Ruthgar

Been a while since I've posted something here. Didn't do much in KSP today, just started a new game with the usual dream team of kerbals that will be led by a new one, one JG Kerman, who will be the lead kerbanaut for this world. Appropriate I think for what happened today. "Thank you John Glenn for being a part of that first group of explorers to brave that which is beyond the limits of our world to show us a glimpse of what is beyond it. May you Rest In Peace."

One thing I've also found that does work when I can't place a node within the first 45-90 degrees of the orbital path that the craft is going to take, but I can place it farther on, is that you place the farther node then just drag it back to where you need it, afterwards the ability to place nodes anywhere is restored as well. If you can't place a node anywhere on the orbital path than yeah go back to the space center and go use the tracking station to fix the problem.

The more it shakes, rattles, burns, and generally gets closer to exploding, the more Jeb likes it.

Well, decided I would try to revisit an old experiment of mine from back in .7 or .8 of lifting a X shaped station whose arms were made of two giant orange tanks each. As I had reinstalled KSP to start a fresh career without any trace of the old mods that even though I had removed them from game data some of the info was still showing up in the game and causing a few bugs, this had left me with a career at a point that did not have all of the parts I needed (stock) to make this creation, so I started a new sandbox save. The only mods I used for this were kerbal engineer and hyperedit (used hyperedit to simulate the full proper asparugus staging I would need to get this thing into orbit by adding some fuel into the tanks during the lift as I was only doing this to prove it MIGHT be feasible to lift such a massive ungainly station) There was much discouragement at first Plus what looked like some wibly wobbly time stuff before the big explosions But after much frustration (see many many many repeats of the above pictures in various angles and lighting) I finally had a finalized prototype (didn't blow up, spin cycle, fold itself, or otherwise implode in the first 5-10k meters of flight) Due to building it in the spaceplane hanger there were some issues that did come about in the test flight were some of the fuel transfer lines not being properly hooked up, which led to a second hyperedit refueling rather than the original single one that was intended. Turns out had those fuel lines been connected, along with lines coming from the station tanks there might have been enough fuel to get the thing up to it's final parking orbit of 1 thousand km, definately enough fuel to have gotten it into a stable low orbit, provided I work out the stability issues the engines will develop from losing the empty tanks and there support lines. Anyways, here it is up in orbit ready for ships or more station modules to dock with it if this was my career save. You can't really see it clearly, but two of the engine mounts along with 1 set each of tanks and engine attached are still on the station (that's the extra rockomax hub at the top and bottom) I think I'll have to do one more test prior to setting this up in career as they're were a few flaws I noticed. Final engines on each rocket mount had no stability and liked to wobble everywhere during the burns (luckily I was in orbit by then and could afford to keep the engine speeds low. LIGHTS, need to place some lights by the docking ports. Finally need to do something about it's turn speed, damn thing took forever to make turns for orbital burns - - - Updated - - - Speaking of my career mission from my last post, Jeb and Val have come up with an interesting way of dealing with those tourists that I get in those career missions. Here you can see Val and Jeb after Val gets her pilot certification and makes an excellent drop of the tourist pods even if she didn't quite land hers quite right. And here's Jeb doing a solo run, he got his pod to land correctly, the tourist pods..........not so much. (You're seeing the mark 2 design of the Tourist Trap reentry system, the mark 1 design.....well the chutes of the 3 man pods kinda bumped with the 1 man command pod and the stack separator under it and when the separator and chutes would activate, well the 1 man command pod dissappeared or so I thought. Then I'm looking at the mission report and seeing a 500+ max g reported and finally go back to the space center and the tracking center. To find the 1 man pod has in under 2-3 minutes gone from an altitude of 3k over the surface of kerbin to almost out of Kerbin's SOI. Only did it one time tho, and I tested the design about a dozen times after wards with no repeats. Still redesigned the chute placements so they wouldn't touch the separator anymore.)

My biggest issue with the latest patch is the need for putting wings on your earliest rockets to keep them from going end over end. In real life I've spent over 20 years working on and around space lift systems, and I know for a fact that the primary means of steering of the rocket under thrust is the use of thrust vector control or gimballing of the thrust nozzles along the x/y axis. The main reason why you ever see a rocket start to spin end over end is usually because of a failure of one or more of the servo motor control systems of the nozzles and one or more of the nozzles being forced by the engine thrust itself to the furthest possible travel of the nozzle and locking into that position. Now requiring the use of wings/rcs to control the spin of the rocket LENGTHWISE is perfectly understandable, practical, and even applicable to real life. Glad I've got multiple versions of KSP saved because of wanting to continue various builds/campaigns under certain conditions, as I won't be playing the updated version until the end over end flipping for no real reason gets resolved. PS. that thrust vectoring I talked about has been on both liquid and solid rocket engines for space lift since the 50s at least in the US.

Started a new career in my 'BTSM' modded KSP copy folder (original purchased version is in a separate folder and is mostly vanilla aside from science alert, Kerbal Engineer, and mechjeb for precise node timing ( I like to do my own node calculations, just don't like sitting around for the precise initiation of them)) and my first trip out to jool, my probes get there and..... they only have the 100,000km transmitter........*sigh* time for a new mission and waiting for the next transfer window.

Usually read some fanfiction, after getting something to drink and changing my music/anime I've been listening/watching if necessary.

I have two of them. First I'll tell you about my trip to Eve with an ingeniously designed lander It was designed for a parachute/powered assist landing (final braking), then launch, link up to a set off fuel tanks left in orbit (4 sets of quad linked tanks that after transfering fuel from them to the lander I could jetison individual tanks), and the lander would then go back to kerbin. Here's a screenshot of the basic lander design I was using in that career, unfortunately not of the lander I'm specifically talking about, but it is the central 'core' of the lander that was used (it's missing the clamp o-tron, and additional ascent engines for EVE) The problem was something about the descent/landing/ascent from EVE broke something in the lander supports, and once out of EVE atmosphere any thrust over 35-40% would start the 'legs' gyroing around, actually they started gyroing at anything above 10-20%, but could stay on course until 35-40%. So Jeb took this crippled lander, and managed to get it back to Kerbin and landed it at the north pole. When it landed, only one of the four legs was still at a right angle to the central stack, one was twisted about 30% off center, and the other two were pushed up about 15%. Turns out I had not noticed that I had completely lost the struts on those 3 legs, and only the struts from the central stack to the 4th leg were intact. An examination of the mission log showed that jetisoning the Eve ascent packages after transfering the last of their fuel once I had reached the resupply tanks in orbit had somehow destroyed those missing struts. The second awesome moment I had was landing at a 45 degree angle as you can see in this picture. It's my firm belief from Jeb's normal lack of response, aside from being happy/excited, to all forms of 'exciting' incidents that there is something not right with him.

Did an actual apollo like mun mission (separate lander/command craft) for the first time ever using the BTSM mod. Have always done a massive lander that was capable of returning to kerbin itself before, usually with enough fuel left over for a partial powered descent. This one, barely had the fuel left to return to Kerbin on an intercept course. It was fun.

HAven't yet, between being sick and just having one of those days where I can't find the motivation to do/play anything.

Without editing my save file here are my never been there stats. Unmanned, haven't been to eeloo yet. Manned haven't done a Moho landing/stable orbit (did do a moho SOI slingshot), also haven't done manned landings of one of Jool's moons (need to check that career save)

This is somewhat incorrect as obviously the ISS gets resupplied all the time(food, life-support, thruster fuel, etc...), and when the shuttle was around part of the maintenance they did on the satellites they worked on in orbit (Hubble for example) was to resupply the onboard fuel (usually either tank swap, or transfering a pre-calculated amount). However the main reason why resupply missions aren't done to most satellites (aside from the shuttle being retired) is that currently it's cheaper/easier to just launch a new satellite when the old one de-orbits/goes offline.

Finished Phases 1, 2, and 3 of setting up my Minimus base in my "Better than Starting manned" mod save. Phase 1 was delivering my gantry crane for use in setting up the base, here's a screenshot of testing it on Kerbin Phase 2 was getting the initial base component there.....Had a slight issue with how close I landed them to the crane as you can see Phase 3 was getting everything disconnected from the ship and hooked up. Found a few flaws in my current design (no lights, not enough docking ports, etc...) all of which I can fix in the future. Here's how my Minimus base looks currently. Phase 4a will be a redesign/testing stage on Kerbin of both the manned lander system, and probe transport/lander system for carrying more base components, plus testing the design here on kerbin. Phase 4b will be the initial flight test/probe transport missions to minimus using a variety of payload sizes/weights Phase 5 will be transport of more base components Phase 6 will be transport of supplies Phase 7 will be a manned mission to assemble the base and evaluate if more components will be necessary (possible return to Kerbin if supplies are being used too fast) Phase 8 will be resupply transports, and more base components as necessary Phase 9 will be final assembly of base components for the initial science studies (with a manned mission if the one in Phase 7 returned to Kerbin) Phase 10 will be start of long term science studies at the base (looks life 5 years for one of the BTSM experiments), and multiple resupply missions as needed Phase 11 and beyond are currently undetermined as they will depend on future science discoveries, and the success/failure of my Minimus Base. Though current plans do include the possible replication of Minimus base both on the Mun and a variation of it up in orbit. One final plan is to capture a type E asteroid get it into stable Kerbin SOI and construct a base using it as the anchoring base.

You used a few too many landing legs, probly cost you a few dozen-few hundred in Delta-V

I was working on building my Minimus base in my "Better than Starting Manned"/"Deadly Reentry" mod career when I heard the news about Robin Williams. After that, I just couldn't find it in me to continue working on it.

Nice, assembled in orbit I am assuming?

Unless you're running a high end computer with LOTS of ram, and have set the debris allowed to max, you're not really gonna get a kessler syndrome, here's my attempt with a 2k item ship hyperedited into orbit of the 2k items that went into the ship (half tanks, half separatons vert/side) my game was only tracking 232 items after they had all been released and timewarped for 2-3 months (initial number within 24hrs of release was 400-440) Not sure if the missing 150+ debris was destroyed, or lost due to system limitations. *edited* your more likely to destroy one of your missions completely by accident by running into something rather than trying for it. Had to relaunch my first Jool probe fleet after the final rocket ran into the mission staged at 120k orbit and then the remains of the two took out the missions staged at 140k, 160k, and 200k orbits respectively (140k and 160k ran into the 120k mission debris, while the last one launched just kept burning up into the 200k mission (probe computer was destroyed on impact to the 120k mission)). It was a freak occurance, had done my launch without final check of my stagings first(basic design of the jool probes had some separatrons out of order) so I had gone and fixed them mid ascent, and had left my mouse over on the staging, this had kept me from jetisoning the SRBs for about 20 seconds, normally not a mission ending problem as my jool probes had been overengineered with about 20-30% extra delta-v. Unfortunately that 20 seconds of carrying that extra weight slowed my ascent enough that i rammed into the already preorbited mission at 120k orbit. Valuable lesson learned that day, when staging a fleet of ships, always start with the highest orbit first.

Been playing with the mod "Better than Starting Manned" (using just science mode, not career), and just finished my 2nd set off unmanned probe missions outside of Kerbin SOI, this time to the outer limits of the system (out to Jool) The new probe design I used worked so well, thinking of redoing my inner Kerbol explorations again as the original mk1 probes just did not have the power gen/storage to survive (lost most of the mk1's when their bats ran out. here's a pic of the mk1 and mk2 (MK1-original test launch(no pics of the MK1-A's that were actually used(had another set of the flat solars))) (One of the MK2's doing a close orbit pass to start the surface scanner science transmission) The mk1's were retired (dead in space) after only 2 years of functioning, the MK2's were able to use their remaining fuel to deorbit and land on each of their targets (with the exception of Laythe, Jool, due to atmosphere/lack of landing surface, and Tylo due to it's high gravity). From start to finish, the MK2 mission lasted 12 years before being called mission complete. Currently thinking of a mk3 design to go back into the inner planets to finish off the basic sciences that was missed (if I just don't send a bunch of MK2s) or a totally new mini design for the mk3 with just the new science instruments (science jrs) to go out and return from each world. Also have a tentative MK4/5 designs for a future Eeloo mission (though the current design of the MK2 SHOULD work due to it's nuclear engine for continued power)

Nice pic, here's two that I think should go with it.

I think almost everyone has done the inline engine thrust disruption at least once. It's a part of the game's learning process. As far as my most recent mistake using the mods "Better than Starting Manned" and "Deadly Reentry" had a 3 man capsule coming back in at just the wrong angle and burnt up half of my side mounted parachutes. Thankfully due to the fact that I overengineer my landers/re-entry pods the remaining chutes were enough to slow the capsule down enough for a hard impact on the ground that vaporized my 2 additional heat shields, with said vaporization providing the needed remaining breaking 'thrust' for the capsule to survive final impact. So yes, I made it into space, but almost didn't survive making it back.

For my strandings, it's been more like Bill, Jeb, AND Bob on a planet/moon

Thanks for answering so soon, I don't really mind if it doesn't track the copied folder, as I will still be playing the normal gameplay version (I call it normal as the basic gameplay is still the same even if I do have mods added that are just add-ons to the game). My currently used mods are just feature/information adding ones such as "ScienceAlert" "Kerbal Engineer" "Mechjeb (Mostly just use the node engagement function of this as I like to plan my nodes myself). I was more concerned about using the ones that radically alter the basic structure of the game such as the "Better than Starting Manned" mod as I know they would potentially severely damage/break my current saves.

as far as the multipart contracts go, you get a reward for EACH part you complete. Upon completion of the final part of the contract, you get a reward for the part completion PLUS the overall contract reward.

I bought my copy of KSP through steam, and I am thinking of adding a few of the gameplay altering mods such as "Better than Starting Manned" and "TacLifeSupport". However, I would like to do this using a separate copy of KSP that way I can keep my current saves usable (until some future patch potentially ruins them by accident ). What I am wondering, is it possible to make a separate copy of the steam downloaded client that is usable without affecting my main copy of KSP?

One of the problems i have with rendezvouses is that my transfer stages always seem to develop either a spin or wobble as I get close, even using the timewarp to kill the spin/wobble only keeps it still for a few seconds before it starts to move again This happens 1 out of 3 rendezvouses so I just edit the quicksave and take the fuel from the transfer stage to the lander and then force the lander home.