Angelo Kerman

@DoctorDavinci Absolutely fabulous!

A tractor beam is already on the books, along with a drill beam. Imagine hovering over a spot about 20m up, then turning on the drill beam to get resources. I also have a transporter on the books that uses plugin code I created for Pathfinder's Pipeline mass driver. With a corresponding transporter room somewhere on the surface, you can beam (technically, wormhole via stargate) resources, KIS items, and crew back and forth. With Pathfinder installed and set to Classic Stock play mode, one of its templates will include a transporter room. In the meantime, I'm still doodling: Inspired by: If I do Star Trek parts (I'm on the fence on that, maybe it'll be a summplement), I'd do something inspired by the NX-01..

..working on it.. Part 1960s flying saucer, part Star Trek saucer section...

Make her a test pilot and crash the plane.

That's sort of the plan There'll be a Flapjack cradle that sits on top of the bridge module that's hollow with cutouts so that you can get to the docking port and undock. For those that don't want the cradle, there'll probably be a sensor dome with science instruments to fill in the space instead.

Love it! I have to get back to my coding challenge, but I did some more doodling this morning: I figure that by the time the kerbals start building their own mothership, they have a better understanding of the crashed saucers' technology and don't need to copy their shape directly..

I've been hammering on a code challenge for a job the past couple of days, so I haven't gotten as far as I'd like. I'm kind of stuck on the mothership concepts. Here's an example: Not really feeling it, so it's on the backburner for a bit while I get back to the prototype's cockpit IVA. The plan is to do MAS/ASET with Near Future Props for the cockpit and crew cabin. IVA's are a huge slog though, so it'll take some time..

I established an outpost on Minmus: Left to right: Payin, Bobus, and Commander Valentina Kerman (Kerman Navy). This is the first landing on Minmus for the Kerman States, and the first spaceflight for Payin and Bobus. Both Payin and Bobus are veterans of the Kerbin Elcano Exploration Project.

Glad it's working for you. One caveat: be careful not to bump the object on the arm against your ship, it'll cause kraken forces against your ship. It's a quirk I haven't figured out yet but if you go slow it shouldn't be a problem..

The new ship looks great! Interesting deployment method too. I thought Senior Consul Maxbas’ secret meeting was to, um, hook up with Kerny as some kind of arranged thing.. Now we know she is also Section 31!

Another concept image: The mothership is 30m in diameter and two decks thick (room for two decks, each 1.25m tall). I think 36m is a bit much so this is scaled down a bit. Here you can see the prototype for scale; it'll dock onto the topside of the mothership and serve as the shuttlecraft.

The Mk1 Station Arm isn't well suited for a shuttle bay, but I do look forward to Pak's shuttle arm

While the tech behind the saucer is influenced by Mass Effect, I've thought about Trek ships too... That's one of my concept images for the mothership. The warp engine itself is in the saucer, but I've considered adding warp coil sections that store additional StaticCharge and might provide a speed boost. For a traditional saucer, you could just outfit a storage section with a warp coil template instead. That reminds me, distances in stock solar systems are pretty small, so you probably won't need to go past light speed while traveling intra-system. I'm thinking you'll need a low gear while in system, and a high gear for interstellar travel. Not sure how that'll work and it's a ways off before I even make the FTL engine, but it's something to consider...

You can fly underwater, but can't land on Jool. No craft in KSP can do that. Glad you like the classic UFO look, that's exactly what I was going for. The tech nodes are already in line with CTT. The science costs reflect the appropriate CTT tech tree tier. I've also balanced out when you get certain functionality. You won't get Crazy Mode until unlocking Gravity Wave Applications, for instance, and while the A-51 saucer parts are available mid-game, it'll be conventionally powered. Same goes for the gravitic fusion reactor- the saucer is underpowered with the SAFER reactor by design, but you get it at Gravity Wave Applications too. You'll get the mothership's FTL engine after unlocking Advanced Alien Engineering. Hence, DSEV still has a place; the Hypernova lets you reach for the stars, but it'll still take you awhile to get there. The only caveat is the Kray Kray supercomputer. It's as expensive as an SSME, but there's a small chance that you'll achieve a breakthrough and unlock parts in one of the alien tech tree nodes- but only if you're running its experiment next to a crashed flying saucer. The K2 is conveniently the size of the Buckboard 1000...

After struggling through several bugs this morning, I finally managed to put together a demo video: The stuff I ran into is why I'm not rushing the release of this mod...

No, just their presence orbiting above was enough to make the VKR back down. They're currently the only operational nukes.

Thanks all! This is indeed my top secret project, long delayed, and definitely the most challenging. I'm a software designer by trade, not an artist, so coming up with a design that's both alien and kerbal has been particularly hard. But I'm pretty delighted with how the prototype has turned out. Speaking of which, here are some IVA WIPS: My plan is to texture and outfit the IVAs with props for the A-51, then build some test pieces for the mothership so that I can complete its functionality. Once I get that done then I can make a public alpha release. I do have enough done that I could do a private release, but I'd need players who can provide feedback on the playability. For instance, Graviolium is hard to get. Most planets don't have any, and you'll have to go after asteroids or use the new Refinery to slowly produce the resource at an expensive cost. Does it last long enough in the saucer's generators to make the effort to obtain it worth it? Also, the Gravitic Generator produces GravityWaves from Graviolium, but it also produces StaticCharge. When your StaticCharge storage is full, you can't generate any more GravityWaves. Does the saucer get charged up too fast? Too slow? Should it be able to reach the Mun on a single tank? There are other questions, but these are just a few of the things I'm wrestling with as I create the parts, the functionality, and the lore behind the saucers.

“Congratulations on your promotion, Major Kelbin,” Gene said over the wireless. “The Air Force thanks you for your service by giving you more stuff to do. Be sure to check your personal effects once you reach orbit. Ok gang, you, Dr. Munvan and Samalla are in for one Moho of a ride. Kapollo 6, you are go for launch. Now get up there and get Skybase unpacked and ready for business!” *** “Alright nuggets, you want to go into space like Kelbin and his crew? You’ll have to pass my training course first. The Original Four, The Next Three, and The Five New Guys all learned to work as a team on this course. Now you, the Scientific Six, must do the same. Just don’t expect any around the world trips; that was an anomaly. Now climb aboard the Rubicon, we’re airborne in five. Dismissed.” All but one of the student astronauts left the rooftop. “You know you don’t have to do this, Jim,” Liscella said. “With your service record and what we went through, you’re way overqualified. Mulch, you wrote the training course.” “Actually, I do,” Captain James T. Kerman admitted, “It’s punishment for getting us jailed. Something about reading the manual and following it… Besides, I get to go on Akron’s last tour before she becomes a museum ship...” *** Kerbin Galactic Launches Abenteurer Towards Eve D Duna 23, 1967 Kosmodrome: Director Oskar vonKerman announced today that the Abenteurer, which previously had flown to Minmus and the Mun, launched towards Eve with a crew of four aboard. If their mission is successful, then the crew of Kerbin Galactic’s flagship will become the first to leave Kerbin’s sphere of influence, the first kerbals to reach another planet, and the first kerbals to land on Gilly. The unkermanned Kerbal Space Program’s Pioneer 4 mission, which also launched towards the purple planet but also with the intention to land on it, pales in comparison. After her historic mission to the Mun, the Abenteurer was refit with a revolutionary nuclear thermal rocket system and advanced but untested life support… *** “Because of Chancellor Abelard’s press conference yesterday, the Lattice nearly shut down with all the talk about the arctic saucer lawsuit,” KIA Director Ryan Kerman said. “His claim that we tried to take the craft for ourselves won’t hold up though, especially after Akron’s live broadcast.” President Kenny shook his head. “Between their flying battleship and our orbiting atomic weapons, the Total Disarmament Treaty is pretty much out the door. And so much for expanding ‘Camp Saucer,’ that alien ship will be tied up in the World Court for years.’ “Speaking of aliens, we need to sanitize this speech a bit before the call with Enterprise...” “Munbase Enterprise, Sir,” Ryan corrected. “Right. We again acknowledge our discovery of ancient aliens and that they made the tracking stations and the mining pyramid and the monoliths, but we make it clear once more- truthfully- that they’re long gone. The skeleton the Akron’s crew found, the DNA that we share with the aliens, and the rest will have to wait. There’s a lot to take in as it is.” “These continued cover-ups are going to cost us a lot of resources. And information leaks, whether deliberate or accidental, are bound to happen sooner or later. I’m starting to think it would be easier to just come clean,” Ryan admitted. “Finally changing your tune then?” Ryan shrugged. “More or less. Well, some things should be kept secret…” President Kenny nodded. “Which brings me to our next item. How are we doing with the other one? “MSR-2 has done all it can.” “Explain.” Director Ryan took a deep breath. “Well, the rover is pretty beat up from all the crashes- KIA agents make better spies than remotely operated rover drivers. It lost both its surface scan lasers, one of its hydrogen sensors, the primary relay antenna, the auxiliary solar-“ President Kenny waved Ryan silent. “What have we determined with what’s left? Directory Ryan continued. “Not much. We have mapped out its shape and have verified that its design is the same as the arctic saucer. Which reminds me, the Kerbal Space Center rolled out a rocket-powered mockup yesterday. It’s a hybrid saucer with wings. My informants say that they’ll have a working prototype in the near future. I suggest we add their designs to our research.” “Approved,” the President responded. “Back on topic. Anything else we know about the munar saucer?” “Not really. To do more, we’ll need a research base, our own astronauts to staff it, some hidden bandwidth on the Echo Relay II satellites, and to appropriate the Round Range launch site where nobody will ask questions about our missions. Here’s the black budget request. It’ll be a joint venture between the Kerman Intelligence Agency and the Kerman Air Force.” President Kenny whistled. “Hm. It’ll be costly, but we’ll get a big head start before anybody else can crack open that arctic saucer. Very well,” “Project Excalibur is a go…” Kelbin Kerman will return in: When We Left Kerbin This story took months of planning and the creation of my Heisenberg mod to pull off along with tilt-rotors in Buffalo. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did making it. Thanks for reading! And just what is Project Excalibur? That’s another story, but it involves this:

Latest Release Source Sample Craft (also found in WildBlueIndustries/FlyingSaucers/Ships/SPH) Gerra Kerman, test pilot. She liked the sound of that! Here she was, standing in front of her first assignment, parked on the tarmac at KSC. Gerra whistled, marveling at the design and then began walking around the strange aircraft. It had a disc-shaped body easily 6 meters in diameter and over a meter thick. Add the trailing wings, and the aircraft spanned 8 meters. Its leading edges had gray carbon panels, ready to resist the heat of atmospheric entry, with dark heat-resistant tiles trailing the edge. A set of windows followed the craft’s contours, but they only gave a view out the front. As she walked around to the back, Gerra saw a sculpted engine housing that sported a strange looking engine with a sloped ramp. Then she realized that the craft was a transatmospheric vehicle, a flying saucer! Read more... Have you ever wanted to pretend that your kerbals found a crashed flying saucer and then the little green men and women reverse-engineered it? With Kerbal Flying Saucers (KFS), now you can! KFS is a mod that lets you research and build your own custom flying saucers that work within established gameplay mechanics while providing exotic twists. It’s as easy as mixing and matching components to create a vehicle suited to your needs. And with its custom tech tree branch and research experiments, you can simulate your reverse-engineering efforts via the stock science system- and possibly unlock parts early! Kerbal Flying Saucers is inspired by real-world saucer-shaped craft like Avro Canada's VZ-9 Avrocar, North American Aviation's Lenticular Reentry Vehicle, USAF's Project 1794, and Northrop's NS-97. Required Mods: Tutorial Videos More Pics: Waterfall engine configs by @Horizons Aerospace

...or for players to read the KSPedia which explains it...

KerbalActuators comes with its own arm and crane (same ones in MOLE and Heisenberg). You can go to my github repo and just download KerbalActuators.

The Kerman Air Force. It was supposed to be MOLE-3, but the Air Force stepped in and took it over while, for a time, allowing KSP use of its lab space. It now services the DenEye spy satellites and sports 18 "science return capsules." (Actually, they are science return capsules, but in the story they're nukes.)

Pathfinder. I used KerbalKonstructs to move them into place.

This evening I made my Scrapper Pod Mk2: Built from DSEV's space station parts, it sports 4 DSEV radial tanks for recycled resource storage, aft-mounted size 0 docking port from MOLE, and some stock parts for reaction control, lights, and power. In addition to the recycler arm, the Mk2 comes with a grabber arm from Buffalo: (previous iteration shown): I also made a Buffalo version: It can scan asteroids, grab free floating parts, and recycle them. Finally, my ground scrapper:

To: Chairperson Karen Kerman, Wild Blue Industries From: Angelo Kerman, CEO, Wild Blue Industries Subject: Important Matters Security: Encrypted Karen: Hide the nukes!