TrooperCooper

From the first Kerbal space-flight orbit to the first unmanned mun-landing, my 1.0.2 career is continuing with its babysteps...

After this success with an unmanned machine, it was time to put a Kerbal into an orbit. Jebediah launched with the Vostok 1: Once in a stable orbit, he performed a series of scientific experiments... And then returned to the KSC with a well timed re-entry... Splash-down in spit range of the space center... Jebediahs flight was soon followed by Valentina in Vostok 2, proofing that Kerbals can survive in space for a prolonged time by completing nearly 20 orbits around the planet... With the Voshkod mission, the KSP launched two Kerbals together for the first time. The ship mainly consisted of two lightweight landercans, held together by duct tape. Nonetheless, it returned Jeb and Val safely back to the surface. The KSP turned back onto unmanned probe missions, as those naturally had to make the next step forward. At first, a few more sattelites were put into various orbits arround Kerbin. Then the first Luna mission took off. Burning out of LKO to make the first transfer to the mun in Kerbal history. Arriving over the target, the lander probe is seperated and begins its descent to the surface. Successful touchdown. But since I accepted the Luna 2 contract, I had to smash the probe into the mun later on... And now work is beginning on manned Mun operations...

Jeb and Val did a few more biome landings with the P1 in the vicinity of the KSC... Then I launched a probe on a sub-orbital trajectory to explore the ice caps... Booster drop... Lander seperation... Re-entry... Probe with scientific toolset hanging on the chutes... Then, after more than two and a half years of playing in the dirt, it was time to go into space and stay there. The Tiros 1 and the orbit contracts were accepted and an appropriate vessel created. Take off below. Circularization... Separation of the sattelite... The Tiros 1, the first Kerbal-made sattelite in orbit, seconds before fulfilling the contract...

After upgrading the SPH to level 2 as well, the first manned vessel was designed and tested. The P1 is a lightweight science plane that can land pretty much anywhere with its radially mounted parachutes. Below is Jebediah on his first flight. Completing a contract for good money... And the science gathered is nice as well. Along with that, Jeb earned his first set of ribbons.

Started a new career and decided to do a diary for it.

I have just started a new modded career and decided to start a diary with this thread to keep track of my progress and not spam the "what did you do in KSP today-" thread to much . Comments are always welcome. The thread will probably be very picture intensive. I wont write down every little step, but rather focuss on the things that I believe are noteworthy. The career is played in a "no revert-" mode. Meaning if something goes wrong, I'll have to deal with it. Quicksaving/loading during flight wont be allowed except for bugs/game crashes etc. But since I play with the Kerbal Construction Time mod, it will be possible to run (payed) simulations. Cheating through the alt-F12 menu will only be allowed in a fair way (shortcomings of the game itself etc.). Part-clipping is allowed however. Aside from that, the difficulty settings are all on normal. A rough overview of the mods in use (might add/delete some later on): The first unmanned launch with a cheap "sounding rocket" went just a few thousand meters up: With the science gains from the first rocket launch, the next bigger rocket was designed, which made it into the upper atmosphere: The third one already peaked into space, propelled by a BACC "Thumper" SRB: After these first few babysteps, the VAB is upgraded to level 2. And the research progress looks as follows. First time ever I am taking an early aviation approach. Will see how that goes...

Developing a new cargo lifter SSTO. This stock craft can put at least 50 tons (one and a half orange tanks) into LKO. Still has quite a bit of fuel left, so there is more potential...

First orbit with SSTO spaceplane since 1.0

Regular crew shift arrival at the mining colony on Mün. One of the colonists sitting atop of a storage module, before he gets to... do some more construction work... Sometime later: the (most likely) finalized colony with another crew bus at the bottom left. Testing a new LKO crew launch system. Simulation of an interplanetary travel vehicle that is still on the drawing board (pictures from simulated flights). Its purpose will be to move crews to upcoming colonies within the Kerbol system. With 6k dV it will be able to reach pretty much any celestial body and has capacity of up to 20 Kerbals that it can keep alive for two earth-years. Simulated docking test at the KSS-1. Picking up Bill from a training academy in LKO on which he served as a teacher for engineers. As a first step to establish a Kaborundum mining colony on Eeloo, an entire OKS space station as a foothold and fallback option is launched in one go. Launch booster seperation. Leaving Kerbin. Arrival at Eeloo. After some orbit adjustments... the travel stage gets seperated. The station with inflated modules, ready and waiting for the arrival of the first crew.

Payed Gilly a visit so the A-Team could gain some more XP. Now they are ready to serve as instructors within the academy program.

Brought a handfull of new modules to my Mun colony. Ongoing mining and refining process has begun, though I will have to bring more drilling units to increase the output of exotic minerals sufficiently...

Karborundum miners of course.

Continued work on my Mun mining colony and installed (amongst many other things) a pylon at the outskirt of the installation that will act as a visual spot marker for incoming mineral freighters on their final landing approach as well as a gas station (Karbonite mining and refining capabilities included).

I made Jeb feel scared.

Sent a couple more modules to the Mun: a nuclear reactor to provide energy and an aeroponics module with greenhouses to plant food.

Just raise your initial orbit before you do the kickout-burn and your problem will be fixed.

And if you cant figure thrust offset / symmetry out correctly, just mount two. Might not be as economically efficient, but it certainly is easy to do.

Continued with my MKS Mun-colonization project: Created and tested a cheap ressource-return system, that is able to bring back mined minerals from LKO to the surface of Kerbin. With the help of an exploration vessel, that carried eight tiny automated landers... and a self-propelled scanner-rover, I found a good spot on the Mun surface that has all kinds of resources in (hopefully) sufficient concentration. Next up, the construction team, consisting of Jeb, Bill, Bob and Podler started their long mission. They landed their craft, a small temporary base that can keep them alive for a few month during the construction time of the main base, near the exploration rover that found the desired resource-hotspot. After decoupling the travel-stage, Podler had the honor to plant the colony flag. Next up it was time to prove that oversized weirdo-rovers can fly as well. The so-called "Movertron" also landed near the colony-site. Bill blowing up some left over debries from travel-stages with TNT while watching from atop the Movertron: Finally the first actual MKS module launched from KSC. Colony Control Center on landing approach as the sun rises over the Mun horizon: For the team of Kerbals the actual construction work is now beginning:

I put a stack of TNT on my lifters, countdown triggered by their decouple-stage. Less boring than deleting stuff through the tracking station. Yummy explosions.

Put an OKS station into Mün orbit in preparation of further colonization efforts. Here is hoping my project wont get ruined by this annoying bug again.

"Who are these little grey guys?"

I can confirm this bug. Havent tried it in space, but upon trying to launch my JAW-vessel, I am running into the exact same problem. If there is anything I could do to help figure this out, let me know... - - - Updated - - - Here is the craft-file if needed. Only other mod I used is KW Rocketry iirc... http://www.filedropper.com/roidcleaner EDIT: strange, now it works again.... hrmmm EDIT 2: now its happening to all other ships that were working fine before I spawned the jaw for the first time ever. Stuff that has been in space for years suddenly gets ripped apart through structural failures. Looks like my save is corrupted now. Luckily I have a backup.

Over time it lost its atmosphere... just like Mars did (mostly).

Shipped some burgers to my newly built OKS station in LKO...

Kouston, this is Orbital Station... we are going to conduct that fuel pump test now...