Qwotty

Okay, so, today, I decided to take a leap like a leapfrog playing on a LeapFrog® and make a post after not doing it for a while. Not only to share my breakthroughs and/or whatnot, but also to step out of my little Kerbal-themed bubble and ask for something I’ve been thinking about for a while: friends. Kerbal Space Friends, to be specific. I realized it would be even more fun to share the experience with others — even if it's just geeking out together. It felt a little nerve-wracking at first, but then I realized that I had already been putting myself out there. Who knows? Maybe I’ll find some kindred spirits who are just as obsessed with weird Kerbal projects as I am. And you're supposed to share common interest with your friends, or else it will be boring, right? Well, lookie here at me here. It checks out. If you are interested, I can be reached here. If not, continue reading and ignore that part. Why wouldn't you want to be attempting some multiplayer madness with me to see who can crash land the best the most or something like that, though?! Hahaha. My joke is that "if I don't start seeing some friend requests soon, I am going to start chucking Kerbals into high Kerbin orbit until I do". The day before writing this, I was hard at work trying to make something that I could post to impress y'all with my biplane building skills. As you can see, I was indeed able to get my 1903 Flyer/Flyer I/Kitty Hawk/Wright Flyer on, but, come landing time, things would get... erm... "explosive". Ever since I've started to take messing around with Firespitter more seriously, I've been having fun using it to immerse myself in the world of old-school plane-building utilizing Kerbal Space Program. The result? Beautiful chaos. Enough about biplanes, though: this is not what this post is about. Nor triplanes either. Not even quadplanes. Nay. Rather? Floating balloon vehicles. As you can see, my first attempt at a floating ship went half-to-plan. Yes, it was able to take off. But, no, it was not able to take off safely. Then, I tried the same design again, but with more balloons. Better, yeah, but the clipping was not what I was looking for. Or able to tolerate in terms of eyesores. Therefore, I had to change something. And that I did. I resized two of the inner balloons, as well as the center one. And with that, it was now more like "Squadala! We are off!". I even felt the need to go FreeIVA my way over to the floor hatch window to look down at the water high above Jeb with a sense of triumph. As evidenced by the GIF, I even walked around in FreeIVA as Jeb handing out smooches to crewmates like snacks. Totally normal, right? Just your standard, everyday Kerbal behavior. Okay, maybe not. It is indeed one of my favorite unintentional finds in Kerbal Space Program 1 thus far. Jeb pressing W to lean in and "kiss" a fellow Kerbal strapped to an exposed seat mid-flight is peak KSP nonsense. You may call it silly or insanely strange, but I call it discovering the secret Kerbal-kissing easter egg feature that the devs probably never intended. What was I doing in Kerbal Space Program 1 the day that was written? Sending valuable seconds of mission time walking Jeb around the cabin like a space gremlin just so he can do that. The sheer audacity and absurdity of it all is what gets me. This game is supposed to be about science, not doing whatever Jeb was doing there. And the best part? Because of how the video game, works the Kerbals don’t even react. They just sit there, looking unphased by Jeb's smoochy shenanigans. It's when you first figure these silly little things out that the ridiculousness hits like an RCS thruster firing at full blast the most, but oh my word — I still find this funny to me now. I am glad I was feeling silly enough to think of that, because the whole thing was so absurdly funny and funnily absurd that it felt like my sides were able to achieve escape velocity and start orbiting Kerbin. It started innocently enough. Just experimenting, thinking, “Okay, let me see how it looks when I move Jeb over here for some immersion.” until I felt like I couldn't help but start doing it to something like every Kerbal in Jeb's line of sight for the meme. It gets even funnier when you realize the context. Jeb's supposed to be this main pilot veteran type — but he's getting up out of his seat to go do that to the other Kerbals in the Mk3 Passenger Module? Pure comedy gold. As far as the balloon ship itself that Jeb was in doing all of that goes, I'm quite proud of how that experiment turned out. It was a successful proof-of-concept test run to see if I could create an airship that could stay airborne without having to rely on fuel. Thanks to the combination of a J-N160 'Fireflash' Air-Breathing Nuclear Engine with KerBalloon technology, it was indeed possible. Flying in the air? Like that? Without liquid fuel? Sign me up promptly!!!! The takeaway about this day? The day this was written?? It was more than just a chaotic flying lovefest; it was also, ultimately speaking anyway, a total success. I mean, who needs the constant anxiety of watching your fuel reserves tick down when you can just float majestically over Kerbin like the airborne royalty you were always meant to be? This airship felt like a glimpse into a new realm of possibilities. Imagine the potential! Long-range exploration missions, high-altitude research, Kerbal tourism, or just floating around, enjoying the view of Kerbin without the constant risk of running out of propellant. But, of course, no successful flight is typically complete without some mid-air shenanigans usually, like you saw. Being a fan of closed-loop design type of vehicles, the successful test of this felt like quite the win that way. Think about it: with this type of design, you can hover indefinitely at high altitudes to gather atmospheric data, like monitoring weather patterns, and do things like observe the surface below without ever needing to land or refuel. Oh, and let’s not forget how visually absurd this thing looks. It’s part airship, part spaceship, part nuclear-powered monstrosity, and all of it is floating in the air like it’s no big deal. You’d think this was some niche prototype for high-altitude experiments, but no — this is my new type of mode of transportation. Forget rockets. Forget planes, even. I’m flying around Kerbin on a nuclear-powered balloon vehicle thing like some kind of overpowered dirigible captain now, and it’s glorious. The absolute madness of combining balloons with nuclear propulsion, eh?? In conclusion: this airship is pure, unfiltered genius wrapped in a thick layer of Kerbal insanity not too unheard off for the type of zany builds you see players create sometimes every now and then. "Those biplanes I showed you earlier ain't got nothing on this", I say partly sarcastically. That's like comparing a paper plane to an awesome alien super heavy-lift launch vehicle. It’s novel, it’s efficient, it’s absurdly practical, and it makes every other craft I’ve built look like it was training to get me to this type of spot. If this isn’t a pinnacle of Kerbal engineering, I don’t know what is. Balloons, you know? These bad boys are just like, “Up? Sure, we can do that. Forever? Yeah, we got you.", and I think that is quite lovely. Flying this thing feels like an absolute power move. Rockets are stressful—you’re constantly worried about trajectory, fuel, staging, and whether your craft is going to spontaneously disassemble. Planes? They’re fine, but you’re always one bad maneuver away from a fiery crash. This airship? It’s just vibes. I’m floating above Kerbin like I’m on an airborne yacht, sipping imaginary tea while looking down at the planet with smug satisfaction. I could stay up there forever. I’m practically untouchable. Gravity doesn’t even know my name anymore. Fun, right? I deem this stuff worth a shot. There is lots of potential there. To celebrate, I did the absolute madness that was my Red Bull Stratos recreation in Kerbal Space Program. I didn’t just build a simple balloon setup. Nope. I strapped a solid rocket booster to the balloon-ship, because of course I did. Why? Because I wanted the most Kerbal Space Program -ish Red Bull Stratos recreation possible — that’s why. As per usual with S2-33 "Clydesdale" Solid Fuel Boosters, it had started punching through the atmosphere like it had a personal vendetta against Kerbin's gravity keeping it sat on the surface. The rocket had a large-model Advanced Reaction Wheel Module with a Sarnus-SIV-CGI Instrumentation Unit sat atop of it, so that I could have a way to guide the rocket during ascent. That being said, you can see how, regardless, during ascent, there was a partial loss of control that resulted in the rocket tipping downwards, but, luckily, I was able to turn that around. This part I was especially proud of, considering how the rocket tipping downwards temporarily resulted in the projected apoapsis starting to go down, not up, as it should nominally be optimally. But it was a Red Bull Stratos recreation in Kerbal Space Program, after all, so when it came time for Jebediah Kerman to be like Felix Baumgartner, things fell flat. Quite literally. Into Kerbal-ish faceplanting. I don't think that anything like that ever happened to Felix when it was jump time, unlike Jeb. "C'mon! Get up! Walk the proverbial metaphorical plank, Jeb! Just do it already!" "I can't... a mysterious force is making it so that I can't move without EVA RCS jetpack thrusters, let alone walk!" Like... what in the KSP??? As luck would have it, the very same said EVA RCS jetpack thrusters were able to yeet him out after enough flailing around like a fish floundering because it has been taken out of its watery habitat. He plummeted through the atmosphere like a tiny green meteor as he started spinning wildly towards the ground he was approaching with speedy velocity. Jeb even did some spin tricks with the last bit of EVA RCS jetpack fuel that he had left. At the end, I was able to make sure that Jeb's safe water landing was ensured. He touched down gracefully, and with that, it was yet another mission success. I had a great time the day this was written reconnecting with Kerbal Space Program all over again. It seems the key to that is in the creativity and thinking outside of just planes and rockets. The absolute comedy and fun times were priceless indeed. After everything this mission put him through — SRB chaos, spinning, plummeting, and that wild RCS ballet — you’d've expected the landing to end with him face-first in the dirt or bouncing 50 meters into the air, right? Nope. Not Jeb. Not this time. He stuck that landing so cleanly, it looked like he’d been practicing for years. Between my chaotic biplane crash landings, nuclear-powered balloon ships, and Red Bull Stratos tribute that spiraled gloriously out of control, I had successfully proven to myself (and hopefully to you) that KSP is less about "playing the game right" and more about playing the game like this here. But here’s the thing I want to make clear while you're still here and I had time to ensure this was published the day it was written — I don’t want to do this alone anymore. Kerbal Space Program is always more fun with others to geek out with, laugh about ridiculous creations, or even compete to see who can crash land the most spectacularly. If any of this chaos resonates with you, why not be my Kerbal Space Friend? You can add me on Discord and we can connect! To show me your fellow crazy builds, engage in multiplayer madness together, hang out and chat about how we keep accidentally discovering Kerbal “features"... all of that. Whatever strikes and thusly suits your fancy. Again, to repeat, if interested, here’s the link to reach me: https://discord.gg/DeYg3aeu Seriously, don’t make me have to start chucking Kerbals into high Kerbin orbit until someone accepts my friend request. Let’s make some chaos together — Kerbal-style! And so, my fellow Kerbonaut-kontrollers, to summarize, the day I wrote this, this holiday season, I didn’t break physics — I just bent it until it started laughing with me. Gravity was like, 'Hey, you can’t just float here forever,' and my airship was like, "Bet." about it. And with that, I’m off to dream up even more ridiculous Kerbal adventures — hopefully with some of you by my side later because of this post. if I don’t start seeing some friend requests soon, I’ll send Kerbals to kiss y'all until you all decide to be the one to investigate that Mystery Goo™ Containment Unit for science and the magic of friendship! Consider all of yourselves warned. Hopefully, one y'alls friendship shall be like the ultimate Kerbal Space Program expansion pack I didn’t know I needed something like something straight outta a blursed GameStop bargain bin. And... with that... there you have it... The end of this post! "Until the next", you know? Until then, fly safe. Or dangerously! Whichever works.

I made chicken lo mein for Thanksgiving dinner instead of the more traditional Western turkey dinner style typical of American (and furthermore moreover Anglospheric) Thanksgiving Dinners. The frozen dinner was deployed from the cryogenic storage unit (freezer) and thoroughly enjoyed by mission control (me). It came preloaded with MSG boosters and flavor payloads. A stack of dishes from earlier missions still in orbit around the sink that night too. The mission from pan to plate, Operation Lo Mein Lift-Off, was executed with nominal efficiency and minimal cleanup. The P.F. Chang's Frozen Chicken Lo Mein, unlike the lo mein dish itself, was still by all means as American as the typical traditional Western turkey dinner style, though... so — ironically enough — my Thanksgiving dinner consisting of food whose origins originated from a completely different part of Planet Earth than the holiday Thanksgiving itself did still somehow managed to be peak American. Even if that means it was more like peak Asian-American. Eating an immigrant-inspired dish filtered through an Americanized lens sure sounds like the spirit of modern America to me. What I learned on the Thanksgiving Day that this was written, after gaining proof of it from personal experience, is that Thanksgiving dinner does not need to be turkey dinner for it to still be valid. So, therefore, all in all, Thanksgiving 2024 was a tasty resounding success. Much like in Kerbal Space Program, the mission didn’t follow the traditional flight plan but still achieved its objective: survival, satisfaction, and a dash of creativity.

They type "[email protected]" into a typewriter and wait for a squirrel to deliver the message.

Hi there. Been a while since our last post indeed. This cis-trans duo over here known as @Qwotty (that shares a brain (thus body) like Kerbals do a dual-pod command module) had been busy working on jettisoning useless thoughts and other things like that. On the day that this was written, we decided to spontaneously create and then take on what we call the "10/14 Challenge", which is named after the day it was started, which is to see how nuanced we can get with these designs. We launched a colossal, disk-shaped satellite loaded with an impressive number of dishes, all aimed at establishing help for communication networks for future interplanetary missions. And, no, it was not in an attempt to play some sort of game of cosmic ultimate frisbee with Jeb, although that is tempting. As far as KSP1 builds go, this one looks like it's trying to contact every unknown alien species and their UFOs outside of the Kerbol system at once. This thing, created as a result of thinking outside of the box, is so huge that you’d think we were trying to send signals to another galaxy, or at least just to flex on the entire KSC. The payload launched, that being the giant satellite disk, after being decoupled from what launched, read as weighing 66.57 tons. That and a part count of 47 including a decoupler that shall be removed later by a Kerbal during a mission dedicated to that. It sort of looks like a "space pizza". You could say that the dishes are the "pepperoni slices". It spun out of control twice during launch due to SAS switching between orbit and surface mode, things had still gone smoothly otherwise. Knowing KSP, true to the calculations made about the delta-v in the VAB, it had just enough delta-v to jump out of Kerbin's SOI by a hair's breadth. As it should have, though... seeing as the point of the mission was to get the big dish out into a Kerbin escape trajectory, not to go farther!!!! The rocket used to launch the payload uses a large cluster of Rhino engines, as well as jettisonable liquid fuel boosters. Why liquid fuel boosters instead of solid fuel boosters? Because the SRBs would overheat! You can see so below in the first half of this GIF, where we were recording testing them in the hopes they'd work, and that we would get to show you that. The other half is trying the more successful liquid fuel booster idea solution, but falling over as the thrust of the rockets burning rocket fuel assists that descent towards the ground. We present to you the "Disk-net Array"... ...a truly magnificent frisbee-ish satellite array relay disk so big that several Kerbals can play around on it like a roundabout playground toy. This is not recommended, though, as the Disk-net Array's OKEB-100 'Gateway' Blanket Photovoltaic Array and RFL-2000 Dish Reflector Array parts were not designed with playful Kerbal roughhousing on the gigantic satellite array relay dish probe in mind. What is, however, recommended, is using this beautiful thing to bounce signals such as memes about snacks to your Kerbonauts far out in the deeper parts of outer space. And, knowing that as strong as the strength of that array is, it was still out only so far, we two built an efficient an efficient 176.811-ton rocket with a much smaller payload designed to bounce the signals from the Disk-net Array out farther. It worked quite well, and resembled launches done with similar launch vehicle designs, and thusly shows that this type of rocketry design is a tried-and-true type of thing inded quite verily. The smaller relay ship probe for comms made it all the way to Duna without a problem, and with more than enough delta-v for operations — to the point where there was enough fuel left over. Therefore, thusly, the payload was left attached to the rocket that brought it to Duna, so that the little bit of liquid fuel left can be utilized by a ship at a later time during a rendezvous for refueling. And then, ultimately, the destruction of that part of the spaceship, after it has been deemed no longer anything more than space junk. That cute little dish-equipped spaceship was put in a high polar orbit around Duna, as to not ever get its signal blocked by the planet itself. The polar orbit sits right around escape trajectory territory, as to be as high above Duna as possible whilst still staying within its sphere of influence. It’s like the ultimate Duna Wi-Fi router, keeping our space missions, rovers, and Kerbals in touch (especially when they need to send a frantic “I’m stuck in the sand, help” message). So yeah, we’re back, and we’ve got more wild ideas in the pipeline. Especially as far as modding goes. We found useful information about how use KSP1's Part Tools plugin utility for the Unity Engine before writing this that looks like it should be able to assist us with finally be able to create rocket part mods to publish and whatnot. Getting .mu models to show up in the VAB in KSP1 turned out to be far more of a challenge than we had thought it would be, but here we two still are, not giving up on it, because it is quite evident that others have been able to do it over the years, and we are trying to be able to become a part of that club and thusly be able to do things like take requests. Stay tuned as we continue our quest to dominate adorably while making sure Mira doesn’t go feral from lack of snacks and Gabe doesn’t accidentally turn one of these launches into a meme-worthy disaster. Maybe sooner than later we two shall have some mods to share with all of you. "Until then", you know?

We two decided to think ambitiously in Science mode — utilizing that gamemode does not place weight limits or require budgeting — and started building an engine cluster for a gargantuan spaceship. That's right: what is in the GIF below is merely just an engine cluster being tested, and is, in essence, designed to be used as a huge rocket engine for even huge spacecraft to use multiple of them.

I uninstalled all of my mods to create a new mod setup for KSP1 machinima, and posted my first today. I hope that you enjoy it. Here it is:

What I did the day in KSP1 the day that this was written was recording footage for a KSP YouTube video that will be the start of many, doing things like launching communications satellites and trying to do interstellar travel yet again. It was the type of thing that reminded me of that this game is Kerbal Space Program and not Kerbal Star Program. Those Alcubierre drive warp drive mods are cool and all, but I have yet to see NASA utilize one of those as of writing this, and isn't Kerbal Space Program supposed to be more in-line with NASA than something like Star Trek? That type of stuff combined with the star added by Infinite Discoveries messing with solar panels really made me think twice about getting carried away trying to add celestial bodies outside of the Kerbol System that way. I mean, seriously — solar panels not working because of star mods? That’s a dealbreaker. It’s one thing to have your ship blow up and then glitch through the fabric of space-time, but to have your solar panels — an often-utilized source of energy — rendered useless? That’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, and it was enough to make me reconsider. Especially knowing that not doing so could be what delays making videos, as it is easy to get lost in the vast expanses of the stars that Infinite Discoveries can give you and the troubles including bugs that can come with that, and trying to work with it became detracting and distracting that particular type of way. Integrating an Alcubierre drive and star systems to navigate to with it into KSP introduces much more complexity and vastly more challenging distances to work with, and in this case, it was too much. I remember Kerbal Space Program being this neatly contained solar system playground space sandbox where you could build, launch, and explore without worrying about century-long voyages or malfunctioning warp drives when I was growing up — a game grounded in its own quirky realism, where challenges were centered on the Kerbol system's intricacies. Then came along the interstellar mods capable of turning KSP into a half-playable mess, that of which I spent a lot of time with before realizing the value of not going crazy with Infinite Discoveries adding a bunch of stars that ultimately just end up breaking the game. That is what I am going to go do for the sake of making videos as well see what I can do about manually adding some stars myself by hand or something like that which don't break the game, and maybe even my own propulsion system mod. Creating KSP1 videos is everything that I thought that it would be and more, and Kerbal Space Program's proven to be quite the fitting game for making machinima with. I am hyped as of writing this about being able to start sharing with you and to pilot my debut here. It has got me feeling like this: By the way, on a funny and silly unrelated note, when I tried to add on some writing above with "Rewrite with Copilot", it spat out this when I copied and pasted it in: "On thes f , a , - (n. for the. boni,, f all [", am I right? When I say that I have been working on something for all of you, I mean it. And here is proof: And here are the stars that I was going to explore: There are certainly no Kerbal Space Program videos uploaded quite yet as of posting this, but the link to the channel where they will be is here. Until then, I will be here working on that.

We have indeed and were previously utilizing the Outer Planets Mod planet pack before with a similar install, and it was working fine then, like it is now as of writing this, thanks to help from you, like how you said you were "not seeing this issue with the solar panels". You helped us get the issue figured out and problem solved through your asking. You see, just like you, we were using Kopernicus on an install of 1.12.5, and that worked fine, but during the time that the initial post was made, we had installed Kopernicus wrong. How so, you may ask? By picking an install of Kopernicus that was not the "Kopernicus Expansion Continued-er Stock Configs" in particular specifically. The golden key is to install "Kopernicus Expansion Continued-er Stock Configs" as opposed to the other options. Doing so with a clean install solved the problem. Before that, we were noticing that installing Kopernicus the other way as opposed to what is abovedescribed kept resulting in the same problem with solar panels. The problem has therefore thusly been troubleshooted down to the root cause after meticulously being thoroughly investigated, and now the solution is available here to assist other Kerbal Space Program players with this bug.

Today, in Kerbal Space Program, the day that I wrote this, I took Valentina Kerman out to deep space and got to do interstellar travel how I had been wanting to do it for the first time — which was without the problems from before — and had a great time (what some might call "the time of my life") right up until Valentina had died upon approaching a planet that I had locked Valentina into a descent towards, at which point I had. It was much too rapid of a descent for the RE-L10 "Poodle" Liquid Fuel Engine on-board to stop the beyond dangerous fall into (what I presume to be) "Oceanogseaf", a planet orbiting a star that I had flew all the way out to as Valentina Kerman called Recalewh, that of which is "roughly 0.94 times the size of Kerbol", according to the .cfg file for the planet. It was a sad note to end on, but I had learned a lot about how to do space travel using @RoverDude's Alcubierre drive part mod to travel to the stars provided by @Sushut's mod that randomly generates them while doing that space mission. Thanks to the helpful advice from @capi3101 and @JadeOfMaar, I was able to finally break through the battling with understanding how to utilize warp drives for interstellar travel and have not had the same problems that initially had stopped me from trying interstellar with the warp drives since, which just goes to show that those two really truly had knew what the Kerbal they were talking about. No more burnout due to being stuck within the confines of the Kerbol System or whatever planet packs have been released and no more having to worry about warp drives causing adventure-stopping explosions caused by lack of awareness about Exotic Matter levels, that of which had previously been extremely exasperating to deal with. Now I can post my interstellar space missions instead of having interstellar space mission breakdowns. So... that being said... big shoutout to four involved that I tagged with an @ sign... because — all four them, combined with my determination, effort, and smarts, are what made the mission being posted about possible. Here is a GIF created with recorded footage of Valentina burning up: The mission lasted for a total of 18 days, 2 hours, 18 minutes, and 11 seconds. During this time, it reached a maximum altitude of 43,565,771,237 meters and achieved its highest speed at 52,896,341 meters per second and 52,896,339 meters per second over land. The mission covered a ground distance of 8,921,565,727 meters and a total distance of 9,646,708,988 meters. The most significant G-force endured during the mission was 366.3G. For a relatively small test ship, its reach was truly "out of this world". I remember falling asleep orbiting around a star, waking up, and then getting right back to business. This mission wasn’t just simply merely an impressive space mission like my others before that I have posted here; it was a cosmic achievement of epic proportions that was more far-reaching than any mission previously done before! It showed me proof that the world full of infinite potential due to infinite discoveries (see what I did there?) was now well within welcoming reach and that now I have the foundation for turning Kerbal Space Program into a nifty spaceflight combat wargame KSP RPG, but whether or not that is going to be with code in the form as a mod with some sort of release for the public is TBD. As of writing this, I am wondering if it going to be more of a D&D type of thing where imagination and immersion in combination with mods to boost — and perhaps even hypersupercharge them — take center stage, or if it is going to be more of a full-fledged roleplaying game system with coding and .dll files that goes in the GameData folder. Either way, I am sure that it will be epically fun and create engrossing procedural tales. That's what I did the day that this post was made, along with making a YouTube account for posting KSP videos. More on that and other stuff later. You all shall see.

I am not at the moment as of writing this, and Infinite Discoveries is the only thing like that installed ("with Kopernicus, of course", like you said), so it's not something like that, I wouldn't think. I got it through CKAN, and have even tried installing different version other than through CKAN. I have totally tried things like verifying the integrity too, but even uninstalling and then reinstalling Kopernicus is not seeming to do the trick. This issue has been narrowed down to stemming from installing Kopernicus Planetary System Modifier through CKAN, that of which also requires installing Module Manager 4.2.3, ModularFlightIntegrator 1.2.10.0, and Harmony 2.2.1.0 as dependencies. Without it, the solar panels function normally. Even a KSP Community Fixes patch addressing this particular issue did not fix it. Every time I remove Kopernicus and its dependencies, the solar panels work fine again, and vice versa. Therefore, the problem is there somewhere. But, still, it is hard to know what it is. Especially after, quote, "editing and removing the SolarPanels.cfg from C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\Kopernicus\Config both seemed to have no changes". Something somewhere is obviously obnoxiously overriding the solar panel behavior, but with the clues provided as of writing this, it is like trying to look for an unlocatable Kerbal lost in deep space with no cozy comms connection back the KSC — and that is what makes the fact that as of writing this my only issue with my Kerbal Space Program setup is this bug all the more infuriating. Something within what gets installed when CKAN installs Kopernicus and its dependencies into the game is what is doing this, and a deductive process of elimination done through removing mods proved that outright. So, the question is what changes the solar panel behavior and how to reverse that while still keeping Kopernicus and the stars and such that it gives.

I already pinpointed the issue to being outside of that but thank you for the suggestion. Perhaps you did not read the "Kopernicus and/or its dependencies have something to do with it, as without them, the solar panels work fine" part clearly enough. It seems to have nothing to do with Infinite Discoveries. And I cannot even find others reporting that issue you were talking about anyway. This bug is most likely even older than that mod if anything.

The Bug: When the Kopernicus mod is installed, solar panels deploy automatically in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The toggle options for the solar panels are missing, and you can't control their deployment. Additionally, they seem to have lost all function as well. It is obvious as of writing this that Kopernicus and/or its dependencies have something to do with it, as without them, the solar panels work fine, but those mods are needed to add new stars using Infinite Discoveries, and there does not seem to be any working fix as of writing this that allows for both working solar panels and the stars. Editing and removing the SolarPanels.cfg from C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\Kopernicus\Config both seemed to have no changes that would make any effects. The solution to this in 1.12.5.3190 or any other game version seems to be elusive even though multiple posts in different places have been made about this. KSP Log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dp_4BgC0U5IwNW-6YwBqUUNAXui5zgAt/view?usp=sharing

Let's not forget the edge case of running said engine from inside a fairing or cargo bay. Turned my ship into a relativstic shrapnel stream and even unleashed some Omega Molecule there. Revisiting the scene of the destruction after the fact was actually pain. Thank you both kindly for the helpful advice that translated into what, as of writing this, seems to be the solution to *(most of)* the warp drive bugs. As you can see here below, we two were able to launch a fully functioning spaceship with a warp drive. It was able to make it to Eve and then Eeloo. It appears as though that the issue has been resolved, seeing as the spaceship never blew up within the window of time that it would before. We even made it to Moho too before directly crashing into it at what must have been quite a rapid speed to hit the surface of a planet like Moho at. That being said though, we used ALT+F12 to test the warp drives again but ran into a similar type of boom thing like from before. And it seems to be quite replicable, much like it was before, but this time more specifically. As you can see here above, there were no issues with things going boom in regards to doing the escape trajectory burn, or in terms of velocity, but when the Exotic Matter resources got depleted to the point of reaching zero, the whole ship exploded, and to the point that it had locked the game in an extremely long loading screen wait time (meaning infinitely), which is, again, the specific KSP1 bug that we were looking to avoid, and for the most part had avoided earlier. So, that being said, we are both over here wondering as of writing this if it is true that we two must keep our Exotic Matter levels higher than zero or else things will boom. Is it correct to say that we must ensure that our Exotic Matter levels always remain somewhere above empty? It sure seems so, and that is something that would make logical sense: Exotic Matter is crucial for stabilizing the warp bubble in the Alcubierre Drive, and without it, the drive can't maintain the bubble, causing a sudden collapse that results in an explosion. It’s like the game’s trying to stick to the science, but in the process, it breaks apart into a softlock. The mod's logic suggests that Exotic Matter is essential for stabilizing the warp bubble, and running out of it can cause a catastrophic failure, like an explosion. While this makes sense scientifically, the way the game handles this failure—by breaking into perpetual loading screens—seems more like a bug than an intended feature. This kind of game-breaking bug does not seem like what a mod creator would intend to. implement. If the mod follows that logic, then that's fine, and makes sense even, but the way that it blows up is semi-game-breaking and requires restarts to escape perpetual unchanging and unvarying loading screens that are not very nice. To repeat: stuff like these bugs does not seem to be part of the mod that was intentionally put in there. Although the part regarding Exotic Matter levels very well may be, which would make sense. We two are looking for a keen KSP player who would know to corroborate with a "no" or "yes". We are basically just wondering if this one type of event is a normal thing that happens to other KSP1 players and if Exotic Matter levels must always be =>0 or if other Kerbal Space Program players have been able to have their spaceship reach an Exotic Matter level of zero without it doing this type of stuff. It seems like the former, and we two wondering if that is the case. For instance, look at our recorded documentation of Valentina Kerman burning Exotic Matter at full throttle until the fuel levels reach zero and how the spaceship proceeds to blow up afterwards immediately after. The fact that this game-breaking bug with different possible causes always occurs during the moment that the Exotic Matter levels reach suggest that the keeping-fuel-above-zero maintenance is indeed intentional, but the way that it causes the game to glitch into a state of unplayability is not. There is where getting corroboration from readers comes into play: would you fellow Kerbonaut-deployers agree that, along with staying inside the bubble and making sure not to produce Exotic Matter during warp drive burns, that it is absolutely essential to ensure that Exotic Matter fuel levels always stay above >0?? The other specific things that caused the game-breaking bug previously have been addressed from what we two can tell. Although right before writing this, we encountered yet another when firing the engine again after producing more Exotic Matter, which could have been from not toggling off producing Exotic Matter, which is like how it was before. These warp drives require more attention and precision to prevent them from breaking the game how the mod should not be anyway than we had initially thought. But we two are sure now that people who read this will know what we are talking about specifically in terms of Krakens and know what to say about them. The goal is obviously to avoid these altogether so that we can stop metaphorically stop tripping over the same rock every time we walk by it due to not knowing about the different paths. We are sure that you know those paths. To answer the thread's question that makes the thread what it is, what we two had did in KSP1 today was get all hyped after being told how to solve our problems with the warp drive, only to merely run into another one, as if a Kerbal version of DJ Khaled (DJ Kherbled) had appeared out of nowhere like a Pokémon hiding in tall grass and went: Anybody who has spent enough time utilizing the warp drive mod talked about earlier has as a result learned how to make it so that the game-breaking bugs do not occur entirely, which simply leaves the questions for those people about how that is went about and what the deal is. Especially regarding Exotic Matter. Help with that would be appreciated so that that DJ Kherbled will stop riding over to our spaceships on a Kraken and shouting "Another one!" (as he does) before the said spaceship blows up.

Cannot tell now that all of those mods have been installed, but what we two do know though is that it was not those mods. It was from the mods on CKAN that specifically give you the warp drives engine parts. It may have very well been the mod by RoverDude. It is up to speculation at this point. Something must have not been installed right and/or clashed with something else. Oh well. Those things always seem to cause spontaneous unpredictable and unintentional detonations. We have been wondering if it is because of the PB-NUK Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator overheating, but we do think that that is it, and think that it has something to do with the mod being broken, as in the spaceship always ends up going boom at some point, and it is always because of using the Alcubierre warp drive parts — no matter what they are — which as far as troubleshooting goes, as of writing this, does not seem to have any sort of immediate answer as far as debugging Krakens goes, unless there is some sort of solution for this which has been overlooked or not found yet. As if the bugs as far as the bubble looking how it did (which is how it should not) and the fact that they still take as something like about as much as time as Xenon engine burns do to reach far-out stars added by Infinite Discoveries wasn't enough, the darned parts seem to rigidly insist on destroying the whole spaceship that was built for the interstellar missions in the first place. As of writing this, it seems to be an insidious all too replicable Kraken. The long burns from Kerbol to other stars would be endurable if the intolerable darned Kraken that defeats the whole purpose of installing stars to attempt trying to do interstellar missions with that way would just go away and join the other solved Krakens in Kraken Jail, which seems like it would be located directly underneath the KSC, like some sort of bunker prison. But much like this other bug where solar panels deploy in the VAB without being deployed by toggling and cannot be retracted either in the VAB or outside of it during flights, that of which the source of is practically impossible as of writing this to determine, and a solution looked up for it before writing this blames a mod that was not installed. Which makes for two mod bug full stop stoppages. And we two cannot seem to figure out how to even start doing diagnostics. But through our conversations about KSP we realized together that the easiest and pleaseiest way to go about things like that is to remove every mod and add on to a bug-free blank state "now that we know what the best mods are" (through testing them through trying them), to quote the conversation about it from earlier — yet that still seems as of writing this like it would solve things like the problem with the solar panels, and this Kraken with the warp drives will still persist. Knowing that... what gives? There has to be some sort of solution to that knowing that, if it happened over here, it has happened elsewhere. But the darn things seem to go boom every time that they start doing their warp drive thing that those warp drives do for anything longer than a few minutes. If that, even. Thus the talk of it being unpredictable. It is a real head-scratcher indeed. Is it because of the game version? Mod incompatibility? Something else entirely that is more out-of-the-way than somebody might think of at first???? Are those mods kursed??!!??!! Because it is starting to seem so as of writing this, and we hate how it presents us with a warp drive that takes the warp drive out of warp driving after a few minutes. If we had figured out before writing this how to get .mu models to show up by exporting them with the materials right, which has not worked despite our best efforts with experimentation yet as of writing this as well as kind attempts at assistance from @ColdJ , then we probably would have already published our own warp drive mods by now that were created to get around this error. But it seems those things are still plagued with the same errors, and there must be some sort of nuance escaping us here that we are yet to determine as of writing this. Kerbal Space Program is so much fun, but not when things like creating mods for it and installing mods that were made by the community for it in the same ways are throwing out these issues that seem to tackle us more than we can tackle them as of writing this, and that is why there has not been any mod publishing or interstellar space travel documentation: because Bforartists/Blender and KSP1 are both great at crapping out at times when you would not anticipate it like that, and then have the nerve to be like mysterious riddles in terms of diagnostics and troubleshooting when it comes down to the horror that is trying to work with what you do not understand like that. And those are the type of flubs where you swear you are doing everything right and very well may be, but this incredibly highly specific thing is stopping things from working correctly, and it is starting to look like we are going to need the KSP version of Scooby-Doo Mystery Van adventure to solve this mystery, if you get what we mean. And we really do mean that. It's like "try contributing to a game that wants to fight about it for the ability to be able to even do it at all because of how modding the game works"... and you would think that, with KSP1 being a video game that runs on the Unity Engine, it would not be that hard to mod, yet it seems to be way harder to mod that people might think, and all of that stuff is so unsolvable as of writing this for us in all of the ways, that, as of writing this, we are starting to struggle with not giving up on working with this endless stream of "fix this one thing so that it can work properly" together toughly so much that is causing us to write what is now by this point in the writing hundreds and hundreds words about all of this stuff. But the determination to get all that stuff working is still as fierce as ever because the way to get it working is to try and to do stuff like this. Lately it has been like "What we did do in KSP1" is want to chuck a whole Kerbal or two at our pretty gaming setup that glows rainbow colors out of pure frustration due to this type of stuff. Which is actually possible as long as they are not wearing their space travel gear, as according to KSP info, they are 2'5½" and weight about 99.2 lbs without jetpack nor parachute. But with their gear, they are 207.235 pounds each, which is not within chucking with ease range, unlike the former. Here is to hoping that we can figure this all out and contribute to the Kerbal Space Program community with mods and with those warp drives included but working this time. We do not get what you (i.e. @capi3101) meant by "the devil you know and all that", but if you we were referring to that darned Warp Drive Kraken, then we agree big time. "In space, no one can hear you pass gas..." like you say in your signature indeed, and nobody can smell it either (thanks to the adult diapers that come installed in most spacesuits, like NASA's Maximum Absorbency Garment!!), but unlike that, these modding problems reek of fettered potential possibilities in terms of being able to create our own custom parts and then take them on interstellar space missions using the warp drive part mods. Quite the Kerbal Space Program stinker (as in difficult task/unpleasant thing) indeed truly. And farting around doing other things in Kerbal Space Program eventually leads to wanting to work with these things again that go wrong the same way, and it can obviously be seen how the cycle would repeat from there. Which it has. Yet we keep trying. Which is important. And why we are writing about it. Which is basically because of this confusion-inducing bottlenecking of epic proportions that is epic because of how epically hard to understand how to solve that they are. Shoutout to the moth that landed on the monitor we were looking at while writing this between this sentence and the previous sentence that scared the living daylights out of the two of us, by the way. It truly added to the dystopia that is this KSP modding mess over here with its grizzly and morbid pestilent cameo that was as unpleasant and unwanted as these Kerbal Space Program modding issues that place restrictions that we, as of writing this, have been watching other people get by through somehow getting past how we cannot as of writing this. Which is not quite what we were thinking of when we were planned to set out and create mods as well as interstellar space missions with warp drives. We want to make Kerbal Space Program into something like an interstellar roleplaying game, but there are certainly obstacles as of writing this. For instance, say that us two wanted to go to this randomly generated purple gas giant with the equally randomly generated name "Boneair", and go visit its cute little moon Lapidboul, both of which are pictured below. Literally impossible. At least as of writing this anyway. Try taking your custom part that will not even visibly show up in the VAB to another star on a spaceship with a warp drive that makes the whole ship go boom randomly, you know? TL;DR version: us two basically did the same that we did before, cursing (out) the (darn) KSP(1) part modeling process and warp drives mods for being as frustrating as they were, which was a pain in the Kerbum to work with. But deep down we both knew that both of those problems can be solved, even if they have seemingly unsolvable problems with them that present incredibly demotivatingly frustrating challenges. But people have gotten past those. We two both keep faithful hope together lovingly knowing that instead of letting it make us angry. We are sure that great "post-worthy" posts will stem from figuring this all out after we do. "Until then", you know?

It was unintentional. We noticed that too. It is indeed not supposed to look like that and must have been some sort of glitch. Although us modifying the warp bubbles to look cooler sounds like something that we two would indeed do. What a great idea, if anything.

What did we do in KSP1 today, you ask? Well... you ever have a day in KSP that feels like the day? The day that this was written was one of those KSP1 days. This post is definitely not a short post with only a few sentences per picture this time either. While brevity can be powerful, long writing often offers a richness and depth that can be immensely rewarding to write and equally as impressive to read in world called Planet Earth where short-form content is increasingly more prevalent. It represents the culmination of countless hours of dedication and revision on the work. And every additional detail added in adds to the overall richness on a more profound level, which allows readers to immerse themselves more deeply. And the choice has been made degree wise that our major will be English, so consider what you are reading here some practice for that, that of which we hope brings as much enjoyment to read as it did to write and isn't too TL;DR or TMI. "The more, the merrier." you know? The day that this was written was another epic day spent adventuring through outer space with love. This time was special though, and more than worth writing about. It was worthy of writing about the said Mexican space game while drinking Mexican soda truly indeed. The foremost objective was to take interstellar travel parts from parts mods created by @linuxgurugamer (that of which creates great mods that heavily populate our CKAN KSP mod list) to stars created by the "Infinite Discoveries" addon program made by @Sushut. But it seems that Alcubierre drives are a Kraken Magnet over here for us, and thusly may not be something that can trusted for travelling beyond the Kerbol System, unless spontaneous and unpredictable complete destruction of the spaceship is a wanted attribute. And try getting something like parsecs out from there without something like warp drives. That is what we have to do due to warp drives always causing the spaceship to blow up... and it is enough to make us want to make our own mods to fill in the technological gap caused by the glitching and/or whatnot. Even joyous journeying to the "Kcalbeloh System" by @Jason Kerman is like watching snails trek vast distances very slowly without them, but things like mods not being able to be installed correctly due to different game versions and such have made things so. But no worries. Mods can be made and .cfg files can be edited so that there is still fun adventuring to be had to build for. Generating planets and then editing their orbits seems is its own type of fun awesomely anyway anywho. And the best part of it all is that the mission that got this ship as far as it did before it was claimed by the same Kraken that seems to claim every other Kerbal or ship made by them that uses these personally infamous warp drives infected with the Kraken Kurse. Pretty much literally every part of the spaceship and its mission had gone nominally besides that. And in addition to that, the day that this was written, which is the same day that all of this stuff documented had happened, was the day that 210 space-themed stickers were shipped for delivery — meaning that the day that this was written was their arrival day — along with 1755 smaller holographic heart and star stickers. You know, like the gold star stickers that teachers put on your paper after grading it if you did A+-level work or something like that. I love that the posts that we see from all of the others on here are that high-grade. You all deserve some holographic heart and star stickers for that. Golden star stickers, if you want. In total, that is 1965 stickers. And 1965 happens to be the year that Edward Higgins White II did the first American spacewalk pictured below to pay tribute, which is a feeling that of which we are sure that all of the readers have felt upon doing their first EVA with a Kerbonaut in KSP. We figured that it would be worth speaking about given the impressive numbers and high amount of relevancy. A lot of why this post is so long and has so many words is because the writing helped pass the time required to make the stickers arrive. Worth the wait indeed and gave quite a hit of hype to see finally sat in front of the doorstep like so: Talk about enhancing playing Kerbal Space Program with some decoration, you know? We are sure that that will remind us of this. As in these forums, and our writings on them. Here is the interstellar payload spaceship that we made in KSP1 the day that this was written that had went awry to the point of causing Kerbal destruction (), and the rest of the rocketship that surrounded it. The shiny reflective white metal was intentionally chosen to fit with and match the white stock parts. The thing had gained quite the sci-fi aesthetic to it by the time that it was done being built and hence thus bore little if any resemblance to the rest of the craft which had concealed it. The strutting on this rocket was a pleasure to do and helped immensely during the mission to prevent wobbling, and instead had a satisfying sturdiness to it where wobbling would not fly. Pun intended. It provided the rocketship more precision to control all of its thrust power with gracefully and MechJeb was able to handle launch and orbital burning procedures because of its inelastic-ish lack of wobble. After the escape burn shown in the second KSP GIF below, the spaceship was easily able to reach Jool. And without using too much delta-v too due to it being a good launch window time, as well as other factors. Its gravity well worked perfectly for a gravity assist slingshot burn all the way over out to Plock. In essence, this ship was so efficient and well-designed, that it was able to do the equivalent of slingshotting from Jupiter to get to Pluto. With plenty of sightseeing too to boot no less, even though most of the mission was flown with a payload fairing on that blocked the windows. But who needs windows when trailblazing through the final frontier? Not these specific Kerbals. They were still able to make do regardless anyway. All of the fun gravity assist travel was evocative of the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft trajectory that took place from 1997 to 2004 in terms of how it felt during gameplay and what it looked like on the map view and whatnot. Quite similar and as impressive indeed. In fact, as far as space travel with stock parts goes, as of this being written, this was the most far-reaching and successful mission yet, although there will obviously be another mission after this that will be even more epic and fruitful, seeing as this is the proof in the pudding right here. The 77-part payload spaceship launched on the launch vehicle part of the rocket weighing 34.520 tons yet still being able to make it out as far as it did without providing any propulsion in and of itself was something that created a lot of optimism and rocket design inspiration. To that into perspective, other things that weigh around that much are a Boeing 737, a bulldozer, a cattle truck, a large passenger bus, and — last but not least — a medium-sized yacht. But not like the yacht from the Maritime Pack by @Fengist, that of which is 1.53 tons. 34.52 tons = 76103.57 pounds, which is a simply stupendous amount of weight to be able to take out so far, and more than seventy-five-thousand pounds of weight is more than ample for a spacecraft designed to refuel indefinitely and maintain operations in the void pockets of outer space. That type of weight-to-distance ratio provides ample capacity for incorporating all necessary components. The term "weight-to-distance ratio" may not be standard in the realm of aerospace engineering, but it is a fitting and effective way to describe the relationship between the mass of a payload and the distance it can be transported. It simplifies the discussion of how payload weight impacts the distance a spacecraft can travel, which is crucial for understanding and appreciating advancements in rocket design and mission planning. The biggest and key difference between Thrust-to-Weight Ratio (TWR) and Weight-to-Distance Ratio (WTDR) is their focus and application. Thrust-to-Weight Ratio (TWR) measures the thrust produced by a rocket engine compared to the rocket’s weight. It indicates how effectively a rocket can overcome gravity and is critical for launch performance and acceleration. A higher TWR means a rocket can lift off more easily and accelerate faster. Weight-to-Distance Ratio (WTDR), while not a standard term, conceptually relates the mass of the spacecraft to the distance it can travel. It reflects how efficiently a spacecraft can carry its payload over a given distance, considering its propulsion and delta-v. A lower WTDR suggests a spacecraft can travel farther with a given mass of propellant. TWR focuses on launch and acceleration capability, while WTDR addresses payload efficiency and travel distance. For those interested in calculating their WTD ratio who are smart enough to, here is the instructions: Additionally, relating the "weight-to-distance ratio" (WTD) to the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation helps clarify how this concept aligns with established principles in spaceflight. It is a four-step process, that of which abbreviates to the acronym "CDCI": Calculate the delta-v by using the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, which involves the initial mass (including propellant), final mass (after propellant is used), specific impulse of the rocket engine, and the acceleration due to gravity. Determine the delta-v value, representing how much the spacecraft's velocity changes as it expends its propellant. Calculate the Weight-to-Distance Ratio (WTD) by dividing the initial mass of the spacecraft (including all propellant) by the delta-v value obtained. Interpret the WTD to understand how efficiently the spacecraft can transport its payload over a given distance. Things such as CDCI and WTD are quite useful for assisting with calculating how to do the more nuanced and involved orbital moves, like slingshotting to a slingshot and then yet another slingshot, that of which is a well-established technique in orbital mechanics that has been used by NASA and other space agencies for decades after it was suggested by Aleksandr Ignatyevich Shargei (a.k.a. Yuri Kondratyuk) in his paper "To Those Who Will Be Reading in Order to Build" ("Тем, кто будет читать, чтобы строить") back in the twentieth century. That technique is what Pioneer 10 and Mariner 10 used to get so far out. And it makes it possible for spaceships to do fun KSP1 orbit ballet stuff like this: It felt like such an epic accomplishment to have reached Plock. And how a KSP player playing with stock parts would too. It re-interested us in keeping the space travels close to Kerbol. And until the whole ITK (Interstellar Travel Kraken) that keeps eating our KSP spaceships every time that we go to start really truly trusting in our warp drives gets dealt with, that is how it must be. No ifs, ands, or buts. Interstellar travel is a perfectly ambitious goal for both rocketship design and mod part creation in the meantime anyway regardless... and look at what we can do besides that stuff!! The latter lower picture showing the gravity assist done using Karen here is something that perfectly encapsulates the scope of this mission: we went far and had lots of fun. Back in the day, it seemed like landing on Mun was hard enough, and interplanetary missions like this were something that was out of the realm of reach in terms of knowhow and skill. But then we started to become prodigious. There’s something poetic about that. We always loved how, much like the Reflective Visors visual addon, Kerbal Space Program mirrors the nuance and boom-potential of real-world missions like those to the outer planets or even beyond our solar system. What makes the achievements in that game as shown above truly impressive is the perseverance and ingenuity that were required to achieve them after countless failed attempts, reloaded quicksaves, and hours spent tweaking rocket designs and flight plans. The process is as much about learning from each misstep as it is about the final successful journey. It’s not just about strapping more fuel tanks onto a rocket; it’s about precision. In the end, reaching Plock from Jool is serves as proof of the patience, problem-solving skills, and deep understanding of space travel, both in the game and outside of it, that it took to get there. And to think that that speaks nothing of the modding that we also have planned after we figure out how to stop getting these .mu models to not show up correctly, as in not at all. That is something that we still have a keen eye on, as KSP1 modding has now been demystified enough as of writing this to the point of it being all too fun to try and make function correctly. Aside from that, it is starting to feel like we are not bluffing when we say that we are getting towards what true advanced cognoscente-level Kerbal Space Program mastery looks like. Kerbal Space Program players who know what we are talking about know that the game is infinitely deeper and fuller of novelty and as well as technological depth than just "building rockets"; you can design intricate spacecraft, ranging all the way from asteroid miners to space shuttles, capable of handling multiple mission profiles with designs include advanced features like modular payloads, automated systems, and redundant controls. It is something significant to be able to say that you were able to land Jeb on Mun, but it is a whole other thing on a whole other level to be able to save that you have mastered the art of things like orbital insertion, performing gravity assists and perfectly timed burns in Kerbal Space Program. An inspirational way to look at it is "Enough failures will teach you how to maximize mission success." Our ability to do interplanetary missions with a deep understanding of celestial mechanics came from study as well as trial and error. When you start to get that talented, you start to be able to push the boundaries of what is possible in KSP, inside of the VAB and outside. And not only that, but you can you share that with the community through the type of contributions that help shape the new KSP players into KSP veterans, like creating guides that help others understand and master the advanced aspects of the game and its mods, whatever they may those may be. And a key element of such mastery is what this thread is all about: maintaining detailed reports of missions in the form of post-mission analyses that include things like information about design choices, fuel usage, and orbital maneuvers. The skills start to show especially in how you adapt designs or strategies in real-time based on new challenges or unanticipated issues, you know what we mean? Which even adapts to our situation with wanting to make custom parts through modding for interstellar travel. It would be fair to say that the voyage across vast amounts of space starting from Kerbin that used to Jool to end up all the way at Plock, the outermost celestial body, is, as of writing this, our best latest masterclass in KSP1 space travel. That being because it shows that all of this practice and studying has paid off and that this is only the beginning of doing things as legendary as creating a whole ore-based economy culture out in space for other Kerbal pirates to shoot at and steal from. That type of thing is a beautiful reminder of how, when you see things like your Kerbals touching down on a distant planet, you’re not just seeing pixels; you’re seeing the culmination of effort, learning, and imagination. It’s a moment that carries weight, sparks emotion, and creates memories. It is something that sticks with you as much as other achievements. The second latter photo is the last photo taken before the Warp Drive Kraken ate up the spaceship like Kerbals eat up snacks they bring with them on their long space missions as cargo. Rest in peace to all of the Kerbals on board who perished as a result. The interstellar ship that we designed may not have been able to make it to the stars like originally intended, but it had made it quite far before it was claimed by the same Kraken as similar ships before during their Alcubierre drive engine burns. It most certainly seems now to us that we have "made it" to the realm where the KSP players with lots of knowhow who build spaceships like this and do the same type of playstyle roam, and that now we are far beyond the basics by now. And that brings us to something that we wanted to shoutout the day that this was written, which is our own unique approach to Kerbal Space Program and its specific gameplay aspect comes from our combined perspectives. As a cis and trans pair sharing the same body, as has been stated before previously in our profile signature at the bottom of our posts, we find that our different viewpoints lead to innovative strategies that might be different from what others typically use. Our gameplay style is shaped by our duality and thusly we bring a diverse set of perspectives to the table, which influences our approach to missions and design in unique ways, and our contributions to the community in the form of writing and furthermore moreover plans for contributions through mods are a direct result of those same shared experiences. "What you see is what we make", you know? We learned that sharing what we thought were "trivial details" can humanize interactions and, if anything, create connections. It feels as though, as long as we’re following the forum guidelines, nobody can or should stop us from sharing our Kerbal Space Program stories and how "our story" relates to those stories. The guidelines are in place to ensure respectful and constructive conversations, but they’re not meant to stifle voices. Seeing transgender people posting on this forum about it with a sense of safety and well-deserved dignity helped motivate us forward. Or shall we say prograde? For those interested in reading more about that, a whole lot of words have been enclosed in spoiler text below. Otherwise feel free to read on without clicking on that. If you really think about it, the Kerbals are like our space babies, and we’re the Kerbal daddy and mommy guiding them, protecting them, and helping them grow. Every mission we plan... every rocket we design... it’s all about making sure our little green guys and gals are safe and successful... and we love it. It seems we set our sights on the stars, only to start gravitating back to the familiar celestial bodies of the Kerbol System. This cosmic U-turn was sparked by the sheer efficiency of using Jool's mighty gravitational pull as a slingshot, propelling us from Kerbin to Plock with surprising ease. We hope that this post brought you positive feelings and that achieve something amazing too, perhaps even as a result of reading this. Much love and best wishes.

Thank you for the appreciated tips. The probe core tip shall help a lot. Big ups for that assistance.

The day that this was written, I spent time creating a launch vehicle for a payload that I thought would work perfectly. Or at least correctly. It did not. This is the said rocket in question. Inside the payload fairing is yet more payload fairing. The Kerbals must have been like: "I heard you like payload fairings... so we put a payload fairing in your payload fairing!". What happened the day that this was written goes to show that if your design is not up to par, then you are essentially launching metallic space-garbage into orbit up in outer space. Pretty rocket, right? Yeah, well... that can be said for a lot of rockets that did not even make it far from the launchpad too, though. This rocket is sort of like that but made it to space at least. Lesson learned indeed. And look at how the MechJeb case lights up the inside of the payload fairing with its green light. Quite pretty. So pretty, in fact, that I felt like I had to take a screenshot and share it. It says a lot if that part was amongst the highlights. Everything about this launch and the spaceship payload that it was carrying seemed to be perfectly nominal, you know? That was until I realized that the Xenon engine did not have a way to counteract its own thrust coming from the side instead from the bottom where it usually does. I love to do small minimalist builds that are as tiny as possible, so, in doing that, I accidentally neglected to put on both RCS and SAS. Meaning that, when it came time to test the long-distance interplanetary space probe, it did this: No joyous journey to Jool for me that day it seemed. More like spinning around in space on an escape trajectory without any way to do anything other than stop the spinning or make the ship spin even friggin' more. At least this serves as evidence that I can build ships this cool, even if they are occasionally built with design errors like this sometimes. Perhaps putting the engine on the side of the spaceship was not the smartest design choice. The conversation between mission control and Valentina probably went something like this: If the engine had been placed to face instead of the sideways direction that it was in the prevented it from staying in place to burn at points, things would have worked out. But, as you can see above, they did not — the design choice to put a tiny-sized Xenon-powered engine in a 1.25m-sized service bay looked so cool that it made me skip past implementing RCS and SAS. With no way to provide enough stabilization to create a state of equilibrium, the spaceship was up out there rotating like the wheel of a racecar.

I disagree there

Built a comfy tiny boat using entirely stock parts that uses one Juno engine to push the Rover variant Mk2 Lander Can repurposed to serve as the captain's quarters along the top of the water. I love how it has that bouncing effect where the boat repeatedly leaves and returns to the water that is often seen with high-speed boats or in choppy water conditions. The cockpit IVA even provides quite the appropriate view for such a ship. And this time is it not a spaceship. It is a ten-part design that utilizes Mk0 Liquid Fuel Fuselages for maximum adorable smallness. It's a sight to behold that proves that, in the world of Kerbal Space Program, size isn't everything, and a little ingenuity goes a long way. Docking at the intersection of simplicity and genius, this tiny boat is a floating tribute to the can-do spirit of people like me who look at the parts in the SPH and VAB and see not just components, but possibilities. So, hats off to this diminutive vessel that shows that, if you truly want built a boat in a game that is about space travel, you can. It may not be able to take you past Jool, but it can take you to spots where your Kerbals can do deep-sea fishing for fishies. So, there is that. It is the perfect vessel for Kerbals who want to experience the thrill of bouncing across the water like a stone skipping across a pond, and the repurposed Rover variant Mk2 Lander Can seems like it would have enough space for stashing emergency snacks for long voyages out at sea. It may not be the best for use as a fishing vessel without ladders though, as evidenced by the photos below. Hope you all like my cool boat I created too.

What did we do today (as of writing this) in Kerbal Space Program? (The classic first Kerbal Space Program, that is.) Spotted something... "quite interesting", to say the least. More on that later. Before that, the day before, we learned from what happened following the previous post. And that is what will be discussed a bit below, before discussing what happened after. It seems that, as of writing this, we indeed show a lot of potential outside of modding Kerbal Space Program when it comes to playing the game proper, mods or no mods, but clearly still need to learn interplanetary and interstellar travel rocketry designs and such. Let this serve as proof of that. What you see here above is the giant fuel tank that we tried to add to our interplanetary ship being lifted into orbit. Choosing the smallest docking port possible was not the smartest design choice, but it ended up connecting. The same way that you could walk around with a huge bag of bricks slung over your shoulders, we tried to basically do that with our spaceship, not thinking about that part. Besides being able to connect to the interplanetary spaceship and provide a bunch more fuel, it did not do much but add huge amounts of weight and bend worryingly at the docking port connection. It helped at first, but that for a brief moment until something or another caused a collision, which caused this big blast that destroyed most of the payload that had been brought to the ship due to it. Thankful that the Kerbals were still even alive, we took that sort of cone thing seen in the lower picture fueled with the precious little bit of Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer that it had left and burned prograde. Then, we took that spaceship to to Duna and did this: Anyway, though... As for "what we did in Kerbal Space Program today" (as in the day that this was written on)... After that the day that the abovedescribed stuff happened, we decided to try creating a command pod using payload fairings, that of which is pictured below. That was way less chaotic and went way more according to plan than the interplanetary mission that spanned from the post before to this in terms of comparison. It flew into the air quite nicely on top of the RT-5 "Flea" Solid Fuel Booster that it was attached to, and functioned as any other command pod would, meaning this idea is indeed a keeper. Especially considering that, with this, you can design interiors that can function like KSP IVA, and can ditch the walls around the command seat inside to deploy parachutes as shown above. You see, this was around the last moment that Jeb was up there before we started spotting something that is about the silliest thing that somebody could see in Kerbal Space Program. Something that was not something that you would anticipate seeing at all unless told about it. Something quite unusual. It was this thing: If there is one thing that were not anticipating to see in Kerbal Space Program upon approaching sea level during a regular routine water landing, it is that thing right there. But there it was, staring back at us, its ginormous silliness palpable. I guess that the ocean decided that it wanted to do what the IVA camera screens in the bottom right corner in KSP do too. Regardless... talk about a "Kraken", eh? Jebediah Kerman eventually landed in the water, in a reflection of his own face. Kerbal Space Program? More like Kerbal Face Program! Like... what in the world?! Truly epic stuff. || That is what we did together in Kerbal Space Program the day that was written. We hope that you truly enjoyed the read and find our find as funny as we do.

The day that I wrote this, I did fun and nominal rocket launching with stock 2.5-meter Rockomax and 3.75-meter Kerbodyne parts that entered its payload into stable orbit around Kerbin. Previous posts were made on HP Laptop Model 15-dy4013dx, that of which could only run Kerbal Space Program so well, and things like graphical improvement mods would make the game lag. This post though however was made on the "CyberpowerPC Gamer Master Gaming PC" that was gifted to us that can run Kerbal Space program much better by far to the point of it being impressive. Its AMD Ryzen 5 7600 and GeForce RTX 4060, in combination with the curved Sceptre F24 monitor that was picked to go with it, makes for much more aesthetic and immersive KSP gameplay. The S2-33 "Clydesdale" SRB stage got the rocket well above the KSC by the time that their fuel tanks had been depleted of resources and the solid fuel had stopped burning. They can be seen pictured below being thrown from the liquid fuel engine part of the liftoff stage that utilizes the S3 KS-25x4 "Mammoth" Liquid Fuel Engine for its thrust power. The liftoff from the launchpad up into the atmosphere and beyond was smooth, and like rocket launches as seen on TV, which is indeed what you want to see when playing KSP. As you can see, the rocket narrows down slightly before the payload fairing, which is a common design similar to the way the Falcon 9 and Saturn V rockets taper between stages, hence optimizing the rocket's mass distribution. During the rocket launching off the ground to go up and out of the atmosphere section of the launch mission, the only issue was negligible slight wobbling in the upper stages, that of which had inconsequential effects on the launch profile. The 2.5-meter parts and 3.75 parts together in the lower stages, which were necessary, provided more than enough delta-V to lift the payload, an entire spaceship, up to orbital altitudes. It was safe to jettison the payload fairing coverage without jeopardizing the mission by the time that the stage that utilized the RE-M3 "Mainsail" Liquid Fuel Engine made it up high, and before it even fired for the orbital burn to boot. Rocketships that utilize "super heavy-lift launch vehicles" are not only fun to build and look like the huge towering launch vehicles that have previously been used by space agencies to lift said "super heavy" payloads up into orbit, but also are the thing that makes lifting those payloads into orbit possible in the first place. And that is why we are such fans of these epically powerful majestic giants. The interplanetary spaceship payload made into stable circular orbit at ~200,000 meters (200 kilometers), which is, according to our calculations, something like 124.274238 miles. The rocket design was well-done enough that the stage used to attain an orbit with a periapsis greater than 70 kilometers had 1969 delta-V left over — almost 2000 dV, and also in addition enough to left Kerbin's sphere of influence. That is what I did the day that this written, and what comes afterwards is going to be the fun part, because due to the ship having docking ports and designing specifically done with interplanetary missions in mind, it can venture out around the Kerbol System efficiently, as well as indefinitely if refueled with resources from ore mining operations. The point of the build and the subsequent respective launch was to build something like a reasonably small-scale mothership smaller than what you might anticipate upon hearing that word. I (said that I) shall document the adventures in KSP1 — on the then-new gaming computer capable of pulling off looking visually immersive at high settings whilst not creating dilly-dally as far as the smoothness of the gameplay that we did not have before that of which is worthy of calling a major upgrade that takes playing Kerbal Space Program to a whole other level compared to before — and show you readers the narrative of their space travels from both this type of objective perspective as well as the perspective of the Kerbonauts themselves. Until then, I hope that you have equally as smooth and wonderful space travels, and that this site does not have to go anywhere, so that we can all keep posting about our Kerbal Space Program adventures like this, on this particular website. Jebspeed to you other fellow KSP players in the meantime.

Hi @ColdJ Thank you so much for the powerful pointers in the right direction. That whole thing with not using Program Files as the installation destination for the 3D program in terms of file directory recall is something that would have still been overlooked but looking at the error messages knowing that it all makes sense now and can literally now be seen in the error message diagnostic output how it could not before in terms of comprehending what it is saying... that being that the error "[WinError 5] Access denied" = the plugin saying something similar to what the Windows GUI might tell you when trying to modify file data that you do not have access to, such as an administrators. But if somebody does not know how to read error messages like that, how would they even begin to know that? You said that your hope is that "average person" will be able to "pick this stuff up without too much trouble", and that hope is shared, so catching this seems like quite the find and thing to remember as that same "average person", to quote you directly, is likely to install their three-dimensional modeling program in Program Files without knowing that and would not know what in the Jebediah Kerman that the error messages above meant even slightly. You say you are no programmer, but we over here from at where this is being posted from are most definitely something like that and learned about what the "[WinError 5] Access denied" error message means and why it happened through this troubleshooting, so thank you again for that. You see, these little details about the program-to-game modding process are crucial steps that ignoring can easily cause derailing of getting parts from the drawing board to the video game quite quickly if you overlook some steps. Clearly the "any mesh must have a Material setup before you export it to a .mu or it will not show up" part was overlooked, seeing as there was this test part made before knowing that which had its own .cfg file, respective texture file, and obviously, of course, .mu model, which is everything that is needed for most of part mods that do not add new functionalities (such as Module Manager through code, that of which require creating .dll files as well), yet still only showed up in the Vehicle Assembly Building as invisible, aside from the attachment point and collision model making it possible to tell what the geometry of the model is. In fact, something like that too happened when reading the part about the "3.5 Blender/BforArtists onwards" type of compatibility stuff — for some Jeb-forsaken reason, it was not read properly. In essence, we are doing something like going retrograde instead of going prograde. Before knowing: After knowing: Speaking of that type of KSP modding learning based happiness, the tip given regarding "the list of available KSP shaders that come with .mu plugin, found down near the bottom of the Material Setup menu on the right" was and still is as of writing this (and shall surely be after) something that provided that, seeing as that, along with the other things that were learned here, and important steps necessary to make part mods work at for the players who download and install them who more than likely do not know the first thing about how to fix said mistakes. But this type of knowledge is what this type of inquiring discourse is for. Probing questioning like that is how the treasure that is the answers to tech problems that make everything click together how it should instead finally get found. Our own hope like yours is that after the golden key that unlocks the door to being able to smoothly get created .mu models from Bforartists or Blender without any hiccups or hitches is found that we will be able to streamline things and provide tutorial guidance on it as short and sweet as a Kerbal is. Maybe even some way to make the process even easier. All that we know is that the advice before is just what the doctor Kerbal in KSP down at the KSC ordered in terms of elaborating with insight into the specifics of why the understandable mistakes that were made happened and creating this brilliant way to get things back on track not only for us two over here but also for all of the other readers who might come across this writing by chance or on purpose due to having the same problems as we did that were not demystified by being understood yet before learning what they even were caused by and that there were perfectly good reasons as to why they happened. Anybody and everybody that wants to use Blender and other applications to create KSP part mods should be able to, so once the secret sauce to keeping that as simple as possible so that your average player could learn to do it without having to be some sort of total techie or modeling master is found in term of being able to "pick this stuff up" with heavy emphasis on the "without too much trouble" part of what you said, as that was the feeling got when trying to use the .mu plugin with Blender — truly totally tiringly troublesome. But that was simply from the all-too-relatable misunderstanding that we had thinking that we could just plug in the plugin to Blender and call it a day, when in fact it is more involved than that. To use an analogy metaphor, it is like baking cakes. You can't just put your cake in the oven any way that you want and presume or even trust that it will bake correctly. Not at all — quite the contrary: you must follow the recipe "by the book" (like they sing about in that cute LazyTown song "Cooking By the Book"). Each and every step. And that is an important thing well worthy of calling "knowledge learned". The reason being? The way that things surrounding and regarding that plugin could totally have Kerbal Space Program modders who are not familiar with the plugin think that the part creation process utilizing Blender requires less steps than it does. Very minute yet important steps that if not followed renders all of the modelling work literally null as it will not render what was created with Blender. We appreciate you helping us two out with this stuff, because we were quite hyped about getting things working before, we encountered obstacles that lead to hurdles. We might return with helpful new "knowledge learned about using the .mu plugin" if we find it as to make things easier for everybody, but the main goal for right now is to follow the advice given and get everything to finally work right before considering the possibility of trying to streamline that or streamline trying to teach it. Thank you kindly again very much for the help. Quite the relatively long post indeed but we believe it was worth every word and that we are finally onto something here now. If our part mods start functioning nominally after writing this, which showed signs of being more than plausible at the time while doing so, we will obviously know who to shout-out with love. That is conclusively it. We appreciate all of the insight and wish you well.

It was read earlier, but the part about the Material set up and thing with toggling on "Force Invisible Meshes" was overlooked, which seems like it is quite the plausible reason as to why the .mu models did not show up, yet their attachment points and such would still. That being said, it seems that the part making being off track was the result of missing steps like that at final half portion of the process model creation, but also these errors: The script here seems the same as the script that has been being plugged into Blender as an addon script, but it seems that neither the Bforartists nor Blender versions that have been used in combination with the script provided have been able to work correctly without these errors. Yet clearly without any doubt some modders out there have the correct setup in terms of combability, which essentially basically begs the question as to what they are. There have indeed been links and pointers kindly provided on this thread, but they seem to lead to these same errors. Especially seeing as this was the result of trying to plug the addon into the software as practically literally any modder would. If this is has been happening to us due to simply trying to use this script with Blender, or the more unheard of alternative Bforartists, then clearly this is some very replicable sort of thing that would happen to other people trying to create models for mods, and leaves these things to inquire about — what version of what software should be used with what script, in what way, and where can we find it? Knowing that there is clearly obviously some sort of working combination of things that requires something more specific than adding the script to any version of Bforartists or Blender, it leaves the question of what that is. Referrals to the right stuff would be more than appreciated and indeed might be helpful for others curious about the same thing who read this thread who have or would otherwise run into the same issue. We appreciate the usefully helpful assistance and would especially appreciate something like a clone fork type of thing, to use software engineering computerese slang. Thank you.

After this string of space missions had gone haywire in Science mode, we were finally able to score well-deserved science points. Kerbals had to die along the way to get there, but we bet that you can probably read this and go "I can relate to that." about it. If the code for getting Blender to recognize the .mu files that Kerbal Space Program uses for the video game (which can be found here) were to have not bugged out how it did, we would have posted part mods by now, but for whatever reason, it seems to throw out errors multiple times, even with different versions of Blender or whatnot, as well as put out .mu files that show up in the Vehicle Assembly Building as being invisible, even though they were given the skin and respective reference to them in the .cfg file code. Otherwise with that notwithstanding there would be parts to download. Planetary and star system mods are not out of the picture for now as of writing this, as those do not require .mu files, but until the Blender to Kerbal Space Program process gets figured out correctly, that seems to be about the most that can be done, aside from mods that add some functions that enhance gameplay, but do not come with any .mu models. Until the fix that resolves the issue abovedescribed is found, it seems that space missions like the probe landing pictured above that happened on the day that this written along with learning how to code new things into Kerbal Space Program and creating custom celestial bodies for more gameplay. Designing craft and then testing them out in the field never seems to get old luckily though, so at least this twice multiplied modding sadness at least has some sweet silver linings to it. Upset about the Blender Kerbal Space Program plugin stuff we have indeed gotten, but the upside is that it is the only thing holding us back from publishing new parts to play with that shall be available for download after this stuff is all figured out. Us two will be over here playing Kerbal Space Program like we usually do, as well as working on still faithfully trying to create Kerbal Space Program parts that add new and novel functionalities to the game.