Angelo Kerman

I applaud Squad's efforts to revamp their parts to at last remove placeholders and improve their appearance. From what I've seen, its an improvement, and those who don't use mods will probably like them. The revamped parts don't seem to have a consistent style between them, and the detailing varies between parts. By contrast, Porkjet's revamp of the airplane and spaceplane parts remain consistent and hold up well after several years. By contrast, Restock built upon Porkjet's rocket parts revamp and met and exceeded its art quality. all the parts are consistently detailed and textured. As one example, here are the Restock Skipper and Mainsail: Everything from the detailing to the texturing is consistent, and it really looks like these two engines belong to the same company. And here are engines from Porkjet's revamp: Restock is consistent with these engines as well. What this shows me is that different artists can indeed make a consistent art quality that matches each other's work. I would be very happy if I could improve my art skills to the level of Restock, and my next project will I hope give me that opportunity. I'd say that Squad has their vision of their game, and I respect that. Many people like their art direction. For me, I prefer the Restock style; it looks great and it looks consistent with other aspects of the game.

One more, then taking a small break to do some modding. Chapter 7 Before they’d let anyone fly the K-20, KSC had one more test to perform. They had to ensure that a K-20 could break away from its launch vehicle in the event of an in-flight abort. To that end, they refurbished the Pathfinder and prepared it for another launch. This time, its K-20 launch vehicle adapter sported a pair of Bolt abort motors. Once activated, they could not be shut down. And as before, Pathfinder carried no crew. This time around, the Explorer II swapped its solid rocket boosters for a pair of liquid boosters. The test flight gave KSC engineers an opportunity to gather flight data on them and make any improvements needed for the next suborbital flight. The launch began without a hitch, but then the rocket began to spin out of control! The maneuver was not part of the plan. The rocket was partially controllable, so Flight directed it away from the space center before triggering the abort sequence. Pathfinder rocketed away from its booster and then ditched its interstage adapter. After righting itself and lining up with the runway, the glider set down and skidded to a stop. The unexpected operational test of the launch abort system worked like a charm. A thorough accident investigation revealed that somebody forgot to turn on Aircraft Autopilot a software glitch in the flight control software caused instability in the launch vehicle and caused it to lose control. The glitch was corrected, and KSC prepared Pathfinder for another flight. The Astrovan rolled out to the launchpad, and Valentina stepped out. She won the coin toss to make the first piloted suborbital flight, much to Jeb’s consternation. He remained in the van while Bill got out and wished her well. Valentina took the elevator and boarded Pathfinder while Bill and Jeb drove back to the astronaut complex. Jeb hopped into the Sea Goat, ready for spacecraft recovery. The launch went off without a hitch. Pathfinder roared off the pad and rolled to the right and began to pitch over. Once the LRBs ran out of fuel, Valentina jettisoned them, and continued ascending and arcing over. Once the booster ran out of fuel, Valentina decoupled Pathfinder and coasted up to 109km. She remembered to open the payload doors and run the experiments before buttoning up the glider and hitting the atmosphere. As before, Pathfinder overshot Welcome Back Island and fell short of the Katalina Island Airfield. Valentina carefully guided the glider to a safe landing in the ocean. All she had to do was wait for recovery. Jeb arrived about an hour later, connected the winch cables, and hauled in Pathfinder as Valentina got out and hopped into the Sea Goat. The duo took a brief flight to the Island Airfield for recovery. “Congrats on being the first kerbal in space,” Jeb said coldly. “Now I get to be first into orbit.” Jeb could be such a jerk sometimes…

Thanks! Yeah, I'm trying something different for this save. It's the first time for me playing KSP 1.7.3 (my previous game was on KSP 1.3.1!) and first JNSQ game. I've wanted to do a shuttles-themed game for awhile, so I get to do that as well. It's been fun trying to figure out how to recover the K-20!

Chapter 6 After Valentina and Bob flew around Kerbin and collected their data, the climate scientists got to work analyzing the results. Meanwhile, the engineers readied the Sea Goat to recover the K-20 by adding a fuselage extension with power generation and mounted a pair of winches. They rolled out the plane along with the Pathfinder- it was undergoing thermal painting- for recovery practice. Bill had no trouble attaching the winch cables and hauling Pathfinder against the Sea Goat. Once that was completed, they brought the planes back into the hangar. For the next training, the engineers attached the K-20 mockup- they didn’t want to risk Pathfinder- and Bill and Jeb landed the Sea Goat in KSC Harbor. Bill hit the disconnect lever, dropping the mockup into the ocean, before stepping outside for a swim. He connected the winch cables, got back inside, and carefully retracted them. As before, the glider fit snugly. Unfortunately, the Sea Goat couldn’t lift out of the water, but being so close to shore, Jeb just taxied over to the beach and head back to KSC. A week later, the engineering team equipped the seaplane with a pair of brand-new Titan turboprops and lengthened the pontoons. Once again, Bill and Jeb buzzed KSC Harbor and set the plane back into the ocean to try and take off again under load. This time, with the modifications and new procedures, the Sea Goat lifted out of the ocean. Ideally, the K-20 would land back at KSC, but with the latest success they could handle both ground and water landings. Regardless, the Kerbal Space Program finally had all the pieces in place, so it was time for a suborbital test flight… With its modifications completed, the Pathfinder perched atop its Explorer II launch vehicle and pointed at the sky. The Explorer II had a trio of Swivel engines for increased thrust, a pair of solid rocket boosters to help with the initial kick, and larger fins needed for stability. It was suited for small orbital satellite launches, or in this case, a suborbital hop for for the K-20. The goal was simple: escape the atmosphere, run a couple of experiments, test reentry heating for comparison against predicted models, and land at Welcome Back Island. If the glider flew too far, then it would divert to Katalina Island Airfield as its alternate landing site. If necessary, Pathfinder would ditch in the ocean for recovery. With so many unknowns and firsts, Pathfinder carried no pilot. Instead its cargo bay held a QBE probe core along with science instruments and emergency batteries. If all went well, then KSC would recover the Pathfinder and refurbish it for another flight. If not, then the space center would move ahead with the Pioneer, the next K-20. They had three more K-20s in various stages of construction: Mariner, Ranger, and Viking. Like Pathfinder and Pioneer, Mariner was another Block 1 with a payload bay while Ranger and Viking were Block 2 variants that eschewed the cargo bay for a crew cabin. Pathfinder’s fuel cell started, and the crew tower rolled back in preparation for launch. Once the tower locked in place, the vehicle launched. It quickly shed its solid rocket booster and continued onward with the core booster. After it ran out of fuel, Pathfinder decoupled from the Explorer II launch vehicle and continued to coast. As it exited the atmosphere, Pathfinder opened its cargo bay and ran its experiments and tested its RCS thrusters. KSC engineers were quite pleased that the craft continued to perform well. The glider coasted up to 113km before heading back down and closing its payload doors to reach its designated landing site. But it was clear that the glider completely missed Welcome Back Island. KSC hoped that it would make the Katalina Island Airfield. Naturally, that didn’t happen. Instead, Pathfinder re-entered about midway, but near enough to try and land at an atoll. Unfortunately, the glider couldn’t reach the atoll either and instead ditched in the ocean nearby. Fortunately, Bill and Jeb were already prepped and ready in the Sea Goat. A short flight later, the Sea Goat landed in the ocean and taxied up to the Pathfinder. Just as they had practiced, Bill hopped out, attached the winch cables, and hauled the glider up next to the seaplane. Jeb then gunned the engines and headed back to the space center, landing before sunset. Pathfinder would need refurbishment, but at first glance it appeared intact and capable of flying again.

I had a successful K-20 launch in JNSQ: This was a suborbital test flight of the K-20 "Pathfinder" space plane. Unfortunately I missed my primary landing site at Welcome Back Island, and fell short of the alternate Island Airfield: I tried to set down near an atoll, but couldn't quite make that either: A water landing was something that KSC had planned for though, so Bill and Jeb took the Sea Goat to fetch Pathfinder: They flew off into the sunset with Pathfinder slung under the seaplane, and landed safely back at KSC:

I was trying to come up with something similar. Currently the plan is to just clip parts into the adapter parts.

Ok, More Servos is updated to 1.1.1: - Fixed textures - Fixed control issues with High Angle Hinge And SLOTH is also updated to 1.1.1: - Fixed textures Not a coincidence I'll have to investigate the snapshot issue..

KSP 1.8 changed file formats for textures. Hopefully this weekend I can fix the issue.

This is taking longer than expected due to issues with Unity. I finally got a version of Unity working last night so I can take another look at the texture issues.

I might add it to Wild Blue Tools. There are other decal mods out there though. Here is one example: They don’t use the stock flag switcher but they have many more options for shapes. The X-20 is from this:

I made a small decal part that works with the stock flag selector: It needs a few tweaks but the basics work.

Gotta upgrade my baseline KSC to the top tier, then definitely ready.

Building up recovery ops tech: https://imgur.com/YfQSHp6 https://imgur.com/4FeqXgH https://imgur.com/AurqSLA https://imgur.com/qn9Qoi7 And new engines and longer pontoons to haul the thing out of the water: https://imgur.com/qjGEf4i

Chapter 5 Valentina and Bob have been flying all over the place taking various atmospheric, oceanic, and temperature readings, and after a long 4-hour stretch, they finally reached the Arctic Sea just after dark. The new Tempest engines were doing their job. Mostly. The Bumblebees just didn’t have enough power to carry all the extra fuel they needed and still lift out of the water. As it was, the Tempests weren’t the best either. KSC hoped to convert the Sea Goat to employ turboprops or jet engines soon. Tired and hungry, Bob stepped out of the cockpit and onto the frigid shore of an iceberg to take more readings. He was glad he had his environmental suit. He’d be quite cold without it. Bob remarked that it was unusual to see icebergs; this part of the Arctic Sea should be locked in ice this time of the year. Once they were done, Valentina backed the Sea Goat away from the shore for a brief trip to the Ice Caps to take atmospheric, temperature, and mystery goo readings. While there, Bob did some surveys for a potential astronaut training habitat. After that, the pair headed to Air Base N46A for some much-needed rest. All in all, they made 30 scientific observations and reports, which should keep KSC’s science staff busy for a while. Several hops later, they were back at KSC. The next day, Explorer 2 roared off the launch pad with a determination to reach space- and return safely. Its new Explorer liquid fuel core state lit up after the launcher dropped its solid strapon boosters. Flight disengaged the booster after the probe’s apoapsis reached nearly 925 kilometers. At its apoapsis, Explorer 2 took its temperature reading. Now it just had to survive its trip back through the atmosphere. The launcher had some fuel left, so KSC decided to try a novel approach: relight the engine to slow descent. It worked, but the booster suffered catastrophic failure as its parts overheated and exploded. Flight frantically tried to get the probe’s decoupler to fire. Finally, Explorer 2 broke free of its launcher and deployed its chutes for a soft landing. At last, KSC launched and safely returned their first space probe! The next step was even more challenging… Several days later, the engineering team rolled out their latest creation: Explorer 3! Using a modified Explorer rocket, with 4 stages plus the strapon solid rocket boosters, KSC hoped to put Explorer 3 into orbit. The rocket roared off the pad and quickly burned through it solids. Dropping them off, Explorer 3 continued its ascent. Soon it dropped its lower core stage, burned through its upper stage, and finally ignited the kick stage. There it ran into problems; Explorer 3 couldn’t control its spin! Mission Control had to patiently wait for Explorer 3 to spin around to prograde before igniting the kick stage, but it worked. Before long, the little probe entered an 85km by 224km orbit around Kerbin, the first artificial satellite to do so! A short while later, Explorer 3 deployed its communications antennae and magnetometer boom, taking measurements and transmitting the results before the probe lost its data link with KSC. The Sea Goat ventured out again, flying east-southeast until they came upon Musgrave Air Force Station, an old missile complex. Val and Bob set the airplane down and refueled the Sea Goat before proceeding east. They needed to take additional temperature readings in the Eastern Sea as well as in Kerbin’s Arid Lowlands. They came across the Great Lake and took some readings before continuing onward. The Sea Goat even found some ancient pyramids thought to belong to the Kermantians, a civilization that spread out through the globe before mysteriously vanishing. Several hours later, the team finished their surveys and headed to Woomera, refueling where they could along the way. They landed at night and rested before their long flight back to KSC.

I'm back at it There's a lot more for me to do but I'm mostly moved into my new place. Chapter 4 With the kermanned spacecraft design settled, the next task was to build and test it. To that end, KSC built a prototype, the Pathfinder, to conduct approach and landing tests. Unlike the mockup, Pathfinder was painted black and white for better visibility. If all went well, the prototype might be modified for spaceflight. The space center needed an aircraft to carry Pathfinder up to its launch altitude, but the aircraft engineers were busy designing a long-range science plane for the climate study. After considerable debate, Gene Kerman, Flight Director and acting head of KSC, got fed up and directed the team to design the plane for both missions. It was an ungainly design with long inverted gull wings, twin tail booms that doubled as pontoons, and a pair of salvaged Bumblebee motors. It could carry either the Pathfinder prototype or a combined science and fuel pod. The engineers called it the Sea Goat, a compromise between Seagull and Mountain Goat. Both names reflected its nature. A few days later, Valentina taxied the Sea Goat onto the newly paved runway at KSC. She gunned the engines and the plane took off, easily climbing into the air before rolling down half the runway. Valentina had no trouble landing in the ocean near KSC Harbor or taking off from the water. A few minutes later, she landed back at KSC. With the test flight complete, KSC cleared the range to test another craft- their first multi-stage rocket! Previous efforts focused on working out issues with solid fuel boosters, but today’s mission was to send a simple temperature sensor into space, take measurements, and hopefully return it safely. Nobody was sure that it would work. The Explorer 1 spacecraft lit its 6 side boosters and leaped off the new launchpad. It quickly burned through its solid fuel and shed stages along the way. Just after it breached the atmosphere, Explorer 1 jettisoned its protective nose cone to reveal the QBE probe core, small heat shield, recovery chute, and temperature sensor. Sadly, not much later, Explorer 1 lost power, but not before arming its recovery chute. The dead probe reached 606km in altitude- still “low” in space, and then promptly plunged through the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the recovery chute burned away, leaving the rest of the craft to slam into the ground. KSC declared it a successful failure; they gained a few bits of science and were rewarded for breaking several records. While the scientists were unhappy about not getting any temperature data, the engineers gleefully went back to their drawing boards. They wanted a rematch. A few days after the rocket launch, the Sea Goat was ready for its next mission: carrying the Pathfinder. Once again, Valentina took the controls, but this time Jeb hopped into the Pathfinder. The original plan was to perform a captive carry test of the Sea Goat/ Pathfinder combo, but a desire to try out FRMS misfire of the decoupler changed their plans. Jeb quickly grabbed the controls as the glider nosed down sharply and managed to coax the plane to circle around to the runway. As he rapidly ran out of altitude, Jeb banked over the runway, setting down nearly at the halfway point. Fortunately, it was enough, and Pathfinder skidded to a stop. It was Valentina’s turn next. She banked the Sea Goat around and set down at the edge of the runway. Thanks to is flaps and slats, she brought the plane down with a scant 25 meters per second and easily stopped well before any possibility of hitting the glider. Val carefully taxied the Sea Goat over to the glider, and ground crews recovered both planes. Finally, as engineers poured over the flight data, the ground team showed off the Sea Goat’s rapid turnaround capability. Soon after, Valentina once more took the airplane into the sky, this time with her husband Bob to gather more science data. They had a few days of flying ahead of them to reach all the waypoints. Hopefully the scientists would be satisfied with the climate data.

@capi3101 Thanks for the feedback. I have a little time this weekend to try and make some fixes.

This sounds more like a mod than a DLC. Sort of like:

Offhand I don’t recall but there is something like a consumption rate.

The Blacksmith relies on the Workshop mod that is now maintained by Linuxgurugamer. You can change productivity in the Blacksmith and Clockworks config files that come with Pathfinder. It also sounds like I missed a texture map when converting them over to the now required dx5 format. Life is really busy fir me right now but I might have time this weekend to fix that.

I got a break from unpacking form my move this weekend, and started building a shuttle for my JNSQ/KSP 1.7.3 career game: https://imgur.com/wFn06nZ The shuttle is inspired by the vonBraun ferry rocket. I haven built the carrier rocket yet, but likely it will use the 5m parts from Making History.

Chapter 3 While the vonKermans continued scouting bases, reviewing financial options, and considering rocket and spacecraft designs, it was Aviation Day at the Kerbal Space Center. For those not familiar, Aviation Day is the day on which kerbals took their very first powered flight in a heavier than air vehicle. Today, sixty years later, Jeb tried to redeem himself for his fiasco with the trainer aircraft crash at the Santa Katalina Island Airfield. KSC engineers once again modified the trainer, replacing the motor with a new Bumblebee engine from an old scrapped Korsair and replacing the existing landing gear with pontoons to enable water landings. Why pontoons? At some point, astronauts will need to be fished out of the water. Plus, at the request of the Kerman Oceanic Atmospheric Agency (KOAA), KSC was contracted to conduct temperature studies at various locations around the globe. With the modifications, Jeb’s job was to land the trainer in the water and take some readings. There were other locations, but they’d have to wait for aircraft capable of reaching them. The study was important; KOAA is concerned that kerbalkin’s burning of hydrokerbons is heating up the planet. Jeb successfully took off and buzzed KSC harbor before splashing down just offshore, and then took some temperature readings. For good measure, he took some atmospheric measurements and tested out the magnetometer. Finally, he tested a new bathymetry experiment. But when he tried to take off again, the engine started but plane just wouldn’t cooperate. As hard as he tried, the plane just wouldn’t lift out of the water. Not wanting to push it, Jeb carefully angled towards the shore, “motored” over to the beach, hauled the trainer out of the water. Satisfied that he could exit the water, he carefully backed the plane into the water again, performed the material science experiment that he forgot, and then taxied off the beach. A short flight later, he was back at the KSC- and landed properly on the runway. KSC's mechanics would have their hands full drying out the plane! A bit later, KSC rolled out a mockup of what could be the first spacecraft- the K-20 Kerbal Soar! The Fabulous Four all posed for a publicity shot that’s sure to inspire young kerbals to join the Kerbal Space Program. The debate among KSC's engineers over winged craft versus capsules was fierce. Wings were useless in space, but helpful for gliding back to the space center. Capsules were smaller, but a harsher ride for the occupants. Capsules made it easier to bring along other payloads, but winged craft could have cargo bays. And so on... Ultimately, Jeb and Valentina provided the deciding vote; they wanted something that they could fly! Wernher vonKerman, chief engineer at KSC, was delighted. His original plans for the Lindor mun rocket included a winged orbiter, and it was great to see something like his vision coming true. ---- That's all the time I have for now, for the next few days I'll be moving. But To the Mun will return!

Finally done with all my moving tasks for the day. In a couple of days I'll be setting up shop in the new place. Meanwhile, I got some playtime in! Special thanks to @JadeOfMaar for providing consultation on JNSQ's alternatives to the old Kosmodrome! Chapter 2 Field research is an important aspect of the space program, as it helps advance kerbalkin's understanding of the cosmos. Right now, that field research is pretty boring. But testing out new experiments, even if it's just around the Kerbal Space Center, is vital for future research. Here, Bob and Valentina Kerman, the world's first- and thus far only- husband and wife team (boy was Jeb embarrassed when he found out), are showcasing the Materials science bay experiment. This experiment is designed to expose various materials to the local environment to see how they react. Bob is particularly fond of the ham sandwich... Anyway, the team is trying out various delivery mechanisms to see what works. Stacking two on top of each other is not ideal, but it gets the job done. Fun fact: When the Kerbal Space Program recruited Bob Kerman, he insisted that he'd only accept the job if they also hired his wife. When KSP recruited Valentina- an immigrant from the vonKerman Republic, she insisted that she'd only accept the job if they also hired her husband. Neither one knew of the dealings of the other- until they both got the offer letters! Speaking of the vonKerman Republic, it seems that there are some Very Important Kerbals driving around and touring bases. Exactly what for is anyone's not very hard guess. Here, a group of vonKermans are checking out the Darude Missile Test Range to see if it will suit their needs. Before the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty (NDT) declared atomic weapons hazardous to kerbalkin's health and banned testing and possession of any sort, Darude was the place in the VKR to design, build, and test new missiles. Now though, the VIKs believe that Darude might be suited for munar flights. "What can we say," Oskar vonKerman said when interviewed by the press. "The Kerman States' president's 'We choose to go to the Mun because it's there' speech was quite inspiring. Not just to the Kermans, who need a national goal to break out of their funk, but to us as well. Before her speech, we hadn't even considered it. But then we thought, hey, that's a good idea! We used to have rockets, maybe we can go to the Mun too! But since all missiles and even their plans were destroyed per treaty over twenty years ago, we have to start from scratch if we want to reach the Mun. Our counterparts over at the Kerbal Space Center will have to do the same."

Suddenly I have images of trawlers going "fishing" for intel and anything else they could get their hands on...

Tell that to Contract Configurator/ Field Research...

Thanks guys, after a false start I am working on getting science to build rockets. I am about to move so it may be a bit before the next update. This won’t be as involved as my previous stories as it is just laying the groundwork for the next story .