Angelo Kerman

Epilogue: Huitzil 18, 2007 “We’re doing this because the technology is obsolete,” Scott reminded himself. It felt like he was retiring an old friend. It made him sad. But the simple fact was that the Mk33s couldn’t be upgraded without practically tearing them down to the airframe and rebuilding them. That wasn’t cost effective. It was cheaper to simply build a new one. So, today, he and Mabo were flying Resolute, a.k.a. Mk33-04, to the Boneyard- correction, the Kerbal Spaceflight Museum, to join her sister ships in retirement. Blackstar would have joined them too had the Kerman Air Force not decided to keep their sole Mk33 in active reserve. They would have received better news coverage of the retirement, but they were being overshadowed by the Nautilus’ recent return from Laythe. They were already talking about refitting her instead of converting her into a space station. Scott understood the lack of coverage; Nautilus and her crew found phytoplankton in Laythe’s oceans! But they weren’t the only ones who made amazing discoveries in the past three years… When Frolie’s experiment to zap the exotic material with an electric charge worked, it changed everything. In short order, Frolie Kerman became the Father of Gravitics. It turned out that applying an electric charge to graviolium- the official name of the exotic matter- altered the local fabric of space-time. And that discovery changed the nature of spaceflight forever. Orbital Dynamics kept gravitic technology- a.k.a. grav-tech- a tightly held secret thanks to vastly upgraded security procedures, an army of lawyers, and quietly, with help from the federal government. Other companies would love to duplicate their work as soon as they got their hands on one of their engines, but the company had key patents on lockdown. That gave the company a monopoly on grav-tech for the foreseeable future. For now, grav-tech remained mostly experimental and in limited supply. But it was clear that the days of traditional rockets were numbered. For instance, Kopernicus (DSEV-02) and the Third Duna Fleet- launched shortly after Nautilus began her journey back to Kerbin in 2004- would be the last interplanetary exploration fleet to be powered by conventional and atomic rockets. “She’ll be well taken care of,” Mabo, Orbital Dynamics’ Chief of the Astronaut Corps, said, breaking Scott out of his reverie. “Yeah,” was all Scott could manage. Resolute banked on final approach to the Boneyard, touched down, and taxied over to her resting place next to her sister ships. As before, the pilots shut down the spacecraft but this time, for the last time. As they exited the craft, ground crews began offloading her resources and rendering her non-flyable. Across the way, the pilots saw the previous generation of reusable shuttles resting in retirement as well- including Münraker 1, the sole Block 2 Shuttle orbiter. Scott reflected on what happened with them… Drax Kerman was forced to step down as CEO of Drax Aerospace when he was arrested for attempting to poof Dolores Kerman, and he received the maximum penalty. And his time in lock-down wasn’t going to be like one of those “resort” prisons that the wealthy usually enjoyed… Drax Aerospace also suffered unusually severe fines for attempting to steal Orbital Dynamics’ microgravity 3D printing technology. Consequently, they canceled their own orbiting construction yard, and offered their mass driver engines as a gesture of goodwill to the space mining industry. At least the Arrow Space Corporation was properly licensing the printing technology for their own orbiting yard- the sharing agreement was part of the stipulations for basing their printers off the original MoS prototypes from Starlab. At least Orbital Dynamics was smart enough to negotiate an exclusivity period… Scott and Mabo didn’t stay for long; they boarded the company jet- Scott’s turboprop that he bought when he won the lottery- and flew back to Welcome Island. From there, they watched as ground crews loaded up the payload that their brand new, graviolium-powered Mk33 would carry. Unlike the previous models, the new one had an aft cargo ramp that made life much easier. No more loading via overhead cranes! The pilots boarded the new spaceplane and said hello to Frolie. He grunted a greeting and then looked up a few seconds later. “I’m working on a new gravitic OCTV design,” he said. Scott left him to his work- the new flight computers performed the preflight checks automatically. A flight engineer was mostly a formality. Scott got clearance to taxi out of the hangar and onto the runway, then he asked for clearance to take off. “Skyranger, you are cleared for takeoff from Runway 090 Right,” the air traffic controller said. “Roger that,” Scott radioed back. “ODMC, how we looking?” “Minmus Base is looking forward to that Sandcaster, Scott,” Frobert Kerman, Flight Director of Orbital Dynamics Mission Control said. “Your mission is a go. They still can’t believe that we can deliver it in a few hours instead of the usual week and a half.” Scott laughed. “Let’s prove them wrong.” After warming up her engines, Skyranger flew straight up into orbit. +++ Thanks for reading! I hope you had as much fun reading about my missions as I had flying and writing about them. My JNSQ mission report continues in: Flight of The Endeavour Bonus images :

It's still experimental, but it doesn't cost resources to fill the tank. I have no plans to make it cost funds. The idea behind it is that you fly the mission once and see if you can ship a full tank of resources to the destination. If so, then keep the vessel at the destination and set the timer. It abstracts the supply run, freeing you up to do other things. Think of it as a poor-kerbal's version of what they're doing in KSP 2...

No, the persistent data is stored in the save game file (persistent.sfs). Right now there isn't much you can do except bring out a replacement ship. If you can keep the one with the bugged warp engine around, then I can add some debug code to test how that state is getting set and possibly trace what's going on. That'll take a day or two to code up.

It sounds like there is a problem with a persistent state with that specific engine. If the same type of vessel doesn't have an issue then the problem is with the engine itself. I'd have to take a detailed look to see what's going on though, and add more debug logs to get details. That'll have to wait until tomorrow at least when I have access to my development PC.

I don't know if this will work; I'd have to do an in-depth analysis on what's going wrong with your warp engine. It sounds cranky. Anyway, Try this quick hotfix and see if it helps. You'll need to shut down the engine and restart it.

(this is why in KSP 2, I want to do jump tech...) I'll have to wait until tonight to try and fix this. Not sure what causes it, but one thing I can try to do is recompute the ship's location whenever you restart the engine.

I saw this image from @EJ_SA's stream, and the utilities menu is very telling: One of the menu items is "Teleport." If that's anything like KSP 1's vessel rendezvous, and @Intercept Games makes that available as an API, then jump engines are possible in KSP 2.

Off Topic: Having watched some of the videos on KSP 2, I can say that I'm definitely impressed. The game has great potential and I look forward to seeing how it matures. It sounds like modding isn't officially supported in Early Access, at least for a while, and as a long-time modder of KSP 1, I'm ok with that. It'll give me time to just play the game and enjoy its features, and lets me take the time to plan out what I want to do. @Intercept Gameshas done an outstanding job, and I think KSP 1's successor is in good hands. And if the specs look hefty, just wait, the game's performance will improve. There's no way that the company would build a game that can only be played by 30% of the players on Steam.

Maybe try it with KIS? RE: Sandcastle shipyard: The frame is 42 parts but the total is 216.

Much appreciated, thank you. I don't know how much KSP 1 playtime I'll get out of it, and if KSP 2 has good rover parts then it won't be needed. I'm already looking forward to not needing Pathfinder (due to colonies) or DSEV (due to new interplanetary/interstellar parts) either. There's a raft of other mods I won't need... I really want to keep the number of mods that I maintain in KSP 2 very low- like the 2-3 I've mentioned before. I'm hesitant to even look at Snacks until resources and resource mining is in the game- colonies too. So if KSP 2 has adequate rover parts then Buffalo 2 won't get ported over. I don't even know if any KSP 1 3D models can be ported over...

Yeah, that price is way higher than what I was paying. Soon as it jumped like that, I decided to let my license run out- hence the reason in the last couple of months of 2022 I was cranking out Buffalo 2 parts...

I've used 3DS MAX for the past 10 years. I had a good deal on it until they drastically raised the renewal price. It worked well for my needs- and not just KSP modding. Blender looks to be a stable platform that's been around 20 years, and has improved significantly in the past decade, so it should be a good investment of my time.

Well before EVA Construction, Pathfinder was made for KIS/KAS. There wasn't much for kerbals to do on EVA back then, so I built Pathfinder to be carried by Buffalo to a site and assembled by a kerbal on EVA. The part design and wonky attachment nodes reflect that. EVA Construction was released much later, and while I was able to make some adjustments for it, I didn't have time to redo Pathfinder to make it fully compatible. That's why you might have some difficulty using it. And before anybody asks, I don't know if it'll be possible to port Buffalo 2 over to KSP 2. We know that modding KSP 2 is supported, but it may be some time before the game is opened up enough for modding to happen. Certain aspect of Buffalo 2 would likely need to be redesigned, such as the part variant system, for instance, and the artwork itself. Another constraint is that I don't have a license to the 3D program I used to make Buffalo 2, and while I plan to learn Blender, it'll be a while before I'm up to speed.

@Ooglak Kerman has had luck finding it in Jool orbit, I think. You can also mine asteroids (especially magic boulders), and on the surface of Dres. Blueshift's collectors aren't the best as they mostly rely on the stock resource system- and it isn't the best. Side note: yes, there will be a Blueshift for KSP 2. It'll be expanded to support my gravitic technologies beyond just FTL.

The original Buffalo was bundled with Pathfinder before people asked for it to be available separately. Buffalo 2 was indeed set up to haul Pathfinder's stuff around.

I may have found the bug. Please see if this version fixes it. I also buffed the drilling rig's output.

I noticed that too, and don't have an explanation of why that happens. They're based on the stock drilling code. Something in that code causes them to shut down. I almost want to write a custom drill plugin, but I'd have to do it quick because KSP 2 is dropping next week.

Try this for the drilling rig: MODULE { name = WBIGoldStrikeDrill HarvesterType = 0 Efficiency = 16 ResourceName = Ore ConverterName = Ore StartActionName = Start Strip Mining StopActionName = Stop Strip Mining drillAnimationName = DrillAnim ImpactTransform = ImpactTransform ImpactRange = 15 AutoShutdown = true UseSpecialistBonus = false SpecialistEfficiencyFactor = 0.2 SpecialistBonusBase = 0.05 ExperienceEffect = DrillSkill EfficiencyBonus = 6 GeneratesHeat = false INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = ElectricCharge Ratio = 15 } } The Drilling Rig is supposed to outperform the Hacienda' Claimjumper.

Moved to KSP 2 Discussion.

The VAB scene with multiple vehicles reminds me of the National Air And Space Museum. Well done!

I re-uploaded the release. Try it now.

Ok, here's the fix.

I can partially fix this problem, but some of the RCS thrusters aren't showing their thrust effects and I can't figure out why.

Hm, I'll have to look into that. Hopefully it's an issue that can be fixed in Unity; the license to my 3D program ran out and it's too expensive to renew it. This year I'll be learning Blender. And if it's possible to port 3D models over to KSP 2 without too much difficulty, the Mk-33 is on my list. No promises, we know next to nothing about what it takes to mod the game...

Colliders can’t be added at this time. The kerbal should be able to climb up though