Null Cycles - Epilogue - Updated 2014-04-13 (Image Heavy)

[Tangle]

...wow. How does that even work? Was Kerbin teleported into an alternate universe or the future where the Duna-X Mission actually happened?

[Cydonian Monk]

...wow. How does that even work? Was Kerbin teleported into an alternate universe or the future where the Duna-X Mission actually happened?

Random unexplained phenomena? Wormholes? Professor Arturo? Time Lords? No real idea.

I restart all of my games at a new release, occasionally copying over everything from the previous or "main" save that is landed. In the case of 0.22 I just imported the entire save, orbiting craft and all. Since that included 7 the Kerbals at/around Duna and 1 around Kerbin, I had two of each of the "veterans." I /did/ hack the save to make it a career mode game, and decided to kept the new Jeb and the B's that it spawned.... I later went back and edited in [almost*] every Kerbal that had ever lived in one of my save games, so as of now the "main" save has something like 90-100 Kerbals (all marked as dead just so they don't appear in the capsule randomly at launch). At this point (0.23) there have been 12 Jebs.

[*Almost - I lost two save games thanks to a misunderstanding of how OS-X no longer "merges" directories by default. Oops.]

[ElJugador]

Cool. How'd you design the flags? And how do you launch from other locations? Kerbtown, Extraplanetary Launchpads?

EDIT: This has inspired me to start creating my own headcanon. When the economy finally arrives, I'll start an AAR about it.

Edited January 11, 2014 by ElJugador

[Cydonian Monk]

@ElJugador - Thanks! The flags are my own design, just thrown together in Gimp. I have a large file that has many layers, allowing me to quickly assemble a new flag from whatever logos and mix of stripes I want. The main logo (that I use most everywhere) was just a simple marker sketch from some years back.

As for how I launch from KSC2 - I've tried a few of the mods such as HyperEdit and whatnot, but as I only really want to move to the other space centers I haven't seen the need to keep them around. Instead I just "launch" the craft from the VAB, exit, then edit the persistence file. I've considered building a simple mod to do it for me, and even poked at KerbTown's code to see how it did it, but decided it was just easier to copy/paste into the persistence file than it was to build the mod and keep it polished. Intercepting where KSP wanted to spawn craft seemed a tad bit buggy.

[Commander Zoom]

That's an amazing odyssey for the Wayward 1. Kodspeed!

[ElJugador]

Nice. I just put together my first custom flag in the same program, but frankly it looks rather crude compared to yours.

[Cydonian Monk]

(2014-01-19 - We're having some issues with my web host, so if these images are broken please be patient. I have a ticket open on the issue, which involves nearly everything from FTP to email and HTTP delivery.)

--

The world has now entered The Age of Legends, a time when the powers of the world were fading. The chaos and great empires of the past were forgotten, ushering in a time of progress and continuity.

--

MunDust Legends - The Monk's Tale

Munlin was a simple monk who lived a simple life in a quiet monastery. It was a good existence, with his days spent copying the old books and records recovered from the old empires. Munlin had illuminated the stories of many great kerbals, their deeds lost to myth and time beyond the walls of his small monastery.

Yet Munlin was no simple monk. He had been chosen by his peers as keeper of the MunDust, and elected as the second highest of their order. It was his duty to protect a sacred relic, a vial of grey stone said to be from the Mun itself, until such as time as either he or the dust would return home. Only if he attained the high rank of Abbot could he pass the MunDust to another in this life.

One day, while on one of his long walks from the monastery, Munlin came across a peculiar old village. At one end there was a giant building, at the other a giant bowl. He recognized the bowl from the stories as one of those used to talk to the Kerbals beyond the Sky. A road led out from the giant box and reached out to a series of skeletal towers. Surely this must be the place where the Sky Kerbals of old left Kerbin!

There was a stack of old rockets nearby, rather miraculously preserved over the ages. A plan was taking form inside Munlin's head. He could ride one of these “Sky Spears†and return the MunDust to its home!

--

Several months later and many in the monastery had moved to the old rocket village. They found the formula for the fuel needed by the rockets in the old books they had been tasked with preserving. Many of the tools they needed were found inside the large old building at the rocket village. After some work, hey had one of the five rockets they recovered ready for launch. Munlin named it the Sounder, and naturally was awarded the first trip beyond the sky by his brothers.

They moved the Sounder to the launchpad, then waiting for the Mun to be overhead. Munlin was waiting in patient meditation. He emerged from his trance just as the Mun was directly above him, then spoke to his brother monks over the radio and asked them to move away from the rocket. Once everyone was clear he hit the ignition.

“Wow! I can see the Monastery from here!†he exclaimed as his view cleared the tops of the mountains.

“Now I'm beyond the sky!â€Â

“Can you reach the Mun yet?â€Â

“No, that's much higher than we thought. It looks so far away. The rocket has run out of food. But I can see the desert and the ocean beyond!â€Â

Munlin had become the first Kerbal to enter space in many centuries, but his simple rocket could do only that, nothing more. The Mun was far from his reach, but the first step had been taken. The rocket fell back to Kerbin and landed not far to the west of the old rocket village.

Munlin climbed out of the capsule in his patchwork space suit to inspect the remains. Not enough of the craft left to reuse, but there were still four more motors they could use.

Brother Archibald was next to fly. His craft, the Sounder 2, included a few samples of a mysterious Goo they discovered hiding in the corner of the large building. The monks were split on sending the Goo into space, but were reassured when they found stories in the old books about Goo surviving much worse than the emptiness of space.

Archibald flew higher than Munlin, but was still far out of reach of the Mun. Using the patchwork suit (the only space worthy suit they could assemble from what they had available), Archibald EVA'd and recovered the Goo. It seemed quite happy in the capsule until reentry, after which it appeared to become rather agitated.

Archibald also landed just a few kilometers west of their launch site, an easy walk back. He examined the Goo containers on the way back, and was happy to see he need not have worried about the Goo. Better safe than not, though.

--

Meanwhile, unknown to the monks, a new space program was taking shape on the other side of the planet. Led by the forgotten remnants of the Free States of Kerbin, the Kerbin Space Launch Initiative had just launched their first Kerbal into orbit. Kirny Kerman looked down at the world below him and at the endless space above him, absolutely certain he was the first Kerbal to ever enter space....

--

The monks decided their next launch should not be one of them, but a satellite instead. There were a number of simple thinking machines left amongst the ruins, so they fixed one up, strapped a radio to it, and set it to beep endlessly. They strapped it atop a rocket, named it Moving Star, and let it fly.

They would only know if their launch had worked if they could hear the beeping 34 minutes later, a number they had calculated using the strange runes and formulas in the old books. (Only Munlin was starting to get a feel for orbital mechanics.) Indeed, as expected, 34 minutes later they heard the telltale beeping. As did the crews at the KSLI facility at Cape Kerbal....

--

Brother Orsby's Miracle

Next up, Brother Orsby was to launch and follow the Moving Star across the sky to see if he could hear it beeping on the other side of Kerbin. With no need for further science they sent him up in a simple craft, named it the Flying Goat, and waited until the Moving Star was overhead. They hit the ignition with the best of intentions, but the flying goat had other ideas.

Hundreds of Kerbin years of rust and neglect caused the motor of the Flying Goat to explode at ignition. Orsby's survival was heralded among the monks as a miracle, and they declared him more worthy of a second attempt than any other of their order. (This miracle would later see Orsby elected as head Abbot and appointed Keeper of the Duna Dirt.)

A short time later and the monks had assembled the Leaping Goat and had strapped Orsby safely inside. They waited again for the tell tale beeping of the Moving Star, said a little prayer, and hit the ignition. Orsby was lofted high over the mountains and into the Eastern Sky, the furthest from home any of their order had been in quite some time.

Orsby patched the beeping from the Moving Star into the radio back to the rocket village. “Can you hear the beeping?†he cheerfully asked, with the monks on the ground responding happily “Yes.†He kept repeating the question every few minutes, until he could no longer reach the monks on the ground.

“Hello? Can you hear the beeping?†he continued to ask, awaiting anxiously for a reply. Then another voice came across the radio.

“Cape Kerbal Radar Station to Unidentified Orbiter. Could you please identify yourself?â€Â

“Can you hear the beeping too?â€Â

“Yes, we hear the beeping. Who are you?â€Â

The conversation from there took a weird turn, as Orsby tried to explain who he was and where he was from. The operator at Cape Kerbal was not entirely unconvinced a prank was being played on him, but recorded the conversation nonetheless. After his first orbit Orsby reported to his brothers on the ground his conversation with “The Others,†whom they took to be apparitions in Orsby's mind. (He had acted somewhat funny after the explosion of the Flying Goat.)

A few orbit later and the beeping stopped as the Moving Star moved beyond the edge of Kerbin. Orsby, tired of the weird conversations, decided to spend an orbit on EVA, admiring the stars. Surely this was where Kerbals belonged. Not down on the planet, stuck in the mud, but up amongst the stars, taking communion with the Universe itself.

With his oxygen supplies running low Orsby set up a deorbiting burn. He had hoped to land near the monastery or the rocket village, but he was never very good at math, and overshot into the desert. After landing he packed all the food and water he could carry in his suit, planted the ceremonial flag the monks had been carrying in the capsule, and set off into the desert. The time of the monks amongst the stars had come to an end.

... Yet the flight of the Leaping Goat had caused quite a ruckus among the KLSI, and the achievements of these simple monks would not go unnoticed.

But that is another tale, meant for another time....

Edited October 7, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[MedwedianPresident]

How...did...you...launch...from KSC 2!

[Cydonian Monk]

How...did...you...launch...from KSC 2!

Magic.

My normal process is to "launch" at KSC so the craft is on the pad, exit back to the main menu, edit the persistence file to change the craft's location and orientation to KSC2, then go back to the game, open the Tracking Station and load the craft.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to launch from there, and I'm not really sure why. More often than not the craft is violently shaken apart at vessel unpack, so I have to quicksave/quickload a few times to get it to stick. I've looked into writing a simple plugin to do this (or using one of the already available plugins such as KerbTown or HyperEdit), but I'm not sure they'd fix the "violent disassembly" issue.... It's almost like the craft is clipping into something, possibly the old launchtower (which used to be an issue anyway), but no collision is reported in the log.

[MedwedianPresident]

What are the coordinates and the parameters? I want to try it out!

[Cydonian Monk]

Replace the lat, lon, and rot values for the VESSEL as follows: lat = 20.6634488482173, lon = -146.420919536081, rot = 0.2746611,-0.7280167,0.4987945,0.3817816. I also add 357 to the alt to account for the elevation change.

I should note the altitude is wrong as/of 0.23. I've found most craft need to be 2 meters lower than before, so add 355 instead, but even that isn't very precise. Something has changed and I just haven't had the time to figure out exactly what.

[Cydonian Monk]

(I played through most of this back before Christmas, and I'm just now getting to it. Yes, I'm behind on a few things. Also: I updated the first post with some explanation, a list of all kerbals lost since I started playing, and a list of administrative positions in the space program up through this cycle. Expect a few rapid fire updates as I tweak what I've written and get the images processed. Enjoy.)

--

MunDust Legends - Returning the Vial

The door to Mission Control swung open, briefly exposing everyone inside to the chattering and roar of the news teams. Flight Director Chris Kerman had just finished the pre-launch press briefing and was glad to be free of the endless questions. This was a big day for everyone involved with the space program, launching a Monk to orbit the Mun, though not all were happy about it.

"Chris, I'd like to repeat the objection of the astronaut corps." Kirny Kerman, first kerbal in orbit, and de facto leader of the gang of astronauts. He was also serving as CAPCOM for this mission. "That should be one of us up there, not some unknown Monk."

Chris raised his hands as though to deflect to question and pointed back towards the press room. "I thought I left the vultures outside. Look, we all know this is a PR stunt. And it certainly wasn't my decision. So let's finish this monkeying around, move on, and get back to the plan. Ok?" Everyone nodded and went back to their desks. "Start the clock."

--

Munlin had spent the last two hours in quiet meditation as the MunRunner was rolled from the VAB to the launchpad with him aboard. He didn't understand why the crews here at Cape Kerbal didn't have an access tower like back at the abandoned rocket village, but assumed they knew what they were doing. He barely heard the go/no-go checks being rattled off on the radio, and only drifted out of his trance a few moments before liftoff.

He could hear the faint yet familiar rumble outside the craft. Smoke billowed over the capsule, the craft started shaking violently, then... away! Munlin watched the sky through the hatch as he sped upwards. The craft banked and rolled just enough for him to see the oceans to the south. The boost stage cut out. A few seconds of free floating, then he was thrust back into his chair by the second stage. A few short minutes and Munlin was back in the weightless euphoria he first discovered those many weeks ago. The second stage broke away and the transfer stage boosted the MunRunner the rest of the way to orbit.

A short while later the transfer stage reignited and sent Munlin towards the Mun. The program called for insertion into a Munar Free Return trajectory, with an optional Munar Orbit capture if everything checked out. So far everything was checking out. Munlin had offered to fly manually, but ground preferred computer control over that of a monk.

A few hours in and Munlin decided it was time to test the new EVA suit.

"It's so very peaceful and quiet here. Much quieter than the monastery."

"Copy that, MunRunner. We gave your signal on Mun Relay and show you at T-1 hour until Munar Orbit."

"Kerbin looks so tiny now. So very peaceful and small."

--

With Munar orbit capture completed, Munlin set out to do his only real scientific task on the mission: mapping the surface. This task proved to be a bit more difficult for the scientists back on Kerbin to understand, as Munlin would routinely describe features as small animals or various plants. That crater looks like a duck, this one resembles the leaves of the flowering obloa plant, and so on. His sketches were more useful, though no one could figure out why they hadn't sent along a camera.

"CapCom, MunRunner. Could you describe the far side of the Mun for us?"

"It's very grey down there, Kirny. Nothing green or cheeselike. Exactly like the old books describe it. Cratered. Lots of little holes and big holes, a whole family of holes. Very dark."

"Right. We've got your Munar Escape Burn scheduled for T-45 minutes. Please be inside the ship when that happens."

"So very peaceful. I wouldn't mind floating here forever."

Munlin dutifully climbed back into the MunRunner a few minutes before the burn, and returned safely back to Kerbin. The relatively uneventful trip ended with a nice, safe splashdown.

And thus began hours upon hours of interviews and debriefings.

---

I decided to start playing with mods starting with 0.23. Up to this point I had only used various visual improvement and data plugins, such as the Docking Alignment mod and City Lights and Clouds. Still, there are a few aspects of KSP that are completely missing and filled in well by mods. Fairings are one of those gaps, and I filled that with Procedural Fairings.

RemoteTech is the type of mod I had considered writing for myself before I discovered it existed. There are some aspects of it I don't care for (Flight Computer should really be it's own mod, the communications limitations of RemoteTech are a bit less like reality, etc), but it looked like fun so I decided to give it a go. After I tweaked it to include KSC2 as a ground station, of course.

I'm still hesitant to use mod parts as I'd like to keep this save "clean," so in building my communications network for Kerbin I only used the stock antennas. My network design was straight forward: Six satellites in geosynchronous orbit to use as the network backbone, a cluster of nine to twelve smaller satellites in LKO to serve as ground and low-orbit relays, and three satellites in orbit around both the Mun and Minmus.

I started with the KSO satellites. These are simple craft, with a couple small omnidirectional antennas and four directional dishes. Two of the dishes are trained on the neighboring satellites in the KSO grid for network crosstalk, one dish targets Kerbin, and the other targets one of three options: Mun, Minmus, or Active Vessel.

These were launched with the heaviest of my early-game launch vehicles, the Hawk. Relatively straight forward design, featuring the small always-on omni antenna from RT on the second stage so as to not lose connection.

Here's the KSO array prior to launching the LKO cloud or the Mun/Minmus relays.

The LKO Relay satellites were much smaller, and as such could be launched atop a single motor Kestrel. These consisted of little more than an array of omni antennas, and were placed into a 720km orbit such that they were always in range of the KSO network, yet at varying altitudes and orbital periods to provide a relatively random distribution. I only launched nine satellites, as that provided enough coverage despite the occasional gap.

The Kerbin comms network, following LKO build-out.

Building the Mun Network was a bit trickier, and required one slightly inefficient capture burn to avoid LOS (Loss of Signal). With the first relay in orbit, though, the remainder of the network was easy to build. Here's the first satellite on approach, still connected to the entire KSO network:

The Mun satellites were slightly larger versions of the LKO relays, with two directional dishes for talking to the KSO network.

Minmus build-out didn't occur until later, and would be out of place to discuss here. By then I had also discovered the source of RT's more egregious bugs (including the vessel duplication bug), and was working with a heavily-modified version of it (with antennas tweaked so I could use only the stock ones). I've since stopped using it and all mods that require ModuleManager for reasons I'll get into later. I'm still looking forward to Cilph's next release as I rather enjoyed RT2 despite its flaws.

For now let's get back to Munlin....

---

The MunDust lander was a good bit heavier than previous craft and required a larger launch vehicle. Wernher decided that increasing the fuel of the second and third stages of the Hawk should be enough, and didn't bother to give it a new name. "Why bother to rename it," he asked "when the craft vill be only used this one time? After the monk returns vith the samples, we vill have enough of an understanding of rocketry to build a new rocket craft, no?"

Matwin, serving as today's CapCom, spoke up: "But Doc, Munlin's mission is to return samples /to/ the Mun, not to bring any back."

"There vill be dust and things. In the capsule. There vill be samples whether the monk wants there to be or not." Wernher paused to let the obviousness of his statement sink in. "This discussion is useless. The raumfahrmönch is already on the pad."

Liftoff was getting to be routine for Munlin, and he felt a bit guilty for not letting one of the others take a turn. No, this task was his and his alone. Besides, the fairing outside was blocking the view.

The craft banked at about the same time as the MunRunner, but the main engine cut off much sooner. Strange. A few seconds later the second stage kicked him back into his seat. Fairing separation occurred far above the clouds. Munlin watched the islands slide away from him, 40km below.

The second stage also cut out earlier than before, and the transfer stage had a bit more work to do to get the craft into orbit. Wernher was getting nervous and suggested to Chris it might be a problem later in the flight. This information was relayed to Munlin, and they presented the option to abort and try again with a larger craft.

Munlin would have none of it. Returning the Mun Dust was more important than returning in the MunDust. He set up for the Munar transfer and punched the throttle as soon as the window opened.

--

Munlin floated silently around the ship, watching Kerbin shrink away behind him. He was in the void between the LKO and Mun networks, and had shut off the radio. He really enjoyed the absolute silence and the breathtaking view of Kerbin far below.

--

A few hours later Munlin turned the radio back on. He had just completed his Munar capture burn, and didn't want everyone back on Kerbin to worry about him.

"I've completed the transfer burns, and am preparing to land at the agreed upon location."

CapCom was much calmer than previously. Matwin had gone off duty leaving the more level-headed Rodorf on the line. "We're all watching anxiously down here on Kerbin, Munlin. How do you feel?"

"Normal. The quiet of space reminds me of the monastery. Just like last time." A short pause while Munlin double checked his numbers. "I've set up my landing approach and am broadcasting it back to you now. Can you verify the timings?"

"Roger, MunDust. Your math checks out. When you make it back here you might have a thing or two to teach the engineering department."

"We'll see. Coming up on burn." Silence for a few seconds. "First burn complete, setting up second burn. Wow, what a sight!"

"What was that, MunDust?"

"The Kerbinrise. Wish brother Orsby was here to see this."

"Beginning my final landing approach. Landing legs out. Looks like a nice and flat plain, though there are lots of larger Mun rabbits hopping around!"

"MunDust could you repeat that? Did you say Mun /rabbits/?"

Munlin ignored him and went into a tirade of "Wows." "I can see my shadow now! Wow! Just a few more trees down!"

Rodorf was too busy communing with the flight surgeon about Munlin's apparent lack of sanity to notice the comment about the trees. Mission control was once again working itself into a bit of a panic.

"I can see lights on the surface! Just a bit further!" Munlin could hear the dust being kicked up by the engines as it pelted the underside of the craft. The loudest sound he'd heard since stage 2 separation. "And I'm down! Time to go!!"

Munlin didn't wait for a response before he opened the hatch and climbed out. The crowds back on Kerbin watched as he descended down the ladder and jumped off onto the surface.

The first thing he did was kneel and take a moment to reflect. On the television it appeared he fell off of the bottom of the ladder. He pulled his Mun Dust out from a hidden pocket, the vial he had carried with him for so many years. He opened the vial, causing the air inside burst forth, creating a small dust cloud in the vacuum. He turned the vial upside down and watched as the dust slowly fell back to the Munar surface.

After countless centuries the mission of his order had been fulfilled. They had preserved the knowledge of the previous cycles, returned kerbals to space, and returned the Dust which Bob and Kirk of the Fios 3 had stolen from the Mun. Munlin had been chosen well.

He stood up and brushed the dust from his suit. The flag of his order was placed a few steps from the ship, marking this landing spot as a sacred place. He watched the sliver of Kerbin slip over the horizon for a few minutes until he realized Kerbin wasn't moving, then climbed back into the spaceship.

Or rather he started to, but stopped once he realized the dust was clinging to his suit. "No," he said as he tried to brush it off. "You belong here!" He struggled for a few minutes until he realized the futility.

Mun dust, uneroded and pure, sticks to everything it touches.

Once inside he tried to knock the dust off his suit using the compressed air from his air tanks. All that accomplished was to create a cloud of foul smelling dust in the cabin. Munlin was divided. Clearly he couldn't return in good conscious if he took to Kerbin more dust than he brought with him.

He decided to meditate on the quandary and entered into the trance now so familiar to him. At first for minutes. Then hours. Then days. His supplies were running low and no solution had presented itself. The kerbals back on Kerbin were getting nervous and irritating, so he shut off the radio, turned off all critical systems, and returned to his meditations. Surely the universe would present a solution.

He needed only to wait....

Edited October 7, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[Cydonian Monk]

Mundust Relics

.... until one morning when he heard a strange tapping on the hatch of the MunDust. He had been in a deep trance, and it took some time for the noise to draw his attention. Outside of the hatch he could see two lights and a glowing face. He checked his helmet and reached for the hatch release.

The strange new kerbal waved at him and tapped at the side of his helmet. He was talking and yet Munlin heard nothing. He turned on his radio.

"... I said, are you okay?"

Munlin nodded.

"I'm Calbin, and you must be Munlin. Can you walk?"

"Yes." Munlin started to unstrap from his chair, then asked "What about the dust?"

"What about it?"

"It has to stay here. It belongs here."

Calbin held up his hand and pulled a small tool from a hidden pocket. "Watch." He tapped the end of the tool to his suit, and all of the dust shot away and fell towards the ground. "Static electricity. Knocks the dust right out of you. C'mon, we'll talk back in my ship. It's a bit more comfortable."

Munlin followed this strange apparition back to his ship. He paused to take one last look back at the MunDust, and vowed to one day return to show more of his brothers around. It was such a nice corner of the Mun.

--

"We weren't really sure you'd be here, ya know?" Calbin hooked his suit up to the in-cabin air supply and started to spool up the lander's ascent engines.

"Are you not from the warmlands? The ones who built the towers that carried me here?"

"Uhm, no. Yes. Maybe?"

"How did you know to look for me?"

"Well, see, that's where it gets strange...." Calbin hit the launch button and Munlin was thrust down into his seat. Not the smoothest of rides.

--

Several munths earlier....

The investigation into the failure of the Minmus Visitor 1 launch started the moment Gene gave the order to "lock the doors." No one was exactly sure what had caused the instability that lead to the abort, but everyone knew a craft without parachutes would never land safely. Calbin had the worst of the jobs that day; as CapCom it was his duty to maintain communication with the crew during their final descent. Nothing the investigation board could do would match that horrid task.

The review lasted sixty days. The cause of failure was discovered to be an early jettisoning of the fairings, resulting in a fatal reduction of structural integrity. Abort to Orbit was not an option, and without chutes... the outcome could not have been altered. No one was sure exactly who forgot to pack the parachutes, and firing everyone wouldn't bring Kelgee and Jeddon back from the grave.

The first Minmus Explorer mission had carried with it a small probe. The idea was simple: two kerbonauts would orbit above in their HGR Raddish capsule, mapping the surface from a high orbit. The probe would be send down to discover what flavour of ice cream the surface was composed of.

This probe sparked a great deal of excitement and debate when it exploded shortly after touchdown, an event that accelerated the crewed landing beyond its safe timetable.

Many questioned the logic behind "exploding probe leads to crewed lander," but none bothered to question if they had packed parachutes on the craft. Seventy-six days later the Minmus Visitor 2 had both parachutes and lander, and was ready to answer the question as to why the probe exploded.

It turned out to be a rather uneventful trip. Perhaps not for Lars, who became the first to land on Minmus, but nothing more happened. The world got its fill of pictures of Lars bouncing around in low gravity, and the all important flag planting ceremony.

And as it turned out nothing exploded, and the metal lander legs didn't react to the strange ice salts of Minmus. Lars visited a few different sites, collected a few scoops of not ice cream, and went back up to Kening in the orbiter. Antics over, the pair flew back to Kerbin.

It was the third mission that proved strange. In the interest of saving money, the lander from MV2 was left in orbit, and refueled by the crew of the Minmus Visitor 3. To do this they carried with them an extra fuel tank.

Topped off and ready to go, Calbin slid over to the lander. His first landing zone was on one of the many flats, at a point where he could walk to two different nearby peaks. What he found there confused everyone. Off in the distance, not far from his lander, there stood a flag.

Not just any flag, but one of their own flags. Just very, very old. And a plaque. Also very old.

No one knew who this Bill character was, or what he had to do with Jeb the Junkkerb. (Assuming it was even the same Jebediah.) Calbin was ordered to take as many samples as possible from this spot and to head back to Kerbin at once. He decided to leave his own flag first.

Things got really weird from there. The exploration of Minmus was placed on hold and the Mun missions were accelerated. All mention of Calbin's flag was silenced. Calbin was ordered not to speak of it, and to move on to Mun planning.

It was decided the first landing site on the Mun should be along the prograde face. There were a number of unique features there that intrigued the science department, and a lander was developed that could visit multiple sites and be left behind as a science station. Lars was again chosen as the first to land, with Mitford and Oblas left in orbit. The heavier equipment required an even heavier launch vehicle, and ever more rigorous tests. Eighty days later Mun Visitor 1 blasted off from Cape Kerbal.

The entire mission had gone exactly as planned right up until landing. Lars noticed something in the crater below his landing site, lost focus, and rolled the lander. It required some tricks with the legs to right it again.

Following his "landing" he moved the craft back to the top of the ridge so he could take a closer look at what had distracted him.

The ground controllers advised him to take care of the "housekeeping" before he went to investigate, so he did the usual ladder descent, flag plant, golf ball, feather dropping stunts for the public first.

What he found was even more baffling than the flag on Minmus.

As it turns out, Lars was the third kerbal to land at this spot. (Fifth, actually, but he has no way of knowing that.) He climbed into the lander to inspect, walked around and read the plaques, and even tried to take to strange rover for a spin.

The ground crews were completely baffled. Another order was given to lock the doors - not to conduct an accident investigation, but to prevent a leak. Everyone started pouring through old mission notes, old newspapers, recordings of television broadcasts. All looking for some clue.

Lars was ordered to proceed to his next landing location, activate the descent module's science station, and return to Kerbin ASAP. He did at least take time to plant another flag and take some soil samples before leaving.

--

"And that was when we found you." Calbin took a break from the story to set up the rendezvous with the orbiter. "An intern found some old notes about your mission, and started asking if anyone knew about the Monk on the Mun. We all figured he was crazy. Gene, though, Gene knew the whole story. They found some old telemetry data that showed your landing site, and we retasked this mission to swing by and pick you up, or to recover... artifacts, had you expired."

"Oh."

"Which was the plan to begin with, as nobody expected you to still be alive after forty years. Ah, here we are." Calbin spun the lander cabin around to face the orbiter that had crawled out of the dark just a few moments before. "That's our ride."

--

A few hours later they were back in Kerbin orbit. The flight surgeon decided it was best to evaluate Munlin in orbit before subjecting him to reentry stress. Nobody was sure exactly how long he had been on the Mun, or what that much time would do to a kerbal. So they decided to defer his reentry until later.

"This, my friend, is where we part ways. At least for now." Calbin pointed Munlin towards the window. "There are some fine folks over there that'll take good care of you until you're ready to go back to Kerbin."

Munlin squinted, but couldn't see anything while looking into the Sun. Calbin flicked a switch and turned on the docking lights, bathing the station in their harsh glow.

"Kelgee Station, named in honour of a fallen friend. You'll like it there."

He brought the Mun Visitor 4's command module around to dock with the station. Munlin was in awe.

"How can such a thing be built in the sky?"

Calbin laughed. "You've got lots of catching up to do my friend."

Edited October 7, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[Cydonian Monk]

Building Kelgee Memorial Station

I'm taking a step back today to look at the construction of Kelgee Station, my first large space station in KSP since at least version 0.21. Kelgee Station has been a several month long project, during which I've encountered bugs, glitches, and even the mighty Kraken. Construction began on January 1st, 2014, and is ongoing. The station is named in honor of one of the first Kerbonauts from this cycle, Kelgee Kerman, who died during the launch of the Minmus Visitor 1.

Kelgee is an orbital science and research station at its core, and serves as a "home away form home" for my crews form time to time. It started simply enough, as the first segment included only the Laboratory, a HitchHiker can, and a pair of docking ports. The launch was part of a system test for the Mun and Minmus Visitor launch vehicles, and was used only because it was roughly the same mass as the CS/M and LEM pair. It remained in orbit as a piece of debris for quite some time until I decided to turn it into a proper station. (I should note that my screenshots of building this station are less than comprehensive. In many cases I only have photos of the launch.)

Phase 1 construction began in earnest after the Minmus missions were complete. The goal was to produce a livable space laboratory with sufficient power and attitude control to accommodate my larger plans. Photovoltaic arrays were to be on a separate plane from the living and docking areas to prevent damage from RCS blasts, and were designed to be modular to allow for unlimited expansion.

One of the very early launches included the best construction tug our tech could buy. This hard-working robot has been the longest serving member of the station crew, and is rather affectionately known as "Gerty." (Shortened from "General-Use Robotic Tug," or GUR-T.) Gerty is little more than two monoprop tanks, thrusters, a small reaction wheel, some solar panels and two different sizes of docking ports.

My process for building the station was to launch a component, get it within a couple kilometers, deorbit the launch vehicle, then send Gerty out to retrieve it. None of the components I launch have a probe core (that's part of the launch vehicle), so to this day Gerty has been the only real "brains" of the station.

The early component launches took some odd shapes and required some equally odd fairings. I tried to keep them believable, but sometimes that just wasn't possible, as evidenced by the long and skinny first batch of solar arrays. From left to right: Station Power Core (batteries) with the General-Use Robotic Tug, Station Control Module (reaction wheels), and the first set of Solar Arrays.

Five launches into construction and Phase 1 was nearly complete.

I sent the first crew up in the Explorer 3 on January 18th (Day 66) to conduct a gravity experiment and to connect things inside the living areas of the station. Lars and Jonrigh remained behind to help Gerty with the construction while Calbin returned to Kerbin with the gravity data they collected.

Before Calbin could leave I had to send a lifeboat up for Lars and Jonrigh, just in case something went horribly wrong. Naturally the lifeboat itself was the thing that went wrong. Without any power generation capability, the lifeboat's batteries died awaiting the rendezvous. Calbin was sent out to retrieve and recharge it. He took Gerty with him, and let the tug take the lifeboat back to the station so he could head straight back to Kerbin.

Lars and Jonrigh spent most of their time relaxing in the small Hab module, playing countless hours of "Settlers of Katan" and "52 Card Ricochet."

--

Phase 2 started just before the first Mun Visitor mission (in which Lars discovered Hudwin's landing), and was intended to bring TAC Life Support up to a working state. The first Phase 2 launch occurred on January 19th (Day 76), and coincided with the arrival of the second station crew aboard the Dispatch 001: Kerster, Hudrey and Kening. They were followed shortly afterwards by four more solar array segments (over two launches).

Lars and Jonrigh returned to Kerbin shortly afterwards to prepare for the Mun landing. A small supply ship, the Canary SAV-0001, arrived at this time. Phase 2 began in earnest following the successful completion of the first Mun mission. A second crew was sent up to assist with relocating the larger modules: Lars, Shellan and Jenvis in the Dispatch 002. (Never a moment's rest for Lars.)

The "Command Module" was sent up next. This large module serves as the central spine of the station, and includes a cupola at one end for scenic observations of Kerbin. The first launch of the command module failed to achieve orbit, requiring a second launch after a small construction delay. Delays....

The Port and Starboard habitation modules went up next, and the science lab was moved to the starboard rear mooring of the habitat module. For some reason no photos are available of those launches or of the modules being attached. It was around this time I realized I'd need to collect Munlin from his hermitage on the Mun should I want to activate TAC Life Support without killing him, so the Mun Visitor 4 was launched and Munlin recovered. But only after the Mun Visitor 2 and 3 exploded during ascent in impressive fashion. (The crews were recovered safely.) More delays.

That brings us to where we left off last time. One new member of the station crew: Munlin. Munlin returned to Kerbin seven days later in the lifeboat, at which time I quicksaved. Thankfully.

At this point all that remained before I could activate TAC was to bring the Life Support Module and the supply vehicles up to the station. (That's when things started to go weird....) The life support module launched on January 25th (Day 88). It was an uneventful launch.

Gerty was sent out to retrieve the module, and dutifully installed it on the port aft mooring opposite the science lab.

And all hell broke loose. The first sign of trouble was from Kerbal Engineer Redux. It disappeared. Completely. For whatever reason, docking the life support module caused it to remove itself from the universe, and right clicking on either of the Engineer7500s on the two Dispatch ships moored to the station produced funky, cursor-jumping, wild results. I managed to undock the two Dispatch craft, turn off their Engineer7500s, redock, then continue with no further issues. I chalked it up as just another weird occurrence and went on.

Lars took a snapshot from the command module while the station's computer was freaking out. No obvious signs of external interference. (And no fireflies.)

I then made the mistake of exiting the game and (probably) going to bed.

--

The next time I sat down to KSP, Kelgee Station was gone. The Kraken had come in the night and eaten half of the station. "OK," I said, "I'll just fallback to the last good version in DropBox." Well, Kraken got that, too. And the one before it. And the one before that.

As it turns out, adding the life support module (and another ship of supplies) pushed me over 255 parts. Somewhere, buried deep in the code of one of the mods I was using, there's an 8-bit buffer. At 256+ that caused the buffer to overflow, and all parts after part 255 failed to load. After experimentation I narrowed it down to a few possible culprits: Module Manager, Deadly Reentry, and TAC Life Support. (I had already removed Engineer's DLL before I started "testing.")

That seriously bummed me out, and I stopped playing KSP for a couple weeks (though that had more to do with lack of time than this bug). When I came back later I decided to abandon the save, not use mods that require ModuleManager, and to set limits on what mod parts go on what ships and land on what planets. (Basically: none, unless they're detachable. Cameras and SCANsat parts have since come equipped with built-in decouplers....)

In the end, though, I'm really attached to this save. At the same time I also enjoyed the 'Squad of BadS="Y" Test Pilots' I was playing with in the Thirteenth Cycle and I wanted to merge the two. Thus enters the quicksave from when I sent Munlin back to the Kerbin.... Time hiccuped. The life support module was never docked. A small reorganization occurred, and Kanawha SpaceWorks merged into the Kerbin Space Launch Alliance. And Munlin went back to Kerbin. Again.

--

So we're back on track, right?

Well, I can be a bit stubborn at times. After further experimentation I found that TAC and ModuleManager were not to blame for the weird 255+ part issue. (I'm not convinced Deadly Reentry was either, but nothing else changed.) So I started Phase 2.5 on February 26th (Day 116) when I sent up a new Life Support module. (Somewhere in between the "accident" and Phase 2.5 I also sent up a communications array and two new sets of crews.) Gerty flew out to grab the new module, and dutifully installed it in exactly the same place it was before. Life Support includes three water purifiers and two air purifiers, as well as some storage tanks and a bit of fluff for looks.

And this time the universe didn't implode. Next up: supplies. The ATV vehicles are fully automated, much to Gerty's displeasure, and as such can dock to the station on their own. Here, the Kanawha SpaceWorks Adena ATV.0004 approaches Kelgee Station with a fresh load of food, water, oxygen and monoprop for Gerty.

I also (finally) sent a full-featured science package up for use with the lab module. This should make the scientists happy, as previously they've either had no experiments, or have needed to EVA to one of the docked ships. Here's a very recent shot of Kerster pulling a spent Goo from the experiment pod to investigate and send back to Kerbin.

--

Phase 3 construction began on February 27th (Day 116), and involved the addition of a "South" Habitat (downward from the solar arrays), docking armatures for spaceplanes, and a special docking arm for use with the KSO Space Shuttle. I also added another set of solar arrays, more for looks than actual power generation need.

Adding this new wing required some module shuffling. The solar array and power system was pulled away from the existing structure (with station power temporarily supplied by umbilical from the two docked Dispatch ships). The new South Hab and its node were installed directly onto the Command Module, and the Power and Control Modules were reinstalled behind the reaction wheels.

The spaceplane docking armatures came up next. These are sealed tunnels, but as most of my spaceplanes use Jr-size docking ports crew egress is not a consideration. Still, there are a couple full size docking ports on these for normal craft to use. Most docking operations will move down to the South level to minimize risk to the solar arrays. These docking arms are the longest single parts I've yet launched for Kelgee, and did look more than a bit awkward.

The latest set of solar arrays was sent up, as I said, more for looks than function. I may retract the four innermost panels to keep them as protected spares. Here is the last set of panels being installed by Gerty.

Around this time I managed to get the"Kerbal-Sized Orbiter" tweaked to the point I was happy with it. This mainly included retooling the boosters to use solid fuel and to add stock exhaust effects on top of Nazari's Hot Rockets effect (for exhaust, and because Nazari's booster flame is almost completely un-animated on my system). Here is the launch of STS-1 with the last station module for Kelgee phase 3.

Helpfully, the KSO brought its own docking kit. This was shipped to orbit strapped to the back of the cargo bay, and required some minor gymnastics to get it properly acquired:

The Mission Operations Directorate has yet to find a use for the KSO, though they do admit it is rather pretty. STS-1 represents the Shakedown/Breakdown flight of the first ship in the KSO fleet, the as-of-yet unnamed KSO-100. Here it is on final approach to and docked with Kelgee station:

That's all for now, and this Phase 3 discussion is getting well ahead of the story anyway. Next up: the small diversion I made to the new and short-lived Thirteenth Cycle.

--

Construction Launches by Phase:

1: 6

2: 8

2.5: 1

3: 9

Supply Launches: 7

Crew Launches: 6

Current Mass: 132t

Current Part Count: 335

Current Frame Rate: Acceptable.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[Cydonian Monk]

The Test Pilots

Dudsel pulled the straps in tighter as he readied for takeoff in the R1 "Gypsy Moth." He wasn't really feeling this craft, but the techs had convinced him it was airworthy enough. Still no explanation as to what went wrong with the previous flight that killed Bartley, aside from their cryptic response of "pilot error."

"R1-013 requesting takeoff clearance for runway KSC-09."

"Clearance granted, R1-013. Happy hunting."

Pilot error? Dudsel throttled up and started down the runway. An experienced pilot such as Bartley doesn't make a rookie mistake like coming in 10 meters too low and hitting the end of the runway. No time to dwell on that now though, as Dudsel was airborne. He pulled the gear in and set about putting the R1 through its paces.

A simple out and back. Check the airframe, do some stunts, come back and land. Dudsel made some mental notes about minor issues, but nothing really jumped out and struck him as being fatally wrong.

Until he was on his final landing approach, that is. He came in reasonably level, dropped the landing gear and throttled back, and the plane just fell out of the sky. Dudsel instinctively hit the throttle and pulled up, buying just enough elevation to clip the bottom of the aircraft on the end of the runway instead of hitting it head-on. He somehow survived the ensuing fireball, and was standing by the wreckage of the cockpit when the recovery crews found him.

"Pilot error?"

--

"I tell ya, Al, sometimes I think I should've taken them up on that kerbonut business sooner." There it is. Aldcal had wondered how long Dudsel was going to ramble before getting to his point. They'd almost spent three hours in the "Giddy Goo Crashing Club's" bar, mostly reminiscing about lost friends and complaining about the engineering corps.

"Still," Dudsel continued from behind his half-empty glass, "falling endlessly around Minmus like skam in a can sounds as boring as it did two years ago." Dudsel raised his glass and said "Here's to boredom."

Aldcal raised his glass and screamed "To boredom!"

"Boredom!" Even one of the other slightly-sober patrons joined in a few seconds off. "Boresdam!" Everybody else just shook their heads or shrugged their shoulders and went back to their drinks. A pall quiet fell on the bar, broken by the routine sound of a rocket launch.

Aldcal waited for the roar to die down before continuing. "So when's your launch?"

"Couple weeks. You? When do they finish that rattle-trap mark two?"

"The Firefly? About the same time. Seems they're planning some sort of twin mission. Two of us fly up at the same time, orbit, then land at the same time. Something about safety in numbers."

"Ha!" Dudsel slapped the tabletop hard enough to make their empty glasses jump, eliciting a stern look from the barkeep. "Well, with me gone and Bartley hanging on the wall over there, that makes you head honcho, Al."

"Yipp. Eee."

"Aww, c'mon, it's not that bad. Just make sure you're straps are tight and you'll be just fine. Juuuust fine."

--

"Just fine." Aldcal pulled the straps tight enough to strangle a kraken. Hey, it works for Dudsel, right? "R2-014 requesting clearance for runway KSC-09." Aldcal tapped on the O2 gauge to make sure it really was full and wasn't just some fluke. Spending eight days in orbit in a cramped little jet wasn't his idea of fun, but the techs had assured him it was spaceworthy. Mostly.

"R2-014 you have KSC-09. The range is clear. Good hunting." Aldcal gunned it and was airborne before he even passed the tower.

"Tower? Please inform Kirmon before he takes off that this bird doesn't need quite as much thrust to get airborne."

The climb to 22km was the easy part of the flight. The noises as the Firefly slowly accelerated to orbital velocity? And the flames as the air compressed into plasma in front of the craft? Those were frightening. And then the little Firefly slipped out of the atmosphere and everything was deathly silent.

So Aldcal went for a little walk.

--

Eight Kerbin-days later and Aldcal was more than ready to make the retro burn and get back to solid ground. At least down there things made noises when they whizzed past. The approach plan had been agreed upon weeks before: Descend to 40km over the desert peninsula, heaviest reentry over KSC so they could watch through binoculars, fly out over the ocean aways and then fly back to KSC. Runway landing on KSC-27. Taxi to hanger. Get out and eat real food and drink real alkohol. Mostly in that order.

Except Aldcal missed the target by a hundred kilometers or so... Oops. Ok, so the flight back to KSC would take a bit longer than planed. Once there he lined up for the runway and came in nice and level.

But not level enough. /SCREEEEEEEEE/ "And there goes the engine" thought Aldcal.

Still, it was a better landing than any previous flights, damaged craft or not. He taxied the Firefly to the hanger and jumped out for the celebratory photo.

--

Ground controllers hustled and adjusted their math based on Aldcal's overshoot, and as a result Kirmon burned four minutes earlier. Perfect alignment, with most of the reentry heating taking place over the ocean between the continents.

Kirmon went subsonic just over K2 and started lining up his landing approach. By this time Aldcal had finished his debriefing and was up in the tower to coach him down.

"Ok R2-015, approach looks good, just a bit south of the target."

"Copy tower, adjusting north. Y'know Aldcal, this bird has a bit of a tug to starboard. You notice that?"

"Negative Kirmon, I had no off-center issues. Is your RCS balanced?"

"Affirmative. Lining up for final approach."

"Roger, Firefly. The field is yours. Still a bit south, please adjust." Silence. "Firefly, do you copy? Adjust north or break off the landing!" More silence. "Kirmon!"

--

"I suppose that was pilot error too?" Dudsel was sitting at his usual table at the Goo when Aldcal walked in. Aldcal just shook his head and walked up to the bar. He took the framed picture of Kirmon out of his shoulder bag and slid it across the bar to Pancho, owner, barkeep, and reliable old grouch.

"You flyboys don't know when to quit" she started. "See, I got smart. Stopped flying the crazy contraptions before I ended up a ghost on my own wall. But you two?" she motioned to both Aldcal and Dudsel, who had snuck up to the bar during her rant, "You two just keep at it. Flying about with your head ablaze, wings flying off, landing upside down, sideways up. All your friends are hanging here behind me and yet you keep at it. Why?"

Dudsel: "Free snacks."

Pancho snickered and smiled. "Horse****. You do it for the thrill. Some sort of kestosterone-fueled deathwish to prove who's got the bigger kerb." She reached below the bar and pulled out a small toolbox. "And I wouldn't have you any other way. Now which of you loons gets to hang poor Kirmon here?"

Aldcal started to take the hammer and nails before Dudsel stopped him. "Seems I'm the chief of the loon flock again. You can have the next one Al."

"What's this? I thought you were bigshot Mister Kerbonaut now."

Dudsel just shrugged and went to work. "One thing about space, Al. It's big. Really, really big." He paused for a moment to hammer the nail into the wall. "Big, and boring as all get out. I'd just as soon burn my hair off at twenty thousand clicks as freeze at twenty million." He put down the hammer, picked up the frame, and hung Kirmon at his new home next to Bartley and Ribrey.

Everybody paused and took a moment of silence in his honor, admiring the rather nice photo of Kirmon and the Firefly that took his life.

"He always was my favorite" croaked Pancho.

Dudsel frowned. "I thought I was your favorite?"

"You are now, sweetheart. Just as long as Al here doesn't have to hang you from my wall. I'm running out of space."

--

Dudsel pulled the straps tighter. Usual routine now, almost a superstition. He was liking this bird, and was confidant it would fly. Harsby had proven as much already. He set the brakes and radioed the tower.

"You know fellas, I think that Harsby kid might've eaten all the snacks. Could you have him pitch a new box of crisps to me as I pass the tower?"

"R3-017, you are cleared for takeoff on runway KSC-09. Romy says he personally refilled your supplies. Though we were a bit confused as to why you felt you needed so much if you're just going up for one or two orbits, over."

"Oh, no reason. R3-017 out." Dudsel rammed the throttle as far forward as it would go and pulled back on the stick. He wanted to get up to orbit as fast as possible using as little fuel as he could. No time to waste.

Nothing like microgravity. Even an old dog like Dudsel could appreciate that.

"Capcom, this is R3-017. We have a perfect orbit and lots of fuel left."

"We copy, Sprite. We have you good for two orbits and return."

"Is that you, Harsby? How's it going little buddy? I think you might've left your sketchbook in the cockpit here. Say, would you mind checking some numbers for me? I'll wire em down now."

"Sure, Duds." Dudsel spent a few minutes flipping through Harsby's sketchbook before the response came back. "Sprite, we can confirm your TMI numbers, and flight is curious as to your intent. By the way you might want to avoid page 20 or so."

"Now Hars, give yourself some credit. I think Ellie would be flattered. You know she was test pilot like us once, right? Anyway, I'll be glad to return your little art project in nine hours once I've finished my one orbit."

"Dudsel, an orbit only lasts thirty two minutes."

"Not for me." Dudsel switched off the radio and pulled down his helmet's sunvisor. This Trans-Munar Injection would occur right at sunrise. Fitting.

Dudsel spent most of the trip to the Mun thinking about what Pancho had said. Maybe this was crazy, to keep testing the untested and insane contraptions all the pocket-protected, glasses-wearing aerospace geeks tossed together. Still, he had survived more failed flights than any other test pilot. The more he flew, the less likely some other kid pilot would end up as a ghost on a wall at a bar on a dude ranch in the middle of nowhere.

No, that wasn't why he did it. And it sure wasn't because of the money. Maybe Pancho was right. Maybe he did it for the thrill. That was certainly the reason he stretched his flight plan and flew out here to the Mun. That, and maybe for the view.

He climbed back in the cockpit a few minutes later and switched the radio back on. "Ground, this is R3-017. Over."

"Dammit Dudsel! Where have you been! Gene and the whole Flight Operations Directorate have been freaking out for half a day now." Aldcal must've taken over as Capcom after Dudsel pulled his little stunt.

"Oh, I just figured I'd take Sprite here out for a spin. Say, Al, can you run some numbers and tell me where abouts I'm coming down in this bird?"

"That's the bad news, you fool. You'll hit the dark side of the planet, deep in the old CCHR territory. Two hundred years ago they'd probably just shoot you down and lock you up as a spy."

"Well, that figures. Look, I'm just about out of fuel up here, so unless you boys on the ground have found some way to burn water in the last four hours I'm gonna have to land in the wild."

"That's your own fault."

--

Sure enough, Dudsel hit the atmosphere in the dark. Though it wasn't dark for long.

Dudsel kept tugging at the stick, waiting impatiently for that moment when there was enough air for the Sprite to grab onto. He was coming in a good bit faster than his previous flights, and just barely got full control before hitting the thickest of the sludge at 4km.

"Now to find a spot to park" he muttered to nobody in particular. Finding a mostly level place at night was no easy task, especially without a good onboard radar system. He was just glad he didn't come down in the mountains. He flicked on his landing lights and was surprised to see he was rather close to the treetops. He found a nice clearing and eased the R3 down, barely missing a couple not insignificant giant green leafy things.

/SCREEEEEE/ Dudsel sighed. When would these engineers learn to move the engines further forward so the tailpipe didn't scrape the ground? Then he realized they probably just chalk it up as "pilot error" and wonder when these pilots would learn how to land.

Dudsel spied a small hill ahead and let off of the brakes. The R3 had just enough momentum to coast to the top, coming to a peaceful rest with a clear view to the east. He radioed back to KSC to inform them he had landed safely, then climbed out on the wing to enjoy the sunrise.

No, Dudsel decided. He didn't do it for the thrills. Or the money. Or even for the snacks. He did it so he could enjoy sights like this.

[Cydonian Monk]

Transit! ...and the Early Explorations of Moho

"First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?" (S.R. Hadden.)

The administrators at KSC knew full well their plans to build Kelgee Station would go awry. Even the first launch was suspect, being conducted not to build a station, but to test the redesign of the rocket that claimed the lives of Kelgee and Jeddon. So, to ensure they would have the required parts on hand to recover from a failed launch, they ordered duplicates of nearly everything. Primarily these extra parts were used for integration testing on Kerbin, but mostly they just sat in boxes in nearby warehouses or in a pile outside the VAB.

Occasionally they would launch one of the spare components into orbit. They were just sitting around, after all, gathering dust and rust. Why not use them to test out new rockets? In time these excess parts started to congeal into a fully-constructed station, parked in a nice 126km orbit. The ledgers and logbooks simply referred to it as "Integration Testing Station 1" (or ITS-01), and nobody really bothered to ask about it. ITS-01 continued to orbit in the shadow of the greater glory of the program.

And then the nearly bankrupt Kerbin Space Launch Agency (KSLA) was forcibly merged into Kanawha SpaceWorks (KSW), a company founded by archaeologist and explorer Camden Kerman. KSW was previously responsible for flight testing new aircraft and spacecraft, and responsible for the resupply missions to Kelgee Station. The KSW accountants were understandably a bit perplexed when they discovered there was a nearly complete and unoccupied station sitting in orbit. "How much did it cost?" was their first question. "What do we do with it?" was the next.

As it turns out, donating a space station to a non-profit organization results in a rather attractive tax credit. And there happened to be a wonderful candidate looking for just such a handout: KARTE - Kerbin Authority of Rapid Transportation and Exploration.

And they had a plan.

KARTE would first build out the infrastructure in the Kerbin system. Station One would be converted to a major hub for moving crews between Kerbin's surface and their destinations in orbit and beyond. Second, a station would be constructed in Munar (Prograde!) Orbit for ferrying crews to and from the surface. Another such station would be built in Minmus orbit. Finally, the Interplanetary Transfer Hub would be constructed beyond the orbit of Minmus, and would serve as the mooring point for a fleet of dedicated interplanetary vessels. Two of which were already under construction. From there various stations would be constructed at important locations, such as high Jool orbit.

Tying all of these nodes together would be a fleet of Shuttlecraft and tugs. Two classes of tugs would be needed, one for moving small (20t) fuel loads to the Mun and Minmus, and a larger one to move all of the needed interplanetary fuel to the Interplanetary Hub. Meanwhile, the simple and unassuming shuttles would be capable of moving up to five Kerbals and one pilot to any of the stations in the Kerbin system.

An ambitious plan, to say the least. The program administrators mulled it over for more than a month before deciding to commit to it.

--

Station One required a small bit of refurbishment before a crew could be sent up for habitation. Additionally, it needed the first of what will be a never-ending parade of refueling vessels.

Ground crews set about venting and cycling the atmosphere of the station to help reduce any particles that had built up during the station's long slumber. Meanwhile the KARTE representatives started raiding crews from the KSLA and KSW pool to crew their new station. Orbas, Romy and Derbal were announced as the first crew, with Romy and Derbal transferring in from the space program. Orbas, the only rookie of the bunch, would serve as the first station administrator of Station One. Romy was to be the first Shuttlecraft pilot, while Derbal was responsible for station maintenance and engineering. They rode to the station aboard the first shuttle, the thus-far unnamed Shuttlecraft Alpha.

Construction on KTS-3.1.1 Mun was proceeding faster than expected, so management decided to divert it to serve as the Low Eve Orbit transfer station instead. It was determined the second stage of the rocket used to launch it would be sufficient to transfer and capture at Eve, so a couple of refuellers were sent up after the launch. The Eve and later Mun stations were the first in the line of "single-launch stations" for use by the KTS system. The mass and girth of these stations required that all of the primary boost engines remain with the first stage, necessitating the design of a new lifter. Thus was born the Erne Heavy Lift rocket.

The single-launch station has all of the pieces needed to make it a minimally working transfer station. It lacks the lush living quarters and large docking lobby present at Station One, but most of these will be expanded over time. The tug is a bit overpowered, but will come in handy on stations that grow in the future.

With the original Mun station now bound for Eve, a replacement was constructed and launched. This station oddly was the first thing I've placed in a prograde Mun orbit since version 0.19.1. There's a small danger of some craft orbiting retrograde impacting the transfer station at 1100+m/s, but the risk-analysis experts consider the fuel savings in reaching the surface to be worth it.

The initial transfer of the station was actually something of a failure, and it ran out of fuel shortly after Munar orbit insertion. While awaiting a refueler the ground crews proceeded with the station assembly. The tug, considerably more powerful than it needs to be for these small parts, had no trouble operating at a several second delay. The first order of business was turning the docking armature around 180º so the lights would face towards the station habitats.

This freed the two booms for the underside lights, communications, and the solar arrays. These were quickly installed on their mounts at the core of the station.

And that was it! Now I had only to wait for the refueler to arrive so I could move the station into its desired 100km prograde orbit. This turned out to be a rather ordinary launch, though I may have over-engineered the refueler itself a bit. (The nukes really weren't needed.)

Rendezvous complete, the second stage of the single-launch station was refueled. The orbit of the station was leveled out to a near-zero inclination. Then, at periapsis, the final capture burn was made and the station was placed into its final orbit. Most of the remaining fuel in the second stage was then transferred back to the refueler, and the second stage was deorbited.

--

The Early Explorations of Moho

In all the time I've been playing KSP I have so far only visited Moho twice. My first visit was using the IASE Moho SC-02, a rather simple orbiter, launched and transported atop a purely chemical rocket. Shortly after that the IASE Wayward 1 visited the system on its "Grand Flyby Tour" of the Kerbol system.

From the outset of the 12th cycle I wanted to finally give this lump of warm rock the respect it deserves. I was lacking the needed technology at the first launch window, and only had chemical rockets when the second window came around. "Too bad," the mission controllers said, "we're going anyway." Thus was born the IPX-02 Moho lander.

InterPlanetary Expeditions, long suspected of being agents for the Shadows Kraken, had somehow come into some spare funding between the 11th and 12th cycles. All they really needed was a place to prep and launch their craft, space which was gladly leased to them by the cash-strapped KSLA. Mysteriously they were able to absorb the loss of their first probe, the IPX-01 Mun, and the first two failed launches of the IPX-02. The design here was simple: Get to Moho and stop a meter above the surface. With the limited technology there was zero room for error. Any wasted fuel would result in the suicide burn being short, and the shiny new probe would become a new crater on Moho. Fortunately that didn't happen. The IPX-02 launched on day 65, entered a parking orbit around Kerbin, left after a couple days, and arrived at Moho 39 days later.

Somehow I managed to land this thing on the first go. Blind luck? Just to see exactly how lucky I was I decided to load the quick save up in orbit and try again. (My saves are backed up on Dropbox, so it wasn't a big deal if I had to fallback to the "successful" landing. In the end five out of my seven attempts failed. I stuck with the last attempt, shown here.

With the success of the IPX-02, contracts were signed and teams prepared for the next launch window. IPX-04 Moho, a second lander with an additional comsat orbiter, was launched into a parking orbit on day 92. The IPX-06-MS Moho, a ScanSat-equipped mapping satellite, was launched on day 100 into a similar parking orbit. Unfortunately my transfer calculations were a bit off for these two (even with Kerbal Alarm Clock), and they left Kerbin's orbit about 12 hours too soon. That made finding a Moho encounter... difficult.

Still, we recovered and both reached Moho on day 135. The lander and comsat had insufficient fuel for both a capture and landing, so it was decided to sacrifice the landing and use the remaining fuel to circularize the craft's orbit.

The mapsat performed flawlessly as it had excess fuel anyway, and was placed into a nearly perfect 300km mapping orbit. If you're interested in a complete high-altitude ScanSat orbit for Moho, 300km is your home.

So, the next question is can we send a ship to Moho and return it to Kerbin? Plans were drawn up for a vessel named the "Moho Flame," but were shelved in favor of sending another lander, the IPX-09 Moho. Accompanying this lander is a large tug nicknamed the "Phantom Force" which should be capable of ferrying about 4+ tons to and from Moho. This (also incredibly over-engineered) vessel is likely to only see one flight to Moho, due to some expected improvements in fuel capacity parts. If successful, it will likely be retired into a lesser role as a Dres or Duna tug.

To understand why it's nicknamed the "Phantom Force," you need to install the Distant Object mod and turn on distant vessel rendering. For me, it has a bug that spawns a single OX-STAT solar panel just below the root part. (Wonderful mod otherwise, and highly recommended!) This produces the expected results:

The IPX-09 is still underway, having only launched on day 139, so the results of this experiment are currently unknown. At present no crewed mission is planned for Moho, but if the "Phantom Force" Tug returns to Kerbin intact its design will likely be updated and a crewed landing will be considered. Which brings us to the next subject for this installment: Crew Asignments.

--

Crew Assignments

Gene took a look around to make sure everyone that needed to be here was in the room. Content with the turnout he tapped his pencil on the desk to get everyone's attention.

"So here's the story. The folks down the road at IPX have cooked up a number of interplanetary missions, and have offered us first bid to crew them. Every single kerbal in this room has been here since the beginning. Some of you in test positions, such as Obble and Maclie, some as prime crews, like Lars and Calbin. You are the kerbals that will be landing on the planets and moons of Kerbol."

Gene let it sink in for a minute to make sure everyone understood. "So, who gets what? Lars, Tomton and Romon were already in training for an Eve flyby. Your mission has now been upgraded to include a Gilly landing, as well as some other toys. Calbin will be our first representative to dwarf planet Dres and its asteroid belt, and Jenvis will be joining him as a pilot. We'll still need one more crew for that mission. Jonrigh has opted to sit aside and oversee the construction of Jeddon Station, in addition to taking another tour as commander at Kelgee. That leaves two missions completely open: Jool and Eeloo."

"What about Duna?"

"What about it, Kerster? The IPX guys don't seem to be very interested in it, so they don't have any plans for a mission at this time. We'll probably send our own mission out after we decide on Moho." Gene paused to take a drink of koffee, then continued from where he was interrupted. "The Eeloo and Jool missions are tough. And dangerous. And very, very long. As such I can only ask for volun-"

"I'll do it!" Maclie almost jumped over the table with excitement, eliciting some laughs from the group.

"-teers." Gene grinned. "Well, seems Maclie is up for one of them."

"Jool!"

"The Jool mission will be the worst of the two, and might even include some construction work. Also, Chief Flight Surgeon Albro is concerned about radiation and wants to brief and examine all crews that opt for the Jool mission. You won't be able to get close to the interesting moons, at least not on this trip, but landings will be attempted on Bop and Pol. And you'll get to manage the robots headed to the more exciting spots. The Eeloo mission is just an out and back, with little to do besides land and take a nap."

"For Jool we're sending a crew of six, and we'd like a mix of rookies and veterans. Preferably we'll have an experienced member in each of the three disciplines, piloting, engineering and science, though if another pilot wants to tag along with Maclie we won't hold it against the count. Eeloo is a standard crew of three."

Kening spoke up. "I've always wanted to visit the old green giant, though I'm not sure how sane I'll be after 800 days with Maclie."

"Hey!"

"Ok then." Gene chucked a stack of papers out into the middle of the table. "So there it is. These are the mission plans as they stand now. Give them a good review, think about who you'd like as your crews, and let me know your decisions."

--

Albro, the Director of Flight Crew Operations and Chief Flight Surgeon, pulled Maclie and Kening aside after the meeting and led them to the medical bay. Albro was reaching a rather advanced age for a Kerbal, and it was showing in his white hair and wrinkled face. His voice sounded a bit like his words were being dragged over an old washing board before they escaped from his mouth, and the soft frailty of his age could be detected in his careful speech.

"There's something the two of you need to know." He stopped in front of one of the examining room doors, fiddled with the lock, and then lead Maclie and Kening into what appeared to be the CT room of the radiology wing. There were several other Kerbals waiting inside. Strangely familiar looking Kerbals, all grey haired and wrinkled, but still recognizable. And strangely similar.

Maclie looked around quickly at the crowd and gave them a quick wave. "So, uh, hi!" Kening elbowed him and gave him a cold glance.

Albro cleared his throat and continued. "As I was saying, there's something you need to know. If you go to Jool, there's a very good chance nobody will remember you when you return home. Your computers will fail, your communications will be interrupted, and you will be cut off from home for a very, very long time. You must be prepared."

"Prepared for what?"

One of the crowd spoke up. "To survive. Alone. With only the tools you take with you." His voice was also graveled and old, but in no way tired like Albro's. He still had a strong glow in his eyes. A power that no amount of age could take away.

Maclie laughed and grinned. The cold stares he received back melted his face to one of deep confusion. He shrugged. "What?"

"So, who are you guys?" Kening looked from eye to eye, face to face, slightly creeped out yet unsure why. "You seem... familiar."

The youngest of the very aged group looked around at his friends and stepped forward. "We, my young spacekerb, are Jebediah Kerman."

Edited March 25, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[Tubusus]

It looks very interesting, unfortunately I haven't much time tu read it all.

Anyway, I have two questions:

1) How did you change the textures of these kerbals? Is it some mod? And...

2) How did you make them without helmets? That same mod? Another mod? Or no mod?

I'm thinking of doing my own project and this would be useful. So I looked for the Kerbal model or texture, but I haven't found it anywhere in the KSP folder.

Thanks!

[Cydonian Monk]

The answer to both of your questions is shaw's Texture Replacer:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/60961-0-23-TextureReplacer-0-12-1-%2828-Dec%29

The latest changes allow you to select specific suits and faces for each kerbal without repeating textures. Though you obviously need an original texture to work from.... There are some suit texture packs in both the Universe Replacer and Texture Replacer threads, though I started my suits from the original textures as extracted from the Unity asset files. (With some help from a kind person on this forum....) Once you know the layout of the texture it's not hard to roll your own. You can even generate your own normalmaps, though I've not yet done that (probably need to...).

Edited March 26, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[Tangle]

Oh, it took me a long time to figure out how this worked. The society and kerbals of Kerbin are in an infinite changing loop, but every kerbal who was in the space program and made a flight isn't?

[Cydonian Monk]

Oh, it took me a long time to figure out how this worked. The society and kerbals of Kerbin are in an infinite changing loop, but every kerbal who was in the space program and made a flight isn't?

Bingo. It's a slightly strange projection of my play style (where I usually start a new save file with every new KSP version, but keep an on-going save that includes everything from all the old saves) onto the greater Kerbal universe. Fueled occasionally by sleep deprivation and my general lack of coherency.

[Cydonian Monk]

Nearing the End....

After giving it some thought I have decided to abandon this save when the next version comes along. I'm not just going to start a new "cycle," as I've been doing here, but starting completely fresh. There are currently three interplanetary mission in progress, however, and of course the new release isn't out yet. So I'm going to finish these three missions and bring this cycle madness to a close.

First up: Eve.

----

The Eve Gambit

First among the fleet of my dedicated interplanetary craft is the Eve Gambit. A small craft compared to the others, it has capacity for only three long-term crew members (and a full capacity of 7, but that would be rather uncomfortable for a year-long flight). The vessel comes in at 75 tonnes with 9123m/s of delta when fully fueled and without a payload. It has enough of a payload capacity to transfer an orange tank and large monopropellent canister to Eve.

Launching this craft required a custom launcher, as the Erne heavy lift didn't exist yet and my usual parallel-staged Aquila simply didn't have the oomph needed. Tweakables helped a bit, as I could (and did) reduce the fuel in the vessel itself, but the more fuel I launch with the craft the fewer refueling runs I need to make. The launch took place back on day 121 (March 9th of this year) with a total mass at liftoff of 718 tonnes.

The second stage was enough to get us to space, but the Eve Gambit needed to help itself into orbit. I placed the craft into a 120km parking orbit so I could send up the next part of its first mission payload: the Gilly Lander. The launch of the Gilly Lander was completely routine, and was conducted by a standard Kite launch vehicle. The lander has enough capacity to land two kerbals onto the little Evian asteroid, and will conduct a second landing there once they have been returned to their vessel.

With that done I set about launching the other craft that will head to Eve on this launch window. In all I'm sending four independent vessels: The Eve Gambit, the afore mentioned KTS transfer station, a lander equipped with a parachute or two to land on the surface, and what was a ScanSat-equipped mapping satellite. (I've since removed ScanSat as I'm up against the RAM limit and it eats more than a couple MBs.)

Lars Kerman, hero of the space program, was selected by his peers as the first kerbal to command an interplanetary mission. For his crew he chose Tomton for expedition engineer and Romon as his science officer. They launched on a completely standard Dispatch vessel atop a Kite launch vehicle. Of course getting the crew into the craft required some shuffling, as the Gilly Lander was already using the docking port.

With all that done we were ready to burn for Eve. The satellites went out on a single burn, as they were a good bit lighter. Both the station and the Eve Gambit required two burns. The first Gambit burn was about 3 minutes long, with the second taking another 4 minutes.

With the burn complete the crew moved down from the capsule to the Hitchhiker module, where they will spend the next several Munths attempting to not go insane. Their next maneuver isn't for some considerable amount of time later, when they make a plane-change on day 153.

Many, many days later and the first pieces of the Eve fleet were arriving in system. First up was the Eve Transfer Station, which will perform an aerocapture and park itself in a 2,000km prograde orbit, with the subsequent plasma light show. With that completed the transfer stage decoupled and deorbited itself, becoming only the fourth craft I have sent below the thick atmosphere of Eve.

Next up was the Eve Lander and small communications satellite. This one only skimmed the atmosphere of Eve and most of the capture was performed with the nuclear rocket. With capture to 200km complete and the periapsis still within the atmosphere, the transfer stage was decoupled and allowed to deorbit. The lander was decoupled at the same time, while the communications satellite boosted itself into a circular 200km orbit. The lander adjusted its orbit to pull it periapsis out of the atmosphere to make selecting a landing site easier.

Landing the probe in the thick atmosphere of Eve involved lowering its periapsis to 65km and blowing the parachutes. I had trimmed the chutes to open at half an atmosphere and fully deploy at 300m above the surface. This gave me enough time to pull sensor data in the upper atmosphere and lower atmosphere and transmit it without needing to worry about the lack of electrical charge.

The landing site was thankfully over land, and fairly interesting looking land at that. Nice rolling hills that would make for a nice base site if it wasn't for the thick cloud layers.

Next to arrive was the Eve Gambit itself. The crew was certainly happy to see something other than empty space and an unobstructed sun.

They targeted a 2,000km orbit to rendezvous with the station, but reduced their apoapsis just a bit too much on the capture burn, and had to wait several days for the station to catch up with them. (Or, they could have wasted fuel and pulled to a lower orbit, but... why?) While they were waiting they set about assembling the station remotely using the station construction robot.

While the Gambit was waiting to meet up with the station the former mapsat entered the system. Since the ScanSat pieces of this craft had been jettisoned (and deleted) in transit, I didn't see much need to place it in a polar orbit around Eve. Yet it didn't have enough fuel to do anything else, such as jump around Gilly, so I just played along with the role-play and set it up as a map sat anyway. Here it is with a nice view down at an odd cloud formation over Eve's north pole. It looks lonely without those ScanSat arms....

Back to the Gambit. A couple days later and they had met up with the station. They were in a hurry to dock so they could get to the larger quarters on the transfer station and stretch out. Since they have another 126 days until the return window for Kerbin, the plan is for them to spend most of it here before they head out to Gilly, which they can land on on their way out of the system. Regardless, the Gilly Lander had to extract itself from the Eve Gambit before either could dock. So Lars moved the lander in to dock remotely. Then the Eve Gambit pulled up to the new station and docked on the radial docking port opposite from the Gilly Lander.

They spent most of the next 120 days doing nothing terribly important. Meanwhile, the probe missions to Dres were arriving, and the other lander bound for Moho (and its huge tug) needed attention.

---

And some business on Moho...

I set up the capture burn of the new Moho lander (with the overly huge Moho tug) such that it would occur whenI did the plane change. This let me come into the Moho system at a much more manageable velocity, and allowed for a much easier capture. Yes, that really was a nearly 50-minute burn. At 4 time warp it wasn't too terrible, but.... I'd rather not do that again.

A couple days later and we were ready for that final capture burn.

Once in orbit I wasted no time deploying the lander and its satellite. The satellite will remain in orbit, acting as yet another communications relay near Moho. Network capacity is /not/ a problem for anyone operating in the Moho system!

I decided to place the IPX-09 lander down near the large impact crater on Moho. The orbital track doesn't show it here, but it landed just at the edge of the larger dark plains in a nice valley. The descent itself was routine and completely uneventful. And considerably lower stress than my first probe landing on Moho.

And yet another probe landed on one of the toughest rocks to reach in the Kerbol system.

---

...and Dres

Meanwhile out at Dres, a pair of probes I launched very early in this cycle were ready to make their capture burns. First up was the IPX-03 Dres Lander.

This interesting little craft had perhaps too much fuel, as I was able to safely land the transfer stage. I had originally intended only to turn it into glass by impacting Dres at near-interplanetary speeds, but then decided to land it instead. The scientists on Kerbin no doubt were giddy at the prospect of having another set of data points.

Though I'm not sure way the environmental lobby has to say about depositing nuclear waste on a pristine rock....

Same deal as Moho where the lander's satellite remained in the capture orbit and the lander set up its descent burn. Here I decided to land in a rough patch a bit south of the equator. Unfortunately when I dropped below some really high number of kilometers and saw that it was going to take me another 15 minutes to reach my destination with no time warp, I decided on a new landing site: that newer crater in the middle of the map view below.

It turned out to not be a bad little valley. Rather scenic spot, if it wasn't for the insane distance from Kerbol and the hundred day transit time.

--

The next installment will see the end of this series of mission reports. We'll check in on the Eve crew as they land on Gilly and return to Kerbin, and also follow the crew of the Jool Jester and the various Jool system probes that are accompanying them. After that I'll start to bottle up this save, and make sure there are no mod parts so if I want to open it in the future I can do it without losing craft.

[Tangle]

[Hey, I have an ending for this for some reason.]

All around the solar system, Kerbals saw it. The sun was flickering out. As one kerbal figured it out (the Sun can be rebooted by nuclear fusion, they said), everything vanished in a wave of cold, purifying whiteness. Or it didn't. Perhaps it did. Nobody remembers.

[Cydonian Monk]

"Saved the world and now nobody remembers. Figures." (Jebediah Kerman)

[Cydonian Monk]

How I converted an old sandbox save to Career mode... with Science!

"This Facility is closed." "You feel like you'd learn more if the Research Facility was open." We've all seen those messages in our sandbox games when we try to use the new science system. Frustrating, no? With that frustration in mind and the concept of my "cycles" already in play (where all Kerbal society resets, losing the knowledge gained by the previous), at the start of 0.22 I set out to convert my Null Cycles SandBox game to a Career Mode game.

And it was remarkably easy.

What you need to do this:

1) A Sandbox Save that has been updated to the 0.21 format.

2) A new Career Mode save created form the latest version of the game.

3) A text editor. I prefer vim on the command line (though I used TextEdit for this demonstration), but I'm a UNIX guy. Notepad or Notepad++ on Windows should work. Be careful on OS-X that you don't use a text editor that utilizes file versioning, as that really screws up KSP's load times.

Make sure to back up your save before you attempt this, just in case.

First, open your new "Career Mode" save file (persistent.sfs in the KSP/saves/<save name>/ folder) in the text editor of your choice. You're looking for a SCENARIO section named "ResearchAndDevelopment". In 0.23.5 this will be the first SCENARIO after "ProgressTracking", and on a fresh, stock save will look something like this:

Or this:

	SCENARIO
	{
		name = ResearchAndDevelopment
		scene = 7, 8, 5, 6, 9
		sci = 0
		Tech
		{
			id = start
			state = Available
			part = mk1pod
			part = liquidEngine
			part = solidBooster
			part = fuelTankSmall
			part = trussPiece1x
			part = longAntenna
			part = parachuteSingle
		}
	}

Copy the entire R&D SCENARIO element (as highlighted above in the photo) to your clipboard and open your old persistence file (persistent.sfs in the KSP/saves/<old save name>/ folder). You want to paste this R&D SCENARIO element just before the FLIGHTSTATE element, and possibly before any elements added by mods. Here, for example, is where it would be pasted in my Null Cycles persistence file (the highlighted line):

Once you've pasted that in the last thing you need to do is go up to the top of the persistent.sfs file and change it to a Career Mode save. To do this you need to change the value in Mode to 1 from 0, and possibly rename the Title to CAREER from SANDBOX (that seems to be mostly cosmetic though), the highlighted fields below.

That's it! Load your old save up and enjoy the new world that is the R&D Facility.

"But what happened to all the parts I was using in the SandBox mode?" you ask? Well, you need to unlock those with Science! You can cheatsy-doodle your way to a max tech tree by granting yourself free science by editing the "sci = " field in the R&D Scenario, but where's the fun in that? If you've converted an old save where you've landed probes on lots of different planets, the odds are good that you have enough to just transmit your way to max science anyway.

Enjoy!

Edited April 6, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[Cydonian Monk]

(Ok, so I decided to split this final update into two parts as it was getting larger than I care for in a single post. Besides, I feel like crud right now and the last thing I want to do is edit screenshots. We'll have the short report here where I wrap up the Eve Gambit's mission, and come back for the report on the Jool Expedition in the final post.)

Heading Home with a Stop by a Rock

It wasn't just vacation time for the Eve Gambit crew, and there were countless science experiments lined up for them by the gang at KSC. On top of that they were responsible for organizing data from the various probes in the system, trying to reestablish contact an older probe on Eve that had disappeared during Eve entry, and finishing the interior assembly work of the Eve Station. But time flies by when you're closer to the sun, and as their transfer window approached they bid their space hotel goodbye and set out for their landings on Gilly.

Catching Gilly was easier than I expected.

Gilly is so small with such negligible gravity that I could've made four or more inefficient landings with this lander. So I decided to send all three of the crew down for a visit over two trips. First up were Lars and Romon, the only scientist within a few million kilometers.

This landing was so simple I decided to do it on IVA, much like I do with regularity on the Mun and Minmus.

I somehow managed to land perfectly Between Two Boulders. Perhaps Lars will decide to host a parody talk-show here?

Lars got out and shoved a flag into the soft and porous surface while Romon bounced off to collect a surface sample. I half expected Lars to bounce up into orbit when he planted the flag, but I guess those space boots have some mean cleats on them.

"You don't so much as land here as you do station keeping with the surface," Lars commented while recording a transmission back to Kerbin. "The surface is a bit like pumice. It's still rock, but not terribly dense. As lite as we are the landing craft legs still push down through the top layer, and the lander continues to sway. We could probably take Gilly back home with us if we had a klaw or something of the sort."

The two spent a few minutes on the surface, taking in the wonderful view of Eve, then shot up towards the Gambit. The rendezvous was easy, with the Gambit barely managing more than a few meters per second above 5. Next down to the rock were Lars and the engineer, Tomton. Tomton was a bit worried they'd forget him and force him to become "that other guy that went to Eve," but his patience was rewarded. Lars decided to stay inside on this landing and conserve his EVA fuel.

Tomton was having perhaps a bit too much fun, bounding what seemed to be a quarter of the way around the large asteroid that is Gilly in a single step.

After a few more minutes on the rapidly spinning rock they both decided they'd seen what they needed and went back to the Gambit. This time they only got within 1.5km to save fuel in the lander and EVA'd back to the Gambit with their pockets full of Gilly-ian pumice.

Afterwards Lars remotely piloted the lander back down to the surface where it would remain. Gilly being as small as it is, there was no guarantee some that something left in orbit would still be there when you came back for it. (Even without N-body physics!)

With the crew back in the Gambit everybody said there goodbyes to Eve and its pet rock and burned back for Kerbin.

Aerocapture at Kerbin occurred several days later (unimpressive, really, and I didn't take a single screenshot), and they quickly set up a rendezvous for Kelgee Station. The plan was for them to spend the next several months in quarantine aboard Kelgee in case they had contracted some weird disease on Gilly, and then head back home to he surface of Kerbin. In the meantime, the samples they returned would be processed in Kelgee's lab.

Home at last.