Concentric

Lots of things! First, I saved a copy of my 0.24 game elsewhere on my harddrive, then I wiped the saves and screenshots folder of the steam version and updated to 0.25. After a quick look at the difficulty presets, I decided to start a new career in Moderate mode, which is basically already how I want it. Went through the first few contracts slowly, getting five different Altitude Record contracts - the first three just with an RT-10 each, just different levels of fuel and thrust. Grabbed some part tests, reports and samples, too. An early plane, performing part tests for the decoupler, LT-45, launch clamp and separatrons, then landing safely in the ocean to get reports and samples. I also restricted my research, only researching a given node if all nodes on the previous level were researched. (a previous version of the below, didn't quite make orbit. Nice explosion from the radial decoupler test) This rocket performed a couple of landed tests (radial decoupler and medium booster), got orbit and tested the Skipper there. It was meant to test the LV-909 hidden within, too, but I staged it at the wrong time. It landed in the desert, blowing off one of its batteries when it tipped onto the ground. More reports and samples! Made a small plane to test the jet engine and the 48-7S in flight. Didn't make it to space, though. I think it was around this time that I decided I'd built up enough of a starting stock of funds and reputation to start changing them for science. I went to the Admin building and activated both Unpaid Research and Outsourced R&D at a 25% commitment each. This is seriously science-lucrative, but you don't get anything for the lost money from advances. This exchange makes it easily viable to run a career without any science experiment equipment at all, so I decided not to buy the Goo or Materials Lab. I'll probably get the thermometer when I decide to put up a satellite. A rescue mission, also testing the smallest and largest SRBs in different situations, along with the Hydraulic Manifold and radial parachutes. The LV-909 orbital test altitude was at the periapse of the kerbonaut's orbit, so I got that, too. The return was mostly a guess, but it came down rather close to KSC, so I'm happy with it. A spaceplane, testing the Hydraulic Manifold, the structural pylon, the stack decoupler (landed), and both kinds of jet. Getting all the heights and speeds was a little tough, and it took two tries to make orbit and return to the runway. Finally, a little design work on something I like to call the Moth. Checking the new Mk2 parts out. A previous version of this took off fine, running out of fuel on the way to orbit. It could still take off with the added tanks, just about, but I decided my time was better spent landing the other plane. With the science gained from various missions, I changed the central three basic jets for turbojets and the circular intakes for rams, also using the smaller Mk2 Jet Fuel fuselage. Within the Moth is a legless lander and transfer/crasher stage for Mun, that should be able to return alone. I also think that the lander part could dock back in, if it were in orbit close enough. The Moth should be capable of a rescue mission and a Mun mission, also testing the LV-T45 on the runway - which I'll do another day.

Allow Revert Flights: Yes Allow Quick Load: Yes Missing Crews Respawn: No Auto-Hire Crewmembers before Flight: No No Entry Purchase Required on Research: No (so, entry purchase is required) Indestructible Facilities: Dunno, we'll see. Leaning No. Allow Stock Vessels: No. I don't use them anyway. Starting Funds: 10,000 Starting Science: 0 Starting Reputation: 0 -aren't these three the current default? Or do you get more funds? Science Rewards: Funds Rewards: Reputation Rewards: Funds Penalties: Reputation Penalties: I'll have to think a bit more on the rewards and penalties. Might start them all at 100% and see how things go.

Started up KSP after a while off. I decided to put together an exploration/probe-seeding mission to Jool, Bop and Pol. The stack of five probes (three orbiters, two - not even theoretically tested - ion landers) have a gravioli detector and antenna each and sit atop a reasonably large fuel supply that has two docking ports to attach Nuclear Drive Modules C and D. Speaking of NDM-D, I finally disconnected it from the old ManyMission launcher, landing that in the ocean before the KSC's continent. In total, the launch payload is 50.4t, which is still within tolerances of my 50t to LKO lifter. Not sure I was up to developing a new lifter with how long I've been off. I launched it to an 80km circular orbit, and then set up the maneuvers to bring the drive modules to it. There's still 70 units of liquid fuel left, which should restore the drive modules to full before the last lift stage deorbits and parachutes back down. I didn't take any images in orbit, though. I also didn't check the delta-v of the transfer stage, but if I'm remembering the masses and Isp correctly, there should be about 2.2km/s in there on the LV-Ns. With aerobraking and a good transfer window, that should cut it, I think. It has been a while... I don't think it'll make it back, though.

Well, then, it appears I was even more mistaken than I thought. I had thought that Jool's atmosphere extended to 200 km, for some reason, and also that the game wouldn't regard it as an orbit until apoapse was out of the atmosphere and periapse was above some cut-off altitude when dealing with an atmospheric body... Ah, so could it be that Jool orbital contracts are using a situation determinator that doesn't function well for that area?

Because your apoapse is inside the atmosphere of Jool, your ship is currently "flying", and not "in orbit". If instead you have an eccentric orbit with a higher apoapse, putting the periapse in the altitude window, then you can perform the test at periapse and it should work fine, IIRC. However, I might be wrong (suborbital?), in which case you've accepted an impossible contract that you perhaps needed to be more careful about accepting. Hope this helps.

This looked like the build up to a mod or set of instructions for .sfs editing to get it pointing exactly the direction you wanted, but it wasn't. And yes, occasionally I have had flags pointing in unwanted directions relative to the subject of the shot.

A couple of part tests, transmissions and a rescue mission. Also, lots of mission declining - I'm not sending a manned Eve/Gilly mission to plant a flag at this point, so stop asking. The rescue mission itself was straightforward, picking up Malcolm Kerman from orbit and flying back to the runway in SpaceplaneA. The circumstances that left Mal out there in the black are perhaps best left to imagination. The first part test was for the Launch Escape System. I put it and a probe core atop a large SRB with thrust limiter 40% - which gave a low liftoff TWR. That got it to the requisite height and speed, and firing the LES spun it out of control a little. It ended up almost stationary at 25km before falling, and then the strangest thing happened. Apparently, the LES has a much, much higher impact resistance than it claims, as it impacted the ground first and the whole empty booster bounced. Then it landed on its side and all but the LES was destroyed. Next, a splashed-down turbojet test. I wanted to find out the appropriate angle/fuel level to fire a turbojet, parachute and probe core on an RT-10 to get from the launch end of the runway into a safe landing in the ocean. It seems to be 35 degrees and half fuel, provided you use some torque to prevent the nose dipping too early. Would have profited without recovering, but I was still at 97.6% rate.

Built an utterly nutbars ion lander. I plan to send it from LKO to land on Pol and Bop and get back, all without docking through the power of xenon. An early version massed 5t exactly, and was exactly 35% xenon gas, which is almost 17.75km/s of delta-v. I then decided to check the TWR... and realised that a single ion engine would in no way provide enough thrust for this to land on Pol, let alone Bop. Even Gilly might be asking too much. So, more engines, more xenon, more batteries and more power generation (making a total of 13 RTGs and no solar panels) brought me up to 7.5t and a healthy Bop TWR. Total delta-v: 13.8km/s, by my calculations. That should do it, right? Part clipping all over the place. None of it required the debug menu, however. Of course, after that I needed to put it in LKO and test it on Minmus. So, I decided to make a new lifter. With the 5t version, I experimented with an almost-entirely solid lifter - five Kerbodyne SRBs with varying thrust limiters, decoupling in pairs radially from the core one, above which sits an LV-909 and FL-T200, then the payload. As you can see, when the last SRB ran out, it was very nearly in orbit already. Perhaps it could have managed it without the liquid part. It was at this point that I changed to the 7.5t version. After testing its ability to parachute safely, I stuck it atop the same lifter, to see what might need to be done. The first pair dropped at 10km. The second followed at around 25km. The core would keep burning even as the rocket left the atmosphere. I found some control stability issues with the rocket, so in a later version, I decided to add fins to the bottom. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite able to get to orbit without using the ion engines of the payload. I reverted to vehicle assembly after testing its safe landing capabilities by parachuting into the ocean. Twice the liquid fuel should make circularisation possible. Also, the fins here are on the core, as putting them on the outer boosters was found to cause them to collide with the core when decoupling. Solid fuel ran out while suborbital, but there was enough liquid fuel to circularise at 80km. The circularisation could have been more efficient - not that it mattered, there was still a little fuel left over. So, anyway, Minmus. Didn't bother to check for contracts related to Minmus, and only took a thermometer reading. This isn't about that, it's about confirming the lander's capabilities. It took several burns of reasonable length to get the Minmus encounter, but orbit, deorbit and landing were much simpler. Then it was return time. Decided to use a Mun flyby to bring the orbit down somewhat. I then repeatedly aerobraked until the apoapse was below 240km and made a couple of tries at landing at KSC. It was a no-go on that front, but I wasn't on the other side of the planet, either. A safe return and recovery. For once, I didn't gain any money from this successful launch whatsoever. The cost was low enough to keep me over the 20 million line only due to the recovery value.

Yeah, but I've run into the Mysterious Autoreenabling Crossfeed before, and on top of that, there's the chance I'd forget to do it. Still, there are times that I know for certain I've disabled crossfeed, but suddenly it's back and draining from the wrong tanks. The plate costs next to nothing and works 100% of the time.

Mostly some design and test work for a Moho lander and an Eeloo lander. For Eeloo, I first built a slightly over-engineered two-stage Mun lander with a docking port on the top - a nuclear transfer tug should work fine. The "descent stage" is a set of three drop tanks that also have the landing legs on them, and the ascent stage has a single FL-T100 as its fuel. It's set up so that the ascent stage's 48-7S engine is the only engine used. I checked its TWR: with the outer tanks empty (accounting for less than half its mass), it has a TWR greater than 1 on Kerbin, so there's plenty of thrust. Next, a delta-v calculation. The first stage has a little over 1820 m/s of delta-v, which should be able to land on Mun, take off, and very nearly land again. The second stage has almost 1100 m/s delta-v, which could finish the landing and get it back to Mun orbit, so I'm confident in the capability of this lander to perform an Eeloo landing and orbital rendezvous with an appropriate transfer stage. Checking the wiki tells me that Moho needs only 1400 m/s to land from low orbit, so, technically, this might be able to land on Moho. But to be on the safe side, I added a pair of ROUND-8 tanks to the ascent stage. While this decreases the descent stage's delta-v, the overall delta-v increases by roughly 200 m/s, and both ascent and descent stages have over 1400 m/s of delta-v available. The total mass of the lander remains under 4 tons, so it shouldn't be difficult to get together a transfer stage that'll propel it to its destination. After that, I decided to put the Eeloo lander through its paces: a double Mun landing should suffice. So, I threw together a strange-looking lifter/transfer stage that would also test the TT-70 in flight. Lander cost 17.9k, total cost ~50k (but definitely <51k). There's a structural plate between the docking clamps to keep the fuel from crossfeeding - it's cheaper than a stack separator. The TT-70 test came around the beginning of the gravity turn, just after I dropped the boosters. By that time, the droptanks were empty, but the first asparagus stage had yet to come. The apoapse was still in the atmosphere when I switched to the LV-909, and the periapse had yet to appear. Fortunately, there was sufficient thrust to get orbit. The periapse rose well before I was out of the atmosphere: once I reached apoapse, less than 50 m/s remained to circularise. This might have been one of my more efficient ascents... Burned the transfer to Mun without a maneuver node. Not as though I haven't done it plenty of times before. Arrived at the Mun and burned into a nice circular 50 km orbit. Then, I decoupled the lander from the plate, and the plate from the transfer stage. Immediately, the docking clamps attracted each other and docked together again, ignoring the plate between. I undocked again - perhaps I should have left the plate on the transfer stage until it needed to be removed. And descended into the East Farside crater. Hadn't been there on this save yet. The landing was fine, and I got Jeb out, did a report, planted a flag and climbed back in. Didn't take pictures of that, it seems. Back up to orbit. I decided to make it a lower one, thinking I might run low on fuel. I landed again, on the other side of the Mun, on the southern edge of the Northwest crater. These aren't quite antipodal points, but they're certainly distant. Fuel in the drop tanks ran out on the way down, but as they had the landing legs on, I didn't drop them until I started my ascent. Ran out of LFO before getting orbit - my aim was the 50 km circular orbit of the transfer stage, but that didn't quite work out. I tried to see if I could perform a suborbital rendezvous, but the timing was all wrong for it. Fortunately, I had monopropellant with which to circularise at 45 km. Here you can see the two flags. This is the transfer stage's orbit after an attempt at getting rendezvous with the suborbital ascent stage - I didn't do it through maneuver nodes. The actual rendezvous I used several maneuvers to set up, however. Docking used up most of the remaining monopropellant - I wasn't stingy with it. Escaped the Mun to a shallow aerobrake. Additional burning put me into a 150 km circular orbit. As you can see, very little fuel remained, and I transferred that to the lander. There's a parachute hidden under the lander's docking port, and no such thing on the transfer stage. I decided to leave the transfer stage empty in orbit - might make a docking target, if nothing else. Brought the periapse a little low for a pinpoint return to KSC, but I'm content with the result: 190 km away in the ocean on the other side of the continent. Decided to light up the night ocean as I came down. A safe recovery also completed another contract: data from space around Kerbin. Decided to grab the report from over the desert rather than transmit from a satellite.

I've never been to Moho or Eeloo, never landed or orbited Tylo (manned flyby only), and never sent Kerbals to Eve or Gilly. I try to ensure my manned missions are return missions, or can at least be rescued, so Tylo and Eve will probably be the last ones I send people to. My Eve probe was also one-way, as it was almost a side mission to the Gilly return probe.

Does the launchpad have a "Flying" situation? I thought it only had the "Landed", "Space over" and "High over" situations... Of course, the space ones may have been removed since I heard of them.

I used a KS-25x4 and an LV-N test contract set to put up my Minmus mission, second manned Mun landing of the career, perform an orbital rescue and put up a set of four nuclear drive modules (LV-N, FL-T100, probe core, batteries, solar panels and a docking port) all in one launch. I now have the science to unlock both of those nodes, but I haven't used all of the drive modules yet. Two are at Duna with the Duna-Ike mission, one's still unused and attached to the launcher in LKO, and the last is docked to a fuel tank elsewhere in LKO after pushing a spaceplane to Mun and back (the fuel tank was because it ran out on the way back). That's really the only time I've kept an experimental part around for other things after completing a test - the others have just gone back and been recovered - or, in the case of the orbital SRB/escaping gear bay, just drifted out into interplanetary space until batteries ran out.

Explored Eve and Gilly, losing my planned Gilly satellite in the process. A circular orbit close enough to get the "Near Gilly" science (and thus transmit temperature readings) is also close enough to hit Gilly's mountains and be destroyed. Finally, I crossed the 20 million mark on my funding. My first attempt had to be scrapped, as while I was doing other things and waiting for my Gilly lander to get above the day side, the lander crashed and broke off its solar panels. I restored to the quicksave I made when entering Eve's sphere of influence, and continued from there. First, I took gravitic readings - the Gilly lander probe is intended to return to Kerbin with six different gravitic readings, three temperature readings and even a seismic reading - the expensive equipment and high value data should all make it back. Anyway, aerocapture at 60 km followed by a few shallower aerobrakes brought me down to a nice 355 km over 100 km orbit - all in the Near Eve region. I took readings, transmitting one temperature and keeping the other on the Gilly lander. Then, I targeted Gilly and corrected inclination. I brought the periapse into the atmosphere and decoupled the Eve lander probe, before turning around to get back into a stable low Eve orbit and decouple the Eve satellite. I changed focus to the lander-probe. That xenon tank had supplied the fuel for the entire journey before it was decoupled and it still had a little left. But emptying it would just be wasting fuel for the sake of wasting fuel. Parachuting small things down to Eve surface safely is not difficult. I happened to come down in the water, but fortunately, splashdown transmissions count as far as the exploration contract is concerned. The parachute appears to be the only reason this thing floats at all... Anyway, that's one contract down. Back to the Gilly ship, it's about time to make the transfer. With my inclination already correct, and the encounter near both apoapses, this should be relatively easy. Got orbit simply enough. A 5500km retrograde circular orbit is where I decoupled the Gilly satellite, then I turned completely around to go and do the landing on the day side. That also was rather straightforward, if a little slow. I took all the readings I wanted, transmitting orbital and landed temperatures, and keeping a copy of each alongside all three Gilly gravity readings and the seismic one. After that, I launched back to Eve orbit, escaping Gilly immediately after I had completed its exploration contract. At some point before the landing, however, the Gilly satellite hit a mountain and was annihilated. With some aerobraking and a little fuel use, I got down into a 100km circular orbit to await the return window in a little over a year. Still got over 4 km/s of delta-v, so I should be able to get this back to LKO and take as many attempts as is necessary to land arbitrarily close to KSC. That return window is after the Duna one, though, so it'll have to wait. My next Exploration contracts are Jool, Pol and Bop! Perhaps I'll be able to leave satellites at each next time...

Went and looked up the figures for my 50t to LKO lifter that I used to put up my Fueldump station and my Duna-Ike mission. The whole lifter is a little under 140k (about √1500 under), and the recoverable central core is roughly 50k when empty. So, 70k for 50t to LKO is cheaper than what I pay, even if I recover everything I can. I remember my basic orbital rescue SSTO, SpaceplaneA, is about 30k, which flies back to runway so only pays fuel cost. Don't really have any other standard equipment, except my outdated disposable rescue rocket that I can't remember the cost of. Anyway, science satellites and a "Mun base" (a lander that I'm certain can return, but stays to plant flags for missions) mean that money isn't really a problem. Perhaps in future I'll look into serious cost-cutting, maybe when preparing for a another career once that's imminent. Considering that I currently plan for my next career to be a no-experiment one (no science instruments, no crew/EVA reports. Part Testing will be the source of my science points), I won't be able to depend on data missions to fund everything, so it might just become important.

Just some messing about. Made a tiny lander-probe: mass 0.2t, TWR ~8 on Kerbin surface and 1014 m/s vacuum delta-v. Along with two smaller, propulsion-less probes, these make up the planned payload for my Single-Stage to Laythe spaceplane. Unfortunately, that ran into a small problem in today's launch. I noted that I was basically inside a Jool transfer window, so after a little reworking and attaching the payload, I launched. The undercarriage is busier than ever, holding all three payloads in two locations. This plane is meant to enter the K-Prize challenge - the plan is that in Jool orbit, I'll undock the propelled probe, then redock it also in Jool orbit, then undock it again (to get the orbital-docking credit, and Payload to Jool orbit). That probe will also provide orbital science from Jool for the exploration contract and future data contracts. Then, in Laythe orbit, one of the unpropelled probes will detach for much the same reason. The final one will detach after a Laythe landing, and then, the plane will take off and fly back to KSC runway. Ambitious. I had to bounce twice to get the apoapse high enough above the atmosphere to circularise... I pretty much circumnavigated the planet before I managed to finish the circularisation. I probably need more practice, trying different ascent profiles and figuring out what works. Very little liquid fuel remained - perhaps not enough to take off at Laythe. I had a little over 5850 m/s left on ions... and barring perfect trajectory, I don't think that'll cut it to get there and back. But I gave it a shot. Only once I had wasted a bunch of xenon on a bad escape-preparatory path, with a crazy hour-long burn left to get the Jool encounter (and another 115 m/s correction planned halfway to get periapse into Jool's atomsphere), did I decide to revert the flight and add more xenon. Subsequent design modifications almost doubled the xenon supply and added more RTGs - but now I think I'll need a touch more liquid fuel. Perhaps I'll clip a nacelle or two in, or something. That might help, right? This SSTLaB plane is getting nuttier by the minute...

Thanks to the keen eyes of two forumers in two different threads, a solution to my Duna ship's woes was implemented! I put their names on the Duna flag plaque, which also happened to be a contract-fulfilling flag-planting. The contracts: both the Duna and Ike exploration contracts, then a science from space near and a flag plant for each of them. So, twisting and turning the Duna lander module, then docking it in place with the pods out of the way of the engines perfectly solved the problem without need for relaunch. I immediately burned the transfer, then suddenly realised that I hadn't attached the scientific instrumentation modules. Fortunately, they were on an ion tug that still had over 2750 xenon, so they could actually transfer separately. It took several orbits to get the escape to work, but I managed it. The trajectory of the tug was such that it would actually arrive at Duna first, and even get into orbit before the Eve-Gilly probe stack had its escape burn (I won't elaborate on the Eve-Gilly probe stack here). If I ever want to do more complex simultaneous missions, I should probably get Kerbal Alarm Clock... I deorbited the lifter core relatively close to KSC, recovering it at a 97% rate in the ocean. I'm not sure it would have survived hitting the ground instead. The tug got a flyby of Ike on its way in, and took a gravity scan high above Duna. Then, I put it into a nice, equatorial 100 km circular orbit. It still has over 2000 xenon left... I guess it can still be useful. I had another Ike flyby with Bob. He took the opportunity to take some reports, transmitting a crew report to complete a Science from Ike orbit contract. It took several attempts at burning over Ike to get the right periapse to aerobrake into Duna orbit - 11 km turned out about right, leaving me in almost a 700 km over 10 km orbit. I adjusted to rendezvous with the instruments. And docked! Looks like I didn't need to attach them before leaving after all. Phew. I then undocked from the tug and started to manipulate the ship. I took the Duna satellite, and attached the Atmospheric science module to it, then attached the Ike satellite to the nose and detached the Duna lander. Afterwards, I had Bob gather readings from Near Duna orbit, and it was time to transfer to Ike. That looks unusually close to elliptical... Don't think I've seen that before. A 30 km orbit should be a good place to leave the satellite and the ship. Time to land. The lander is entirely monopropellant-powered: four O-10 engines and a big R1 tank. The capsule has an R10, too - it's intended to perform several docking procedures. I landed very softly, took readings and transmitted a crew report from the surface to complete the Ike exploration contract. I then checked for a flag-planting mission, and planted the flag once I got one. A little timewarping until the ship was overhead before liftoff I still had enough monopropellant to partially fill the R1, even after docking the satellite and transferring the instruments over. Bob kept the data in the capsule, and turned the ship to escape Ike. Getting the periapse where I wanted it used up some monopropellant, so I decided to empty the Ike lander's R1 into the rest of the ship, then detach it on a Duna impact trajectory. It's a bit of a waste, but really, if you're going to bring enough fuel to fill it back up, you may as well bring another Ike lander. Rendezvoused with the Duna lander, and transferred the capsule over. Then I brought the final science module to it with the Duna satellite. Here goes! Landed just a bit past the point that Ike was visible in the sky. I tried to decelerate faster with the engine in the atmosphere - so no heating effects. Took the readings (and more on the way down), made reports and got out. I planted the flag, writing the plaque to name the forumers who pointed out the solution to me: Mr. Rocket in this thread, and Kasuha in the Not Going to Space Today thread. Thanks, both of you. Back up to the Duna satellite to leave the instruments behind. The Duna satellite also had the closest antenna to transmit my surface EVA report and complete the Duna exploration mission. I also repacked the lander's parachutes for the next time it's used. And finally, rendezvous with the transfer ship and moving the capsule over. The Duna lander will remain in orbit, because it's actually cost-effective as infrastructure. The Duna return window won't be for a while - the Eve-Gilly mission will probably perform its landings before that happens.

Yeah, that was brought to my attention in the What Did You Do Today thread, too. So, perhaps I will be going to Duna today, after all. First not thinking it through in the design/construction phase, then not looking particularly thoroughly for a solution in orbit... this mission is certainly going well, isn't it. Edit: Thanks to your suggestion, I ended up going to Duna today, without needing to relaunch. Here are the details.

I could have done, yes. But I didn't think about that. I think I still have the quicksave from just after decoupling from the lifter, so I'll give it a shot. Thanks, you've probably saved me quite a bit of hassle. I'm also glad I put those extra probe cores about the place. If you load a quicksave, then load a quicksave that's further in the future, is that a forward-load from quicksave?

Putting those parachute/fuel pods in line with where the nuclear engines dock was definitely not thought through. No net thrust means not going to Duna today.

Reloaded from my Prewarp named quicksave. I decided to either put the Single Stage to Laythe and back mission off until after my other missions, or do it in sandbox, so I then warped to the Duna window. After a first launch became a little problematic with flexing towards the end, I added some more struts. Launch proceeded according to the notes I made for this lifter: Full throttle until 1km, throttle down for ~1 TWR, raise throttle to 1/2 and begin turn to 45o immediately after dropping SRBs, throttle to full immediately after dropping LFBs, tilt toward horizon to keep time to apoapse at ~30 seconds, cut throttle when apopase is a bit above target orbit, then use short pulses when it drops below. Had a periapse of 30 km when I cut throttle. I needed to pulse the engine a couple of times when the apoapse fell below 80 km, though. 80 km circular orbit achieved! Next, bringing and docking the nuclear drive modules. The modules were tightly packed onto the lifter: decoupling smashed off a solar panel from each of the two modules I was transferring (I sent that up when I sent my Minmus mission, in the ManyMission launch). I renamed the two modules Nuclear Drive B and C, then began to make maneuvers to get them to the Duna ship. Nuclear engines only, no RCS of any sort... Still, managed to dock into place. The side with the broken-off solar panel became the one closest to the core of the ship - it's almost as though I planned to break them off! (I didn't.) The maneuvering was a little poorly planned - sometimes one would have a node before the other had finished burning. I managed to get them both orbit-matched at under 1 km distance before I docked the first, though. After docking the second, I transferred some of the spare fuel from the lifter into the drive modules' tanks. The lifter still has more than enough to deorbit itself, and I wanted the Duna mission to be full. I decoupled, planned a burn, and began. Duna Ship used Burn! But nothing happened... The problem is probably clear to most of you, but just to clarify - for at least the vast majority of engines (LV-N included), if the exhaust is blocked, then there's no net thrust. So, the fact that I twisted the Duna lander portion 90o for aesthetic reasons has made the ship almost entirely useless. I could fit an adaptor to the bottom, where the Duna lander is... or I could reload from Prewarp quicksave again and twist it back and out of the way. I went for the latter option, though my frustration at my past self's lack of forethought meant that I didn't launch it again immediately.

Is there a lower limit on payload mass? And if I take up a payload, decouple it and redock with it, does that count as orbital docking? I ask because I think I may be able to fit a tiny (<0.5t) payload to the undercarriage of my planned Laythe plane, and want to know if it's worth trying.

Gave Aldfred his fuel, and brought him home safely. An all solid lifter, with a bit of a boost towards the end with the six 48-7S engines. The SRBs dropped in pairs due to differing thrust limiters: first the 80% pair, then the 60%, then the 40%, with the final 20% thrust SRB being the core. Launch doctrine with a pure-SRB rocket and similar is very different to normal launches, so I'm not sure I did it in the most efficient manner. Considering that I'll be using the LV-909 to perform the rendezvous, and of course hindsight, I could probably have done with switching the X200-16 and the X200-8. Oh, look, it's that maneuver again. I rendezvoused and matched orbits, then separated the drive module from the spaceplane. After that, I docked with the drive module, performed some fuel transfers, decoupled the LV-909 and docked with the spaceplane. The LV-909 can just go crash into the planet, I don't care. I had the fuel, so I decided not to try precision aerobraking, and instead just burned into a 100km circular orbit with the LV-N. Deorbited with the spaceplane. It took a few tries to get the right height to fly back. The first attempt ended at the runway, but burned fuel in the approach and ended up in a crash after losing control. The fourth return flight was perfectly successful, though. The image of the plane coming in over the mountains is also from that flight. That cleared out my active missions, too. Then, I made a quicksave titled "Prewarp", and timewarped to the Jool window. Time to try my Single-Stage-to-Laythe-and-back spaceplane, and see if it's really capable of that. It's quite a busy undercarriage... Note the structural supports that keep the spaceplane from seriously tipping onto its side after landing. Had to do the bounce again... I don't think I've quite gotten the hang of flying this into orbit yet. The problem with this kind of ion-driven ultra-long-range spaceplane, is the burn times. A series of burns, the first two being ten minutes, and the last likely longer, all on the dark side of Kerbin... Needless to say, I may be putting this off and running the SSTLaB mission after my other missions, instead. It's only the first Jool window coming up before the Duna and Eve ones, after all - there'll be another some other time. Perhaps by then I'll have a contract for that location.

John Cage's 4'33". But seriously, I don't have one.

Heroism and drama! Well, sort of. After some rather uninteresting messing about, part testing and a landing on the island runway, I got what could be called a perfect storm of contract requests. Although I have satellites in Kerbin and Mun orbit, and a "Mun base" (basically a lander that I'm pretty sure can get back, but is going to stay there for a while to plant flags for money), sometimes I want to fulfill the contracts by other means - particularly when I also have a rescue mission. So, with two spare nuclear drive modules, a fueldump space station, and a lone orbiting kerbonaut in LKO, I devised a mission. The contracts: Rescue Aldfred from Kerbin orbit, science from Kerbin orbit, science from Mun orbit, plant flag on Mun, and test turbojet landed on Mun. The plan: Launch SpacePlaneA, my basic, nose-docking spaceplane unmanned to rendezvous with Aldfred. Then, with Aldfred, rendezvous and dock with the fueldump, and fill tanks. Rendezvous a spare nuclear drive module with the fueldump, and dock it to the spaceplane. Transfer to Munar orbit with the LV-N, detach, and land. Plant flag, perform test, take off and take a report, then rendezvous with the LV-N again for the return. Leave the LV-N in LKO, and fly back to the runway. Sounds simple enough. I flew the spaceplane to orbit and picked up Aldfred. Docked and filling up, and the nuclear drive module is on its way. Transfer to Mun orbit was also fine. I didn't take any fuel out of the LV-N's tank before I detached in a 50km orbit. Landing and flag planting was also perfectly fine, as was taking off and getting the report. Here's where the problem started: Out of oxidiser fuel, and the periapse still underground. Uh-oh... Time for a daring suborbital rendezvous and docking procedure with the LV-N! I accidentally forgot to disable the 48-7S pair when firing the rescue burn, which wasted a bit of fuel for no thrust. I realised it quickly, however, and got the spaceplane into a safe orbit. Tried to bring the Kerbin periapse a little into the atmosphere with the escape burn... would it have been possible without that little wastage? Who knows. But now Aldfred is in a high Kerbin orbit, awaiting a fuel-carrying probe to dock in-between his spaceplane and the LV-N. This is the first time I ever performed a suborbital docking - it was a little nerve-wracking but I manged it first try. Once the fuel-probe docks in, the mission can be completed as normal, which I'm sure will make Aldfred happy.