taking a dump or something...I hope he likes Eeloo......"

About this same time, I was notified that the Hellhound 7 rover with skycrane was in position to begin its descent to the Mohoan surface for final scouting of the potential base site area. The plane was rapidly coming around to position for its second aerobraking (and eventual deorbit) pass, so I had to make a quick decision whether to go/no-go for landing, and ultimately chose to try for it. The skycrane made it to the surface but hit it rather hard (a little over 10 m/s) since my attention was distracted, blowing both Terrier engines at impact. That said, the rest of the skycrane made it down intact as did the rover. I had just enough time to get the job done...didn't even record how far off the target I was (which I would've done in the morning session had I had one...). The Auk entered again, de-orbited, and ultimately affected safe landing at KSC 09 to close out my day.

So today I plan to begin with the Hound - I have to get that scouting mission done. If everything checks out, the TBD can come in for landing and base construction can commence, which will then likely take a good chunk of the weekend to complete (assuming RL gives me any time to do any kerballing). Apparently I also need to get started building a Spamcan 7e at Tylo, and since the tourists scheduled to use the thing are already aboard LSV House Harkonnen over Bop ready to head that way, I need to get cracking there. Pretty much everything else not already ongoing is tied up in Atreides's upcoming mission - there are six contracts involved there right now - or in other ongoing construction; the only things that aren't are a drilling mission at Duna and the long-delayed north polar seismic survey to Eve's north pole. I do expect RL to be hectic over the weekend (it's Pinewood Derby time, y'all - and I've got two Scouts participating with enough of an age spread for it to be pretty much an all-day thing), so I don't know how much I'll actually get done. Monday and Tuesday are also going to see RL interference. Push comes to shove, next post will be Thursday morning...wish me luck, y'all......