Angelo Kerman

I made a fly fly..

I wondered if such a thing was possible, nice to see that it is and that you've taken up the torch to make it happen! A mod like this would be a great companion for Snacks and offer additional challenges to players. Kudos to @cakepie for making this possible!

Chapter 12: New Beginnings “We lost the first prototype along with Doster when its singularity projector overloaded caused the ship to implode,” Fredgan said. “What is a singularity projector,” Gedra asked. Fredgan took a deep breath. “What we know as gravity is a curvature in space-time,” he began. “Massive objects like planets and moons and stars create the curvature. It’s like what happens when you stretch a sheet of rubber and place a heavy rock in the middle. The rubber bends. The alien saucer has technology, an artificial singularity projector, that can curve space-time by using Graviolium to produce gravity waves.” “Huh,” Gedra said, both fascinated and confused. “And our classified payload was…” “Graviolium,” Fredgan nodded and admitted. “What happened to the other pilots,” Parie asked, getting the meeting back on track. Fredgan swallowed hard. “Thompcott was killed when the second prototype exploded for no apparent reason. It was running fine one moment, then the next it just exploded. We thought it was the projector again and took precautions. We lost Thomwig, our base commander, when he climbed into the third prototype as a vote of confidence and like the second, it ran just fine for several minutes before it too exploded. We don’t know why. We finished the fourth prototype but until you arrived, I was the only other pilot on station, and I’m not allowed to fly it since I’m uh, was, in charge. But with you here…” “I’ll see what I can do,” Parie suggested. *** “Reactors powered down,” Bill declared. “RTGs are nominal. Lights off, resources locked down, SAS and RCS deactivated, main engine is in shutdown mode, probe cores are hibernating. Protector is napping, Val.” “Excellent,” Valentina commended. “Go for MPU start and final systems checks.” She flipped a few switches and the monopropellant power unit powered up. “She’s all yours, Jeb.” Finally, Jeb thought to himself. “All crew members, sound off. Spacecraft Commander is go.” “Mission Commander is go,” Valentina said. “Flight Engineer One is go,” Bill responded. “Flight Engineer Two is go,” Bobus called out. “Mission Specialist One is go,” Bob answered. “Mission Specialist Two is go,” Payin said. “Note in log, all crew is present and accounted for,” Jeb said for the sake of the flight recorders. “Undocking…” The crew heard a thunk as the Estonian Pathfinder unlatched from DSEV-02. “So long, Protector,” Jeb said as they slowly backed away. “We’ll be back in a year… Ok, descent engine is heating up. MC, lock landing coordinates into the nav computer.” Valentina tapped on her computer console. “Coordinates locked,” she responded a few moments later. It was just after dawn at the Das Wanderer crash site. “Maneuver node plotted. We’ve got an hour and 20 minutes until the burn.” Jeb sighed. That was a long time… “Ok, let’s run some more systems checks…” An hour and twenty minutes later, the Estonian Pathfinder performed its engine burn flawlessly and then discarded its descent stage. Jeb lit the RCS thrusters to readjust their trajectory after the jolt from the descent stage jettison. They were back on course. They were also committed. Whatever happened, they’d be on the ground soon. Two minutes past orbital dawn, the Estonian Pathfinder kissed Duna’s upper atmosphere and began to slow down. They watched the trajectory carefully, hoping they aimed for the right spot. “Passing 20,000 meters,” Jeb called out. “No shock heating, smooth glide scope,” Valentina noted. “Chutes armed. 90 kilometers to target. 700 m-sec and decelerating. Looking good, Jeb.” “Roger that,” the Air Force pilot acknowledged. He looked at the trajectory projection. “Might be coming in a bit short.” At 15 kilometers to the target, the drogue chutes deployed. They slowed down even more. “300 m-sec and slowing,” he said calmly. Bill was chattering his teeth. Jeb armed the landing engine, and its heat shield cover shattered as expected. The main chutes deployed, so he also lowered the landing legs. “Altitude 4000 meters, at 18 meters per second descent rate. Still looking good,” Valentina said. Jeb grunted and kept focus on landing the Estonian Pathfinder. “500 meters at 15,” Valentiana called out. “Still good… 300 at 15, still good… 200 at 14.9…” “Crew brace for landing,” Jeb said simply. At 50 meters, he lit the descent engine. The ship slowed and… “Touchdown,” Jeb said calmly. “Engine stop, chutes cut. Welcome to Duna, team.” Everybody in the lander cheered. He checked the navigation computer. “Distance to Duna Flyer, 4.7 kilometers. Distance to Das Wanderer, 4.8.” “Not bad, Jeb,” Valentina commended, “but you owe me twenty.” “Mulch,” he said and sighed. The crew safed the vehicle and prepared it for its stay on the ground before donning their helmets to go outside. Jeb depressurized the capsule and Valentina stepped through the hatch. “I’m climbing down the ladder now,” she said. “It’s very red outside, and the sky is an orange-ish brown, like a butter gel dessert…. Ok, I’m stepping off the ladder…” She planted her feet onto the Rusty Planet’s dirt and took a deep breath. She had a long time to rehearse this… “As I step onto this new world, I do so on behalf of every Kerman who made it possible, and for all Kerbalkin.” She paused for effect before continuing. “Come on out guys!” Several seconds later, Kerbin received the expedition's transmissions. Around the world, kerbals cheered as the Kerbal Space Program successfully delivered six astronauts to the surface of Duna and safely set foot upon its soil. The crew of the Protector filed out of their lander, planted a flag, and posed for the camera. “Ok, show’s over,” Valentina said, “let’s get to work.” By noon, the crew had Duna Base assembled with its initial operating capability.* *** The next day, the crew watched as the Buffalo Bulldozer began entering the atmosphere- earlier in the day, its transfer stage reversed course, docked with DSEV-02, and transferred its available fuel before undocking and deorbiting. Protector’s tanks were now half full. The Buffalo landed flawlessly less than 3 kilometers away from Duna Base, and Valentina paid Jeb 20 kerbucks. It didn’t take long to guide the rover to the base. Things were almost going smoothly… “We have to shut off the drills in order to keep the snacks processor running,” Bill said during the noon briefing. “And we’ve had to tap into the lander’s MPU, but we’re still losing power. A lack of sunlight is the problem.” “Okay,” Valentina said. “How much food do we have?” “18 days’ worth,” Bill responded. “The CHON processor can make more but we need additional power.” “And how long until the Drill Truck arrives?” “21 days, Val,” Bill admitted. “Bob has already run the math. We can stretch our supplies a bit but it will be really tight. We just need more power…” “Which the Flyer has,” Bobus said. “Exactly,” Bill concluded. “Well, the Flyer isn’t very far away, I bet I can taxi it over here,” Valentina said. It only took a few minutes to get the Duna Flyer pointed in the right direction and headed to the base. After it stopped, Bobus went on EVA and attached a cable to the stricken aircraft. Duna Base immediately had plenty of power to continue its operations. *** “It’s a wonder that this thing made it down in one piece,” Bill said, noting the cracks in the hull. Liquid fuel had spilled out of the tanks and stained the desert, which had gouges here and there where the craft had crashed landed. Bits of metal and plastic were also strewn about. With the Drill Truck still another week away and Duna Base’s food processors churning out enough supplies to last a good 60 days, Valentina, Bill and Bob hopped into the Buffalo Bulldozer and headed to the Das Wanderer wreck. Its cryogenic systems were beginning to fade according to the vonKermans, and they couldn’t wait any longer. The base would be crowded once they woke up the crew and brought them back, but once they reached Expansion Phase One, they’d have plenty of room. “Let’s find a way in,” Valentina said simply. They walked over to the front of the ship where the main airlock was located. Bill helped Valentina climb up onto the handholds, and she tried the automatic controls. As expected, they didn’t respond. Forty-two seconds later- the current light-speed distance between Kerbin to Duna and back- Bill read out the manual directions provided by the vonKermans. That worked. She turned the hand crank to close the inner door, then slowly cranked open the outer door. Air escaped into the thin Dunan atmosphere. She took one last look around before venturing inside. She moved into the “Heart” crew block and found various pieces of equipment strewn about as a result of the crash. There was no sound, indicating that the air had leaked out. Bill hopped up onto the airlock hatch next and cycled the airlock, followed by Bob. Once inside, Bill worked his magic and found the air leaks. He patched up the holes and then repressurized the spacecraft. The trio made their way aft to the cryogenics compartment. It was as cold as a tomb. There were three chambers inside with three frozen occupants. “We found them, they don’t appear damaged,” Valentina said. “It appears that the reinforcements and shielding in the compartment protected them from the crash.” “The vonKermans would like you to try to thaw Ernst first,” Bobus radioed back forty-two seconds later. “She’s their commander.” He provided instructions on how to do so. Bob studied the controls carefully. “Here goes, he said.” The astronauts watched fascinated as the deep freeze cryochamber awoke and began to thaw out Ernst. Color returned to the kerbonaut’s face. They heard the unmistakable buzz of an electric shock inside the chamber. Ernst’s body convulsed then laid still. The chamber applied another shock and her body convulsed once more. Ernst stirred, fighting to regain consciousness. The chamber’s door opened and steam escaped. her eyes opened wide and she gasped for air. “Wie lang,” Ernst rasped. “What she say,” Bill asked. “Ein Jahr drei Monate,” Valentina replied flawlessly. Bill looked at Valentina, stunned. “She asked ‘how long’ and I replied ‘one year three months’,” Valentina said. Bill still looked surprised. “Wernher wasn’t the only rocket scientist who immigrated to the Kerman States after the Last War,” she explained. “He’s just the most famous. My parents changed their last name after they arrived.” “Meine crew?” “Schlafender, Kommandant,” Valentina answered. “Sind wir deine gefangenen,” Ernst asked. “Nein,” Valentina again responded. “Wir sind zusammen. Not prisoners. We are together,” repeated in Kerman for Bill and Bob. Ernst looked relieved. “Welcome to Duna,” she said in vonKerman. “You have landed.” Astonished, Ernst said something that Valentina didn’t recognize. It sounded like a curse. *** The Nautilus pulled up alongside Minmus Station carrying a crew of two and three passengers. As the ship docked and refueled and resupplied, the passengers disembarked and met with the station commander. They spent over a day in several meetings discussing business until the passengers said thank you and goodbye and took up residence in the brand new DSEV-04 Discovery. After powering up the craft and ensuring that Discovery had all the necessary supplies and equipment aboard, the ship’s new skipper, Captain James T. Kerman, undocked the DSEV-04 from its berth in the space dock where it was built. He backed the last Protector-class vessel out of the yard. Once well clear of the station, Discovery lit her main engine and boosted on a trajectory that headed out of Kerbin’s sphere of influence. Nautilus departed a few days later and headed back to Low Kerbin Orbit. *** The Drill Truck slammed into the atmosphere and aimed for Duna Base. Once it emerged from wireless blackout, the expedition crew took over piloting it to the ground. Valentina realized that the truck was going to overshoot, so she fired up the still attached descent stage to slow and then reverse the craft’s trajectory. She added a bit of height for good measure, then ditched the stage before it ran dry. The landing frame’s chutes deployed almost immediately, followed by its landing engines, and the craft gently touched down a mere 1,071 meters away from Duna Base. Jeb cursed and reluctantly handed 20 kerbucks to Valentina. Valentina dropped the truck onto the ground and lit the landing stage’s engines one final time to dispose of it. A few minutes later, the Drill Truck arrived at DunabBase, bringing with it fresh snacks, 3D printing materials, drills, and the base’s main power plant. And with the expedition crew’s hard work- and a little help from Ernst, Karl, and Alder vonKerman- Duna Base completed Expansion Phase One. The Duna One Expedition was off to a great start. *** For the umpteenth time, Kelbin wished that he could take a walk outside. Without his spacesuit. The last several weeks had been pure Moho. His tolerance for dealing with kow mulch was maxed out. Lodory, the saucer design team’s engineering lead had been relentlessly grilling him on the specifications and flight procedures for the A-51D Flapjack Block 1, the heavily modified flying saucer sitting in the base’s hangar. But without the exotic technology, it wasn’t all that different from the X-51 that he rescued from the scrap heap. Sure, instead of watching the heat levels and adjusting the fan RPM of a jet engine, he had to adjust the atomic reactor and monitor the output of the gravimetric displacement generator- the thingy that zaps graviolium with electric charge to produce gravity waves. Instead of nudging the throttle to produce more thrust, it told the flight computer to feed more gravity waves into the engine. And just like how the principles of a jet engine are uncomplicated, the gravitic engine’s operation was straightforward too. It concentrated gravity waves on a single spot ahead of the craft- or behind it, to either side, or above or below it- and created a localized “gravity well” for the saucer to fall into. The distortion in space-time didn’t last very long so the engine repeated the process thousands of times per second. “Kelbin, you’re behind on your guidance computer studies,” Lodory complained. He loved complaining. It made him feel like he knew what he was doing when he was in charge. “Um, you wanted me to evaluate the engine start checklist,” Kelbin pointed out, not mentioning that if guidance computer studies were the priority, Lodory should have said so earlier. Lodory stared at him blankly. “Be sure to file your checklist assessment by the end of the day,” he said, getting up and walking towards the ladder. I already told you that I was going to do that, Kelbin thought to himself. The problem wasn’t understanding the technology, it was his micromanaging boss. If he didn’t need him to clear him to fly the new Flapjack, he’d have left weeks ago. Instead, every day was an endurance test. At least Kelbin would soon get to fly the saucer, and that made the daily mental torture worth it. Lodory returned to Kelbin’s workstation. “Have you talked to Danrick yet about the engine warmup issues?” “No,” Kelbin said tentatively. “Why not?” “Because you didn’t tell me to?” “Well, you’re an experienced pilot, you should’ve talked to him,” Lodory huffed. Kelbin fought the urge to strangle him. Fortunately, he walked away again. “Make sure you talk to him before the end of the day too,” he said as he went down the latter to torture some other hapless kerbal. Kelbin stifled a scream and got back to work. * At long last, I finally got to fly the KSP equivalent of the Mars One mission from the Mars One Crew Manual!

Now we need kerbals without mitts... I was so glad we could finally take the helmet rings off..

USI support was dropped awhile ago; I didn’t use it and it changed too much to upkeep. So there is no USI support out of the box.

I haven't seen that error, does that happen with a game that only has DSEV and its support mods? Explodium comes from Classic Stock Resources which is included with DSEV. Are you using Classic Stock or CRP or both or neither?

Well, things are still in planning. What I want to do is make a rotating service tower. Back a rocket onto the structure, dock with it. Then rotate the tower vertical. Think Falcon 9. I haven’t had a chance to flesh that out yet though. It would be for an X-33 type mod, but the concept could also apply to traditional rockets too.

Honestly it's been a long time since I figured out the KIS volumes. Compacted they should be around 400 to 600L.

Sounds like a bug in the converter. I basically had to rewrite the converter because the stock converter would not convert at the expected rates and that threw off life support estimates. I just need to check if the produced resource is full and shut off the converter if auto shutdown is set to true. I will get to that next week but no promises as I also have to do my taxes..

I'm curious to know where the centrifuge parts are from, they look good. I delivered the flight crew of Discovery (DSEV-04), the last of the Protector-class Deep Space Exploration Vessels, to Minmus Station. DSEV-04 is in the drydock and currently being provisioned for her shakedown cruise. Nautilus (DSEV-03) can be seen in the lower-right. She delivered the flight crew and will be headed back to Skybase once refueled.

Snacks 1.11.5 is now available: - Fixed empty mass for the radial snack tin to be in line with similar parts. - Fixed snack resources being locked by default when Snacks are added to in-flight vessels. - Fixed efficiency processing; processors and recyclers output efficiency should now be 10% to 100% efficient based on their efficiency setting. - Fixed issue where converters and processors wouldn't run in the background without at least one Kerbal aboard. - Fixed issue where the Snacks Processor and Soil Recycler wouldn't produce the proper amount of resources while the vessel is in physics range. - Reduced the amount of Snacks per day produced by the stock Mobile Processing Lab. It was a bit OP... - Snack tins now tell you what their resource options are in the part info view. - Added new SnacksConverter part module. It serves as the basis for the existing Snacks Processor and Soil Recycler. It can also produce "YIELD_RESOURCE" units over time just like the greenhouse from Wild Blue Tools. You can even assign effects to the converter! NOTE: Snacks won't be getting a greenhouse of its own; it's intended to be a lightweight life support system, but I recognize that some players want more sophisticated capabilities. So the tools are there for others to expand upon...

I would suggest you make a copy of your game, install BARIS and take a look.

My suggestion is to try it out and see, but I vaguely recall that it will max out the quality based on current flight experience.

@peteletroll I am thinking of making a custom part that would use NodeRotate. It would work like a hinge joint. What axis is the part rotated on so I can properly setup my attachment node? BTW, I use your mod in my 1.3.1 game and it works great.

Check the KSPedia. Not at this time. I’ll consider it, but you can also enable debug mode and cheat your quality up to max. So it depends on how you want to play your game.. Speaking of test benches, I have a new way to test parts on the drawing board...

Glad you’re enjoying the mod. Sandcastle gives you more of a permanent settlement but you also get better resource converters and things like tracking station dishes. And once I get the 3D printer done, you’ll be able to create your colonies without the need for kerbals on site- similarly to NASA’s 3D Habitat Challenge. Personal issues have been delaying my modding of late, but hopefully this weekend I will have another update.. This is good info! Good to hear that KIS 1.16 still works with Pathfinder. The mod has had a longtime dependency on KIS and KAS, so it’s good that there is a version that still works.

Uh, that was like two years ago... But yes, it ended up in DSEV along with my other 2.5m station parts.

I've been doing some under-the-hood changes to Snacks to fix some issues related to the converters, and had time today to do this: It ain't much, but now you can see what resource options are available with the switcher.

It means if you get an email demanding bitcoin.... It sounds like Kerny and crew are in a real bind! Somebody just bricked their mission. Never a good thing.. Jala being Jeb's niece was definitely not something that I'd expected! And I figured he might've found a way into the crashed saucer...

Still in development but..

This would be difficult to do, unfortunately, without Infernal Robotics. Plus the mod is pretty much feature complete at this point, meaning I don’t currently have plans to add new parts. If at some point Hooligan Labs becomes non-viable then I would make a replacement for the static lift plugin. Otherwise, things are pretty good as is. But if it is something you are interested in making, then by all means. Heisenberg came to be because I didn’t have the parts that I wanted and I was willing to put in the work to make them. I encourage others to do the same if my mods don’t have the parts that you are looking for.

Generally it’s whenever the author has time.

@RocketSquid Sounds like a good idea. If you are concerned about using the Doc, the Casa/Ponderosa are designed for hab-related templates. So you could conceivably create a Medical Bay template and convert MedKits into the Kerbal Health stuff, and use other resources like Minerite, PreciousMetals, and the like to make the MedKits.

Added that to my next batch of updates.

Should get fixed in the next update, thanks for letting me know. Should also get fixed in the next update. Thanks for the heads up. I think I found the root cause: PEBKAC, due to the way I wrote the stupid thing...