Angelo Kerman

Angelo - trying to do his company taxes while not having any coffee.

Made some progress today: Got most of the mesh gaps worked out, and built a new engine sound for the mothership out of royalty-free sounds. This is the combined engine running and engine power effect: http://www.spellflight.com/KSP/ExcaliburEngine.wav

Too tired to do any modding today so instead I "flew" the mothership around: By design, the gravitic engine can move large masses around with enough power. Here I'm hauling prototype mothership parts around...

Kerbal style. Check out Pathfinder’s Pipeline mass drivers for an idea of how it works. Unlike Star Trek you need a vessel on the ground to receive the resources and items.

If set up properly, the mothership can be configured as a portable base. You can fly in, have all the converters and extractors you need, and set up permanent facilities. Then fly to the next location without having to pack everything up again. Heck, once I get the transporter working, all you need to do is beam down (more like use a wormhole) kerbals and finished goods while beaming up raw materials. It just takes a portable transporter room, something like Pathfinder ‘s Pipeline but more powerful and movable.

The mothership begins to take shape... 10m diameter dirigible section for scale: 6m Flapjack for scale: 2.5m diameter fuel tanks and Buffalo rover for scale: While there's only one inner section, you have a half-sized, full-sized, and double-sized outer section: NX-01 mockup:

It wobbles around a lot but it flies and the RCS plumes are bad. Cormorant is much more stable and more versatile. @Pak really did a great job with Cormorant Aeronology Mk3 parts. I did modify a couple and cloned a couple others to make that Cormorant KSOS alike for story purposes but the base parts are stock alike and fabulous.

When I create new parts, I very often begin by blocking out the 3D mesh and getting it into the game to test functionality, and the mothership is no different. Below is the start of the S-4 Excalibur Engineering core, designed to produce both gravity waves via its gravimetric displacement generator, and electric charge via its gravitic fusion reactor. I alsoadded some familiar parts so you can get a sense of scale: It needs more work, like adjusting the height to be an even 5m (4 decks total), and possibly widen it to 7.5m in diameter, but it's a good start.

Ah, thank you for clarifying. California here. Anyway, the IXS Enterprise mod’s EVA was great, I think I can do that for the mothership too.

Thank you for the suggestion, I will consider it. Also, what is your native language? Spanish? I understood some of what you wrote, but the picture really helped. I learned Spanish in high school and college but that was years ago.

I just checked, my mods implement IPartMassModifier so they should be set up properly for EL. Having some sort of coordinator would be helpful; then the 3D printer I'm thinking of could contribute productivity to a base that's being expanded with micropads.

Got a bit more done on the mothership: The meshes need to be cleaned up, but from left to right: Engineering Core, Inner Section, Outer Section. For scale, the Engineering core is 7.37m in diameter- about the length of a Rockomax 64- and 4.5m tall. Once I get the meshes cleaned up, I can make the various sizes that I need.

This morning I launched some elements to my space station, and tonight I continued designing a Cormorant shuttle for my story that's competitor to the KSOS (the Cormorant one wins).

That looks really cool! With some changes to KerbalActuators, I could make it work better with kOS. It's on the list. Love what you've done with the cockpit IVA! I've been a bit busy too: It doesn't look like much, but that's the start of the double-wide outer saucer section for the Excalibur mothership. That basic shape will form things like an outer storage tank and cargo bay. Half and quarter-sized versions will become all sorts of parts like labs, crew quarters, and the like.

Fair enough! Thank you for the clarification, that helps me plan out the direction of Sandcastle.

DSEV has one.

What if the part that is generating productivity is not part of the vessel that has the micropad? Also, many Pathfinder parts are inflatable, and change mass depending upon whether or not they are inflated. How does EL handle that situation? If it doesn’t, can I blacklist parts from the Launchpads?

Should be able to do that along with pdb and mdb files. Might take a few days, my schedule is impacted.

@taniwha While I’m still working on Kerbal Flying Saucers, my next major project is Sandcastle. Thanks to your recent changes, I can make a robot 3D printer to print up the initial base. I can also add a micropad for base expansion, but there is one thing I am unclear on. If I understand correctly, the micropad requires productivity in the vessel that the micropad is attached to. Is that correct? If that’s the case, is it possible for an unmanned workshop, like the aforementioned robot 3d printer, to provide vessel productivity to the micropad? That would simulate the printer adding base components after printing the initial base.

Looks cool, thanks for sharing that!

Today I delivered the Mk1 Drydock, along with a Tranquility module configured as an OSE Workshop, to Skybase: The Mk1 Drydock on the left is powered by @taniwha's Extraplanetary Launchpads. Story-wise, the Skybase crew will test out the drydock and evaluate its ability to recycle space junk into rocket parts and scrap metal as well as build new craft. In reality, EL works great! My mods have had EL support for a long time. Here's all the space junk that I have to contend with: I could just terminate the missions, but I thought it would be more interesting to go around and pick up the trash, then use said trash to build new vessels. Now I just need to send a crew up to Skybase, repair the Bigby Orbital Workshop, and get to work... Meanwhile, I finally processed enough Blutonium into Nuclear Fuel, and was able to bring the Lesser Flats Refinery's nuclear reactor online today: Might not seem like much, but the refinery has had power issues for awhile now, and I finally found some Blutonium to mine. Once I get the tank farm built and assemble the mass driver, the refinery will be done and I can then concentrate on the shipyard.

Outstanding! Glad you got it figured out. I’ll add that to the next update.

Static discharge rods can go wherever it is convenient... The gravitic engine itself has built-in RCS, so the thrusters aren’t strictly needed. And I’ve considered adding landing legs for the small saucer but they’re low priority. The mothership will definitely have landing legs, they’ve been planned since the start.

I fixed an issue in WildBlueTools, created an update for Kerbal Flying Saucers, and launched another hub to Skybase: Once I launch its Mk1 Drydock into orbit, it'll be ready to begin salvaging all the spent stages, obsolete communications satellites, and wayward kerbal capsules left over from various rescue missions.

@vardicd I was unable to reproduce your issue with the electrical drain using KFS. I don't have other mods installed at the moment. Here's what it looks like with just the SAS, torque, and lights running: There is a slight drain on the batteries without the fuel cell running. Here you can see that I've started the fuel cell, and it's charging up the batteries to a crazy amount of ElectricCharge (5150): As far as I can tell, the EC consumption is functioning properly. Anyway, 0.2.11 fixes an issue in WildBlueTools related to template switching, and finally straightens out the Half Keel.