cantab

Ack, I forgot to post a riddle. A guard dog is tied to a ten-foot chain. A burglar tries to sneak past 15 feet from the dog, but the dog rushes forward and bites the burglar. How is that possible when it was tied to a ten-foot chain?

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Well, in my current save I've done over 60 missions across 13 "programs", and still not finished the tree. Science Mode, 60% gains, DMagic and ScanSAT parts offsetting that. I'm playing ironman too, no quickloads or reverts except for bugs, and that's the big one - it means caution with Kerbals and a lot of probe work, as well as repeating the whole mission if something goes wrong. I haven't necessarily tried to just grab science either, I've done several programs where the goal was just to do something else and any science was incidental. As far as tech tree progression goes, well I obviously got solars as soon as possible. I remember leaving the 2.5m engines until late, before then I was putting Reliant+Swivel clusters under my 2.5m tanks and that worked well enough. With DMagic the science parts were spread around the tree more so I couldn't rush science in the same way I would with stock parts. And then when I had a bunch of science I rushed the spaceplane parts because I wanted to make a spaceplane.

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- 46 (-). Good morning.

Yup, works pretty well in KSP. At least in FAR, and probably newstock too. And if it's just a bare pod you can generally use the magic of reaction wheels. I don't find it that useful for making the re-entry more gentle, but it can work to fine tune your landing site.

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Considering only things I think are possible but that I haven't seen done: A Grand Tour without orbital rendezvous. This is a stricter constraint than no docking, it prohibits leaving anything behind anywhere and returning to it. There's no reason for it to be impossible, but without ISRU it would take an immense and complex craft. To start with, consider what it would take to make a craft capable of Kerbin-Eve-Tylo-Kerbin (or Kerbin-Tylo-Eve-Kerbin), staging as you go but never docking or refuelling. Now that we have ISRU it may be a lot easier than it was, but I've yet to see it attempted. Reaching Eve orbit from the bottom of its ocean. This wasn't really practical before 1.0.5, so there's a good chance to be the first. Aviation on the Sun, with cheats. I don't think it's possible without the "Ignore Max Temperature" cheat or overpowered mod parts. Even with those cheats it's going to be a decent challenge. E-class landing on and launch from most bodiies. Tylo and Eve will be the major challenges of course.

Well I've quit career mode because I realised I was doing early stuff a lot, but my last career I never declined contracts. Seeing people spam that X button until they got what they want just looked blatantly exploity. If I really didn't like any of the contracts I'd timewarp through a few days. That has meaningful consequences - transfer windows might be missed, missions en route might arrive and need attention, and I was using TAC Life Support too. I think Squad have done the right thing making decline not free. And I'd say that if you're spending your time hitting that X button until a contract comes up that's exactly what you want, consider playing Science or Sandbox instead and just doing exactly what you want.

Well that was unexpected. I guess you do only have to give a week or two's notice of leaving a job usually, but it still feels sudden. Maxmaps, don't listen to the idiots who said you added nothing. Meanwhile, who is Dr Turkey???

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So I ran my first mission to these planets, specifically the Fearless system. Peabody: https://flic.kr/p/AWapMw Brag: https://flic.kr/p/AFR7Bo Dudley: https://flic.kr/p/AXgXoW Fearless: https://flic.kr/p/AkuxxV The planets did appear a bit rough around the edges, some obviously not-ideal terrain, though I only orbited and didn't look close up. (Hindsight says I should have fitted landing legs, I could have done Peabody and maybe Dudley). The orbital arrangement is pretty neat, with Brag and Dudley being in similar orbits and both pretty close to the edge of Fearless's SOI, I had to figure out to depart them without leaving the Fearless system outright. The only thing that really did seem dodgy are the biome maps, which seem to bear little or no resemblance to the terrain. Peabody in particular has Minmus's biomes, it seems really goofy. And Brag has three biomes with the same name; while that appears to work it's somewhat confusing. This was all in the New Horizons system too. I have a custom config that adjusts the orbits so the Boris planets fit in better, but it's not quite finished, I need to check the SOIs in my combined Boris-Lave system.

Completed an ion surveying probe mission to the Fearless system, of the Boris Pack. The planets are certainly distinctive

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Down to minus 25

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And -25 (-)

Down to -23

And back down to 24 below zero.

Down to minus 25