Angelo Kerman

Yup, I got pretty fed up with all the pestering, removed the Copernicus from the lineup, then ran across this picture: while thinking that DSEV's new hab/lab/greenhouse could be useful as planetary bases if I added a base unit for them (and yes, I know a certain other mod used this picture as the basis for its parts). That circled me back around to the Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0 document, and the Bi-Modal NTR, and I found some old artwork that I did for Kopernicus. It didn't take long for me to clean it up into the pics I posted, so I decided to include them in the upcoming release. The expandable hab has to wait- I'm not delaying the release any further- but the cargo elements are there. You could always use the Homestead from Multipurpose Colony Modules (included in the Extras/MCM folder when you download Pathfinder) for the time being, but I'd rather see if I can make something like what @Porkjet did: So sad these never saw the light of day, they look fabulous! Maybe I can get close, I've been practicing my skills. I'll have to look at HOPE, it isn't currently in my plans. This is, however: I've wanted to build the Mars One ship from the Mars One Crew Manual ever since I read that book as a kid. I still have it, too Meantime, I've got to get that mobile emitter part done over the weekend. KIS accessories are a pain, the hardest part is lining them up on the kerbal body..

I worked on my Kopernicus parts for DSEV:

Yup, pretty much. You can mix and match parts as you like.

Thanks! Due to the detour I'm slightly behind schedule but hey, we get a good head start on the Copernicus! All it really needs is an expandable hab module and an engine mount that doubles as a heat radiator. Possibly a new engine, but the Viper is tri-modal now...

K2 Duna Ascent Vehicle:

Got the Saddle Tank and the Storage Wedge done: Now I just need to slog through the mobile emitter- the hard part is getting the thing positioned correctly..

I don't know anything about Roverdude's crane system, TBH. What I do know is that for the Heisenberg, I move the elevator by positioning the meshes instead of positioning the joints as is the case of Infernal Robotics. I'm also careful to not save the state of the elevator's position because I don't know what KSP will do when you leave the scene and come back. But my experience with the elevator might lead to a robot arm for the Nautilus...

Very easily: the centrifuge is animated and doesn't require Infernal Robotics. :)

And the testing continues. Here you can see that the Buffalo rover has just enough room to clear the saddle truss: You won't be able to stick bulky items on top, but an EVA and some work by an Engineer with KIS installed can solve that problem. Last couple of items for the K2 truss system are a drop tank and a storage wedge. Just 3 parts to go, and I'm done with this release of DSEV!

I like the way that yoy lay out your mission reports, makes it easier to navigate the thread. Your spacecraft designs are pretty cool too. Good luck on your Duna mission!

So close to being done! I partly re-textured the Supernova to be more pork-alike. It’s not the best, but better than it was before; there’s only so much I can do with a 2-year-old model. I’ve also nerfed the Supernova ISP, and upped the fusion pellet usage on the fusion reactors; you won’t see these changes on your existing craft. The update means that my reference design has enough delta-v to reach Jool and a moon or two before it needs refueling, just like in the NASA Discovery II mission. I got detoured today and dusted off some old plans for a saddle truss system similar to the trusses found on NASA’s Copernicus. Here's a look at the three saddle trusses, they're the same size as the stock Mk3 cargo bays: Once I get a couple of storage tanks done, they’ll be in the next DSEV release. In addition to the short, medium, and long trusses, you’ll have a landing frame. It has two configurations, one suited for engines and one suited for landing gear. I won’t have the inflatable hab module in the upcoming release, but at least you can use it as a cargo lander. Finally, here’s the next installment of When We Left Kerbin: The Discovery II mission. When We Left Kerbin: To Refuel or Not To Refuel The Discovery enters a 215.321 km by 213.901 km polar orbit around Vall, with 4,214 m/s delta-v to spare. Starting with 9.5 m/s delta-v at launch, they had more than enough to reach the Joolian moon. The Chief Designer is pleased; the Supernova just needs a bit more tuning. 8.4k m/s for the reference design should be enough. Discovery’s crew readies the ship’s fuel tanks to undock for the trip to the surface, only to find out from Mission Control that the Chief Designer didn't bother to ship a refueling infrastructure out to Jool for the shakedown cruise. The crew is livid, until the @Kuzzter Instruments computer takes a break from writing the second novel of its epic five novel mission to Dres to point out that Eilxy is an engineer, and can modify the Persistence. "You know, like that guy Bill, from that Kerbal space fleet odyssey," the KI-9000 says. The crew thinks that the A.I. is a few bits short of a byte, and goes back to arguing with Mission Control. Its attempt to motivate the crew having failed, the KI-9000 sighs and uses Hyperedit to refuel the ship. The AE-35 Communications Array, with its combined planetary scanner, orbital resource scanner, and relay- which most certainly will not fail within 72 hours, thank you very much- has done a preliminary scan of Vall and verified that its resource scanner and KerbNet access are working. A quick install of SCANSat and a few days of scanning has tracked down the source of the signal on Vall…

Oh, sorry, wrong mod. Take a look in the Gondola folder, they should be in there.

That's likely a typo.

@Shnyrik Looks like you have RPM installed. I recently added ASET props support to the Bison parts. What happens when you delete the ASET spaces? They're in the Spaces folder and all labeled with ASET in the name. Your logs indicate a lot of NREs with JSI RPM.

It's in the DSEV mod. It's "classic" in that it is about two years old now. I designed it to fit in the Mk3 cargo bay, and it was originally based on the truss design for NASA's Discovery II. But they looked like escher drawings from a distance, so I changed them, and eventually redesigned them to somewhat resemble the chassis from the Buffalo mod. The newer D2 trusses are just upscaled versions that are sized for 3.75m parts. In fact, I originally wanted them to be 3.75m, but also wanted them to fit in the Mk3 cargo bay, so the 2.5m form factor won out. After making the new 3.75m crew parts for DSEV, the 2.5m trusses just didn't look right. I did consider making them 2.5m. But 2.5m crew parts have been done many times, and I haven't seen many 3.75m ones done in pork-alike style... My hex trusses are so named because that's what NASA calls them in their paper. But The first mod to use the name hex truss was created by @SpeedyB and you can see the elegance that my trusses lack here:

I finished up the adapter part that goes from my classic hex truss system to the new D2 truss system: Then I sent DSEV's Discovery II reference design to Jool so that I can re-calibrate the Supernova's delta-v: You can change the nose art by creating custom flags... As with the NASA Discovery II mission, the reference design will need a refueling stop at a Joolian moon. She's currently headed to Vall:

Bonus episode tonight, got more done than expected! When We Left Kerbin: Corner Pocket As Discovery enters Jool's SOI, the KI-9000 circularizes the ship's orbit and simultaneously comments on a journalist's point of view about aliens buzzing Kerbin, watches a claymation epic saga about the space program (and a space station!) and makes edits to its epic novel. The crew, meanwhile, is on strike. They hope their tweets will cause reputation hits and fines. Fortunately for the Chief Designer, they're in sandbox mode. KSC wins the bet; the ship successfully made its capture burn, achieving an orbit at 189,730.5 km. The crew will have to pay up when they get home. The artificial intelligence evaluates the situation; a transfer burn to Pol would take an additional 360 days at the ship’s current altitude, but there’s a transfer window to Vall in about 4 hours. This is fortuitous, the mysterious signals have been tracked to the moon. The crew requests that the mining ship meet Discovery at Vall. Several minutes later, Gene responds by saying that they’re working on it. Time to make the burn.

Getting closer to done! Today I finished the adapter part that bridges the classic hex truss with the newer D2 truss system: I'm also play-testing the configurations and adjusting things where needed. It looks like I have some more work to do on the centrifuge IVA overlay, and it looks like the windows are too opaque. But at least I got all the textures converted over to dds... And When We Left Kerbin continues... When We Left Kerbin: It’s An Ice Cream Social Experiment The plane-change burn was completed weeks ago. The mid-course correction maneuver is hours away. With not much to do, the engineering team volunteers to be test subjects for the zero-g ice cream experiment, now that the centrifuge has a built-in experiment lab. It also functions as a Mobile Processing Lab, and of course as a greenhouse and life support recycling, so it is pretty versatile. The pilots stop playing games and volunteer to be ice cream test subjects too. The scientists all try to outdo each other to create the best ice cream in the solar system… Days later, with the crew busy with their "experiments," the onboard Kuzzter Instruments 9000 easily handles the mid-course correction burn while simultaneously playing chess, keeping up with the news, reading TV Tropes, and writing its epic novel about a mission to Dres. There's more waiting around for the crew ahead, but the KI-9000 knows how to keep plenty busy... *** Weeks later, the crew runs out of ResearchKits to make ice cream "experiments" with and is grumpy again. They start taking bets on how much delta-v they’ll have left after entering Jool orbit, and whether or not the ship’s engine will fail and the ship will sail on by the green gas giant…

@DMagic: Thanks for those links. What I was trying to say is that SQUAD should've gone the SCANSat route, and had you do the design. Because let's face it, your stuff is so much nicer.

Ok, I'll take a look and see what's going on. Thanks for the logs, that'll help.

@DMagic This latest release is outstanding! Thank you for all your hard work, I really enjoy using SCANSat; SQUAD would've done well had they contracted you to do KerbNet... I noticed that you are using the new Unity 5 UI, do you by chance have any links or tutorials on how it's done? I have some screens that I want to do with the new GUI system.

Nice! Here are a couple of config nodes that might help: //This is calibrated for 2 kerbals at 100% efficiency //when they consume 1 snack per meal and 3 meals per day. For your custom recycler, //Take into account the number of kerbals it should support along with the meals and snacks. //In game, the player can adjust the efficiency of the recycler from 10% to 100%. MODULE { name = SoilRecycler ConverterName = Recycler StartActionName = Start Recycler StopActionName = Stop Recycler AutoShutdown = false GeneratesHeat = false UseSpecialistBonus = true SpecialistEfficiencyFactor = 0.2 UseSpecializationBonus = true SpecialistEfficiencyFactor = 0.1 ExperienceEffect = ScienceSkill EfficiencyBonus = 1.0 RecyclerCapacity = 2 INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = Soil Ratio = 1 FlowMode = ALL_VESSEL } INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = ElectricCharge Ratio = 5 } OUTPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = Snacks Ratio = 0.0002777778 DumpExcess = false FlowMode = ALL_VESSEL } } Snack grinder MODULE { name = SnackProcessor ConverterName = Snack Processor StartActionName = Start Snack Processor StopActionName = Stop Snack Processor AutoShutdown = false GeneratesHeat = false UseSpecialistBonus = true SpecialistEfficiencyFactor = 0.2 UseSpecializationBonus = true SpecialistEfficiencyFactor = 0.1 ExperienceEffect = ScienceSkill EfficiencyBonus = 1.0 //Ore masses 0.01 metric tons per unit INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = Ore Ratio = 0.0002 FlowMode = STAGE_PRIORITY_FLOW } INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = ElectricCharge Ratio = 30 } //Snacks masses 0.001 metric tons per unit //1 Ore = 5 Snacks OUTPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = Snacks Ratio = 0.001 DumpExcess = false FlowMode = STAGE_PRIORITY_FLOW } } Snacks doesn't really have a greenhouse, but it has a snack grinder that produces Snacks from Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen (CHON). Mods like Pathfinder, MOLE, Heisenberg, and DSEV do have greenhouses, but they're based on code not found in Snacks. I've been considering a "SnacksPlus" addon that will give you a native greenhouse, but you'd need the SnacksPlus addon for that. I'm still trying to keep Snacks as simple as possible, but if you want a greenhouse of sorts that produces Snacks continually, you can do something like this: Greenhouse MODULE { name = ModuleResourceConverter ConverterName = Greenhouse StartActionName = Start Grenhouse StopActionName = Stop Greenhouse AutoShutdown = false GeneratesHeat = false UseSpecialistBonus = true SpecialistEfficiencyFactor = 0.2 ExperienceEffect = ScienceSkill EfficiencyBonus = 1 //Calibrated for 1 snack per meal, 3 meals per day //Supports 2 kerbals INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = Water Ratio = 0.000218750 } INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = Fertilizer Ratio = 0.000072917 } INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = ElectricCharge Ratio = 12 } OUTPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = Snacks Ratio = 0.001388889 } } Composter: //This is calibrated for 2 kerbals at 100% efficiency //when they consume 1 snack per meal and 3 meal per day. For your custom recycler, //Take into account the number of kerbals it should support along with the meals and snacks. //In game, the player can adjust the efficiency of the recycler from 10% to 100%. MODULE { name = SoilRecycler ConverterName = Soil Recycler StartActionName = Start Soil Recycler StopActionName = Stop Soil Recycler AutoShutdown = false GeneratesHeat = false UseSpecialistBonus = true SpecialistEfficiencyFactor = 0.2 UseSpecializationBonus = true SpecialistEfficiencyFactor = 0.1 ExperienceEffect = ScienceSkill EfficiencyBonus = 1.0 RecyclerCapacity = 2 INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = Soil Ratio = 1 FlowMode = ALL_VESSEL } INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = ElectricCharge Ratio = 10 } OUTPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = Water Ratio = 0.000208333 DumpExcess = false FlowMode = ALL_VESSEL } OUTPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = Fertilizer Ratio = 0.000069444 DumpExcess = false FlowMode = ALL_VESSEL } } If you use values like that, your parts will be calibrated to work with other Snacks converters. Thanks for making parts and configs for Snacks!

LOL! Hey, I remember the days of VHS battling it out with Betamax, and remotes that required cables to operate...

The large battery capacity is necessary to help make the rovers go.

I'm in the home stretch at long last! I've refactored the Snacks processors and hit the Supernova with a nerf bat. And When We Left Kerbin continues... Series title When We Left Kerbin: Ordinary and Super-Bored It is 34 days before the mid-course correction burn. With four pilots, two engineers, and three scientists aboard, most of the crew is bored. The pilots take turns running simulations- at least that's what they call their video games. The engineers argue over the performance tuning of the Supernova engine, and the scientists argue over which experiment to run next. Will the fully-loaded Discovery, with 9.5k delta-v at launch, be enough to reach Jool and refuel at Pol? Or too much? Maybe the Chief Designer shouldn't have hit the engine with a nerf bat... Jonney, one of the scientists, is nervously watching plants grow, trying to ensure that the crew has enough snacks. Refactoring the greenhouse’s snack production goes well, and now provides a slight advantage over the snack grinder, but there still aren't enough resources to grow the snacks needed for the trip. The pilots aren't going to be happy about running out, so Jonney asks the engineers to cheat crank up the recyclers to 100%. Life support wasn't a concern for the shakedown cruise according to the Chief Designer, only delta-v was. They should've sent the Chief on this trip instead... Eilxy decides to have a conversation with the onboard @Kuzzter Industries 9000, which is also busy running a ship-wide diagnostic to verify the latest snacks patch, binge watching three of its favorite shows simultaneously- and keeping up with all of them- and outlining an epic novel that it plans to write during the trip. The KI-9000 debates the pros and cons of fusion engines versus fission-based nuclear thermal rockets with its shipmate. It's a little biased, though...