Angelo Kerman

Been a slow week, but I finished the OmniConverter and am now working on the OmniStorage: Pathfinder will benefit from these two part modules, but they're primarily designed for the mothership's OmniLab.

Only time will tell.

No, but there are several bugs that I'm still sorting through.

Maybe, the truss tanks do need some revisions.

Welding docking ports isn't working properly at this point in time. I'd probably have to redo it once KSP stabilizes.

Prologue: Exploring Minmus (This post) Prologue: Exploring Minmus Part 2 Interlude: Flipping Pancakes Prologue Finale: Loose Ends Chapter One: What A View Chapter Two: Eve of New Pursuits Chapter Three: Return On Investment Chapter Four: The Secret Lives of Kelbin Kerman Chapter Five: Salvage Runs Chapter Six: Missing Persons Chapter Seven: Pipelines Chapter Eight: Dopplegangers Chapter Nine: Landfall Chapter Ten: Counter Moves Chapter Eleven: Going for Broke Chapter Twelve: New Beginnings Chapter Thirteen: Lucky You Chapter Fourteen: Ups And Downs Chapter Fifteen: Vapor Trails Chapter Sixteen: Loop de Loop Chapter Seventeen: Going Home Chapter Eighteen: Explorations Chapter Nineteen: Revelations Chapter Twenty: Epilogue - - -

Kapollo 5 finally reached Low Kerbin Orbit after 8 days of travel. After an experimental aerobraking maneuver, Valentina conducts a circularization burn using the nuclear tug: A couple of correction burns and an alignment burn with Skybase later, Kapollo 5 separates from the tug for the trip home: Just before hitting the atmosphere, Bobus undocks the orbital module and jettisons the service module: Kapollo 5 careens into the atmosphere of Kerbin, and despite the latest attempt to land back at KSC, Valentina missed. Kapollo 5 landed in the ocean well over 100km away. Fortunately, that's what the KSCS Liberty is for. The home-built airship replaced the KSNS Fulton in the capsule recovery role when the Fulton was destroyed in the arctic circle. The Arctic Saucer Incident ratcheted up tensions between the Kerman States and the Von Kerman Republic. Significantly faster than the KSNS Akron- the airship that flew around the world and is now a museum ship- the Liberty reaches Kapollo 5 in record time. Raphia, one of the Akron's former crew, swims over to the Kapollo, attaches the lift cable, and helps the Minmus Expedition 1 crew out of the capsule: With the crew safely aboard the Liberty, the airship hauls the capsule aboard as well: A "long" 20 minute flight later, Liberty and her charges arrived back at KSC. Team Valentina poses for a publicity shot: Minmus Expedition 1 brought back a bonanza of science: With Kapollo 5/Minmus Expedition 1 back home safe and the science secured, KSC declares mission accomplished!

More progress with the omni converter:

This looks so amazing, can't wait to try this out!

While Lizchel and Dicie began digging into the research provided by the Minmus Expedition 1 (MEX 1), the rest of the team got to work printing up new base components to support ISRU and extraplanetary launchpads. Jane, a raw recruit and technically still an astronaut candidate (the paperwork hadn't caught up yet), installed the new components with the help of Stelissa, the expedition's other engineer. Jane was a last-minute addition to James' flight crew when Keridien died during a freak training accident. Captain James is technically also a rookie astronaut, but he's also secretly one of the true Original Four astronauts. James would've been one of the first astronauts in space were it not for the Mk1-1 fire that killed three astronauts- a memorial sits outside of the VAB as a reminder that safety and attention to detail is important. KSC recovered of course, hired Bill, Bob, Jeb, and Val as the official Original Four, and the rest is history. Today, James is officially listed as one of the candidates that wasn't selected selected as part of the original cadre of astronauts. But commanding Minmus Station is proof that productive persistence pays off! And when asked by a reporter if he had any advice to young aspiring kerbals, he said, "Number one decide what it is you really want to do, and then second, never give up until you've done it." * Enough ruminating though, there was work to be done! With the successful test of the Minmus Hopper's recycler arm completed, Jim had Marnica remotely pilot the two MonoPropellant Landers over to Minmus Base for disassembly. The landers worked out so well for MEX 1, KSC is considering creating resource cache landers for future exploration missions. Anyway, Jane put that new recycler arm to work as well: With the base expanded and landers recycled, it was time to try making a rocket of their own- all they had to do was make something that could reach Kerbin and deliver the lode of Gemstones that MEX 1 found at the monolith. * Said by Deke Slayton during the Apollo Soyuz Test Project

In more details, yeah. But it's not part of the main story so I thought I'd share what I was up to.

With their successful exploration of all the biomes on Minmus, Valentina, Bobus, and Payin return home to Minmus Base with loads of science: Val had Payin take two sets of experiments: one for processing in the science lab, and another to return to Kerbin with. With their primary objectives complete, Minmus Expedition 1 was ready to return home. Two weeks later, Minmus Expedition 2 arrived: It carried two 3-kerbal flight crews to further develop Minmus into an ISRU mining station. Once ISRU is researched and established, KSC intends to experiment with offworld vessel construction to launch vessels from Minmus- essentially an extraplanetary launchpad... Val has a series of meetings with Kerman Navy Captain James T. Kerman (Minmus Expedition 2's commander) and Marcina Kerman (second in command): After transferring command, Captain James drove Val and her team to Kapollo 5: Bobus awoke the ship from its slumber, and they launched for orbit: ... where they docked at Minmus Station to retrieve their orbital module for the trip home- and to perform some much needed maintenance: With that task complete, Val remotely undocked their new Nuclear Tug for the trip home: ... and then undocked with their orbital module. After docking to the tug, they burned for low Kerbin orbit. In approximately 8 days, they'll be back home with a shipload of science!

It shouldn't affect your game. There's a file that tells WBI what play mode you're using and if it's not there, it'll ask you to select a play mode. At worst you'd have to select CRP and restart the game.

@JadeOfMaar's help revising the resource chains have been invaluable, and the next major mod update will likely switch to Classic Stock as the default play mode for new games instead of CRP. If you've been using Pathfinder or other WBI mods for awhile with CRP, don't fret, your existing games are safe. The change only affects new installs of WBI mods.

It beats waiting a year... like I did! I created the initial concept document in early 2017, but had so much to do with my other mods that I had to wait until 2018 to start working on KFS. I'm actually kind of excited to have something releasable in about a month.

About June, unless you'd like to pay me livable wages for the Silicon Valley (about $80 USD/hr). In all seriousness, quality art takes a long time, IVAs are a royal pain, and I have several projects to work on at once. For example, the mothership's OmniLab has omni converters that let you select a converter from a bunch of templates: Instead of having a fixed set of converters for, say, Pathfinder's BrewWorks, and making use of 1-2 of them, you can instead be more efficient by configuring the converters do do what you'd like.

Working on a new template: Omni converters let you configure individual converters. Instead of, say, configuring the Casa into a Pigpen just for the soil recycler and never using the Sabiter reactor, you can set up the omni converters to soil recyclers for faster recycling, or to whatever you need. The above is the first pass; it needs some of the features of the template switcher, but it's a good start.

Maybe the Krakens get bored with making legs wobbly...

I did some more experiments at Skybase: The station has plenty of ResearchKits along with the ongoing Solar Activity Monitoring Experiment (SAME). The Kapollo's engine suffered a breakdown but Samalla will go outside and fix it.

DSEV also has the Danube Delta inline command pod..

I finished out my Minmus Base: Self-sufficient and ready for science! Once I unlock ISRU I can set up an extraplanetary launchpad and start shipping the Gemstones and PreciousMetals I found back to Kerbin...

The next Heisenberg release won't be for awhile, but here's one of the new parts: This will make it easier to build bases with the Bison gondola parts. Imagine using the existing docking ports, ground stabilizers, and wheels to dock components together to form a mobile base.

Back to IVA slogging... I've got the UV maps done for the cabin shell, and some light placements done.. Doesn't look like much but the important stuff is that I can start texturing the interior. Some inspiration for the KFS interiors: Props will use MAS/ASET as much as possible..

Yup, My flying saucers are inspired by 1960s tv shows.

Last bit for the night: