LordFerret

Mitzi Meyerson playing some John Jones (1728–1796)... marvelous works.

Well at least you can use it to stay warm... or put it under tons and tons and tons of pressure and heat and make a diamond and then sell it and become rich... then buy more coal to keep warm.

If they were, I'm sure it was the Eagles beating the snot outta Tom Cruise.

@Ultimate Steve I would double-check that power cord. Usually they push in quite snugly and aren't even close to being loose. Make sure it's all the way in. Well the day is almost over here. M'Lady gave me a nice new sweater. Best part of the day was our making and eating (traditional Georgian gochi) dinner together... washed down with a bottle of Chateau Mukhrani Cabernet Sauvignon 2011. Oh, and coffee and dessert.

Likewise!... შობას გილოცავთ! Merry Christmas!

Wow, that's a lot of science being transmitted. I would say you've got some kind of conflict with a mod. Maybe check out each of the mods you're using and see if there are any reports of it conflicting with something.

Unless things have changed, I don't think your drills are deep enough. I thought insertion had to be up to the first collar / sleeve.

When I was 8 years old, I began study on the violin. TVs were still mostly black and white. Seat belts in cars were not yet mandatory. We saluted and pledged allegiance to the flag at the beginning of each school day, which was then followed by a moment of silence for prayer... funny, nobody at the time had any need or desire to protest that. Boys wore slacks and shoes and a button-down dress shirt to school, and girls a dress. Boys knew they were different than girls, and girls knew they were different than boys... and we were happy for it, but somehow that line got muddied. Men and women always wore hats. People worried about polio. We had duck and cover air raid drills at school, and on Saturday afternoons the air raid sirens would go off for one full minute at noon.

@Triop That's an interesting color scheme. @Spacetraindriver I'll say! That looks like the eye of the Kraken. Looks like you had the resources overlay toggled? In my world: The SCANsat-Eeloo, which I had thought I lost, turned out to not be lost. Go figure. It came up on an intercept and I did an insertion burn for it... it's now orbiting and scanning Eeloo. The crewed lander is in orbit, waiting; We want to see the preliminary scans before trying to pick an LZ. Even if we find a nice spot to set down, I think we'll wait a little longer for the rover to arrive. Should be soon.

@Spacetraindriver Looks like you've got something in a polar orbit there... what is it? According to my SCANsat of Duna, there's an anomaly you could visit to the northeast of your current position. That's a long drive from where you're at right now however. If you head north-northeast into that big crater (where the anomaly is), you might find it easier to access the canyon from there (turning southeast). I did a Bug-Drop on Duna a while back (posted in here), but all 4 bugs flipped and got trashed because of terrain seams. That canyon and anomaly were one of my targets, only I was approaching from the east; I had intended to drive up the canyon to the anomaly. Hope you have better luck.

Not a good day, not really. The Moho-Bug-Drop, which was following the Hawkeye, fell to the same fate... different reason, but the same fate. Nice new big (very expensive) crater on Moho. The AstroCatch2 is done with its mission/visit, making ready for the trip back home. The Adam-Lander had its encounter with Eve. Twas a fiery affair. The last thing I expected was for the lander, with its big aero-brake shield open, to flip around on reentry. Bang! Poof! The romance was over in seconds. Very disappointing, especially as I'd taken special care in designing the center of mass well below the center point of the lander, right by the shielding. The Eeloo-Explorer (mothership) went ahead and used its fuel reserves to get set up for a landing. There's already a rescue ship on the way, so it looks like I'll be venturing a landing after all. To hell with prudence. The SCANsat-Eeloo ship somehow never got a KAC alarm set, so it's adrift and gone. Ground control plans to send the Terminate command to the ship tomorrow. Another, using newer technology and design, is already on the way. The Dres missions are coming up. Can't wait to see how badly I'll screw them up. The only sunshine today was the completion of the SCANsat-Jool for Tylo. Laythe and Vall are already done. All but out of fuel, its mission is done. SCANsat-Jool2 will arrive shortly, already enroute, to finish scans of Bop and Pol. Once they're scanned, and Eeloo, that will complete the entire Kerbol system. Humm... forgot Ike is only still partially scanned, but it's as good as done.

@HebaruSan Huge pile of ships ..... biggest pile wins. Wow... that reminds me of OGame.

Renaissance period... And, can't go without a traditional (cultural, Orthodox) Georgian Christmas chant, the Alilo (ალილო)...

I remember 50. 12 more years buddy, 12 more years. Heard this the other day, warrants another listen... Mozart, Divertimento for string trio in E-flat major, K563

I have a rover built very early in the game, for running around KSC grabbing science, called the "PushMePullYou".

Asleep at the wheel. My fault. The Hawkeye Moho encounter didn't go well... at all... total failure. Dealing with some issues regarding the Eeloo-Explorer, I missed the mark for Hawkeye - even though I had a KAC alarm set. Lesson: Don't ignore your alarms, you set them for a reason. Hawkeye's only alternative hope was to become a new crater, and indeed it did. The Eeloo-Explorer issues aren't looking too good. The CommSat relays sent in advance were built with early technology, and thus ran out of electricity during crucial final burns. Crossing ones fingers doesn't seem to help any in such situations. Scratch them off. They're cosmic paperweights, adrift. The Explorer itself and her crew are facing the cold hard reality of a fuel shortage... Do we risk landing or just take some pictures and pack up and go home? I think the latter of the two will be prudent. Maybe next time.

I guess I didn't realize I had so many irons in the fire... 8 missions attended to this afternoon, KAC alarms going off one after another, and I'm still not done. Finished mapping Vall, started Tylo. Bug-Drop closing in on a Moho encounter. AstroCatch2 finally made its encounter, currently sucking the little asteroid dry of resources. Hawkeye is closing in on its Moho encounter... telescope to peer down into the Mohole with. The massive Eeloo-Explorer closes in and prepares for its final insertion burn... might happen tonight. It's a crewed mission... scary. And..... we're going to Dres baby! Dres landers L1 and L1b are enroute... crewed missions. That should make some of you out there happy. It's not the first visit however, mapping is all completed, and there's a CommSat array inbound paving the way. Oh, and I forgot the Adam-Lander test... Eve bound.

@XLjedi @Geonovast I used my Albatross2 as the basis for this VTOL. It's quick, and it flies great. I tried several different engines, including Panthers, Whiplashes, and Rapiers... they just didn't have the power. I eventually tried Reliants, but lack of gimbaling was not helping so I switched to Swivels... they did the job, barely. I left the air intakes in place for use with the aft main engines, if you're wondering why two sets (from the air breather trials). For takeoff, I toggle out the aft main engines and throttle up the verticals. The forward engine is thrust limited to 96.5% for balance. It lifts straight up, but reluctantly because it's under-powered and needs to burn off fuel/weight for a few moments before lifting. One of the problems I encountered was, being there's two vertical engines, one on each side of the center of mass, having 'control from here' set to the plane's cockpit causes the gimbaling to fight against itself. A solution I tried was small docking port on the bottom of the plane, and 'control from here' was set to it. However, that brought about another problem altogether, which is - this is a plane, not a rocket, so forget control. Anyway, it eventually did lift, somewhat gracefully. Kicking in the aft main engines gets it moving horizontal, but the nose wants to come up, so you have to work that a little until speed comes up... and as you're losing the battle with the nose coming up, you cut the vertical engines and then have to work the nose wanting to drop. It's not that bad, just a bit flaky at first until you get accustomed to it. The more refined variant now has a forward canard to help life a little. As you can see in this last picture however, fully 1/3 of the fuel for the verticals is used just to get moving. Landing vertically is a whole other story, nearly impossible (with this plane anyway); I find it nearly impossible to cancel forward horizontal velocity. I've come in low and slow, pull a ridiculous flair, switch engines and level back out, and I'm still moving forward - shouldn't be happening. And if I even get that far without running out of fuel for the verticals, I'm lucky. I'm going to work on it a little bit more before shelving it... I have missions coming up that need attention real soon.

Tried a build of a VTOL today, my first. 3 different designs. Finally got around to one which was balanced enough for a vertical takeoff, although it was shaky at best, and then on to horizontal flight... landing was another question, accomplished, but trashed the plane. I find it terribly inefficient, and not very practical. I also find it nearly impossible to completely stop forward momentum in KSP and come to a hover... control is too imprecise and sloppy, for me anyway. One thing's for certain, it killed the afternoon right quick.

Oh my. I don't often lose Kerbals, I rather pride myself on that, but today I lost 4 in one shot. A Cargo-Je with 4 aboard ran out of fuel and crashed midway back on the journey home to KSC from the Old KSC. This variant ship had no nightvision ability, so I couldn't really see the ground rising up to meet me in my attempt to land. Engineer Orhat was to supposed to have refueled the plane before we left, but there's no point in blaming him now. KIA - Gwenrine, pilot Tanfel, co-pilot Lodard, scientist Orhat, engineer RIP I've said it before, Old KSC is bad luck for me. I have better success with seat-of-the-pants missions on Mun. Time to wrap this adventure up and bring the other crews home... I've encounters out in deep space about to happen, things I've been waiting for months to come around.

Well I had a little green guy stranded on the top of a mountain. I figured I'd try and land a plane up there and rescue him. What's that they say?, about the best laid plans of mice and men?... er... Kerbals? Fail. One Pike down, pilot bailed in the midst of the slide... survives. So it's just a 2km walk back up the mountain, so the survivor joins his fellow, and endures an all night berating while other rescue plans are made and enacted. The idea, drop a rover up there for them to drive down in. So I built a rover. Doing things ass-backward as normal, I then proceeded to build a plane around the rover. Novel idea, but it worked. Behold, the Taxi. Don't ask. It flies. Kinda nice, if you like slow lumbering jets. So we fly out there, to the mountain top. Half way, we roll over and jettison the now empty 'drop tank'... that would be that big hulking whatchamacallit up on top. A while later, we see the our target, Old KSC as well in the background. Coming in low and real slow, we cut loose and drop the rover pretty much right as planned... a mere 0.4km from our two stranded pilots. The Taxi makes a set of wide banking turns around the mountain to make sure the payload lands safely. The payload safe, the jet heads on to Old KSC and lands... unfortunately a bit hard, and loses its right wing. The pilot survives however. Back on the mountain top... here's your ride boys. Never mind "I'm driving!"... shut up... get in... buckle up. "Brakes. Brakes! BRAKES!!!" Believe me when I tell you, it was a real chore to keep it under 30m/s for most of the descent - and steer. After that ordeal, half way back to Old KSC, somebody needed to stop and relieve himself. Finally, we made it. It literally took a few hours to make the drive. It ran a close 2nd to my Mun cruise done last year. So much for this mischief, but there's still two more rovers out there.

Wow, that's a really beautiful job. I hope to see the finished product!

@capi3101 Well you've been busy. That Ray Charles telescope deal cracks me up every time I see it in print. Why the eccentric orbit for Boop-Boop? A purpose? Or did it just turn out that way? I'm going to have to take a look at that mod. This afternoon I air-dropped the "Taxi" rover onto the top of the mountain... right on target... almost too on target. The ride down was literally something else... the screenshot will explain it all (I'll post it later). There was a moment, just a moment mind you, where, after re-packing the chutes, I contemplated driving over the edge and taking the express route down.

@Just Jim An old favorite, right from the git-go. Friends put together a Fleetwood Mac tribute band (really superb, better than just about anything else you'll find out there {YouTube}, yours truly was acting stage manager for the gigs), and there was always talk about a shift to a Heart tribute band instead. Can't tell you how sorry I am they didn't. Long sad story. Anyway..... I mentioned earlier (in here?) about the Philadelphia Orchestra soon to do Handel's Messiah. Lo and behold, I just finished listening to Part 1 on SXM Live, and Part 2 has just now this moment started. There's an interesting backstory to the Messiah, but I'll leave it up to you to go do the homework.

LOL... more snow last night. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. No. I won't post that one. I'll spare you. Instead, a sample of Johann Caspar Kerll, Passacaglia in D Minor. This guy is believed to have taught Pachelbel and Bach and Handel! Ya learn something new every day - I did, after a little research. Enjoy.