Kuansenhama

Minor Update. I'm going to fly some more missions today. But first I have a confession. I have done some very minor cheating. Mirbeth and Bobsy Kerman were save file edited onto my roster. Who are Bobsy and Mirbeth? They are my own personal legacy kerbals, from old saves. I honestly got more attached to them, and imagined more of a character for the both of them than I ever did with the OG 4. I wanted reincarnate them into this playthrough. Bobsy was from a save in 0.90 probably. I remember there was no female kerbals yet when he was around. He was a scientist I took on a grand tour which ended with him getting stranded on Eve, and the first kerbal I ever got to level 5. I specifically remember the experience being a thing but not female kerbals, so it must have been a 0.90 save. Bob had died in that save, and I considered bobsy his very skittish and intelligent brother. He loved science. He did not like rockets. Mirbeth was from my 1.0 career save. I remember she was right when they added the female Kerbals. the total opposite personality wise. Not the brightest bulb in the shed, but perfectly willing to fly whatever insane contraption I strapped her into, and very lucky too. Mirbeth had a remarkable ability survive insane stuff. I do remember her somehow surviving bailing out of a massive exploding rocket and landing on her helmet (this was before parachutes were a thing). There were also several highspeed plane crashes that she somehow miraculously survived. I think at some point I ended up launching her on an escape trajectory out of the Kerbol system when I got tired of the save file. Regardless, I wouldn't really consider this cheating consider how I've already demonstrated that I can very easily rescue kerbals and farm the contract. Whats two more with my specific names and traits? I don't think it would void either of the challenges that I'm participating in, and it makes this more fun for me so that's all that matters.

Chapter 5: A Dark Discovery "We choose to go to the mun, not because it is easy, but because... actually it is easy because I've played this game wayyy too much." First of all, here is an up close at the 'Kerbal Rescue Bus' so you can get a good lock at this thing. In some sense it's ridiculous but I also like the roleplay element of it. Even though I'm not using the (uhh I forgot what it was called, the mod that makes rockets take real time to build before you can launch them. I don't even know if that mod is still maintained...) I would assume if someones stuck in space after an accident you don't always have a ground-side rocket ready to launch. But having an orbiting rescue station with ready return spacecraft is somehow 'more realistic'. Anyways, I have the contracts for landing and planting a flag on the Mun and mun rock recovery. So its time to go. This rocket is hilariously over-engineered. I didn't want to struggle to get a decent mun lander on the smaller Gallium launcher. So this thing just has a lot of extra DV it doesn't need. It only costs 72k kerbucks and the contract payouts will more than cover that... Bismuth Launcher booster separation. I of course brought along the OG orange suits for my first Mun landing on this save. (No room for Val) I know vanilla KSP graphics are not the best, but I still think these swivel clusters look cool. The Bismuth launcher was so overpowered for this mission that the center stage wound up being used as a munar transfer stage. Made our lord and savior Matt Lowne happy by dropping the booster on a collision course with the mun. Coming in for landing. 1800m/sec on the upper stage. The touchdown was quite harrowing, but I dont have screenshots for obvious reasons. I overestimated the TWR of this design and hit the mun at about 50/sec. Miraculously bounced and flipped all crazy like. But managed to recover and took no damage. I kept the science pretty basic. I could have probably hopped around in different biomes but I don't have all the experiments yet. So that means at some point in the future Id wind up having to biome-hop again just to do gravity readings and seismometer readings. I recognize the counter-intuitive-ness of that, since I need the science points to unlock the advanced experiments. Bob grabbed a surface sample and a mun rock for the contract, and I ran the reports, goo, mat, thermo, and barometer. I still scored over 600 science points. So what was the "dark discovery" that I made? That you are no longer able to stack kerbals on top of each others heads. That was an absolutely hilarious feature and Squad needs to patch it back in. Either way I gave Jeb the honor of planting my first flag on a body other than Kerbin. Gratuitious Reentry Explosions. I would like to issue a warning. These spherical pods are cheap, compact and low mass and its tempting to use them. But not only do they have no inbuilt reaction wheels but they also like to roll if you land on a slope, especially if you decouple the bottom ring section. They start rolling then they hit a polygon in the terrain and there goes the entire mission. I didn't have that happening here but I suspect I would have had a problem if I had detached that component. The only reason I used it here was because I wanted to bring all 3 of the OGs along for the ride, but this was still the most nail-biting part of the mission (mostly due to my trauma from prior missions) ...

Chapter 4: To The Rescue This launcher is OP for its size and cost. Off in space. I brought bob along to reset the mun science. Orbital Stuff. I was able to get all the way to the Mun on the center launcher stage. Remember to check yo contracts once you get in the Mun's SOI. There is some extremely lucrative stuff you can do on the same mission. Got bob and Val out. Despite the fact no landing was involved it looks like they had a blast. Reentry with the orbital stage exploding in the background. I will never not enjoy intense reentries. Splashed down safe. Munar orbit mission was very successful. Now I'm lined up to land on the Mun. Another lucrative contract, but I'm not going to do that JUST yet. I ended up building and testing this rocket, with this vaguely delta-like triple orange tank setup. This would be the second of my launcher variants. I may add seperatrons once I have them unlocked and consider it the same rocket. It doesn't really need them, it launches fine without exploding. Additionally in my experimentation and back of the envelope math, just using clusters of seven LVT-45 Swivels gives you basically the same thrust as a Mainsail. Its a few tons heavier but when your rocket is 100+ tons you don't notice the weight. But its only about half the cost in funds. I don't really need to save funds at this point. The thing is of course crossfed. I'm going to reveal whats in the fairing in just a minute... (Tho the name kind of spoils it) Deciding to follow through on my plan to name launchers after periodic table elements, this launcher was christened the Bismuth launch vehicle. Liftoff of the Bismuth-1, carrying the kerbal rescue bus. So this gameplay session was from a few days ago, and I realized I never took a good screenshot of the actual payload. But what it basically is is a core with twelve radially attached single-occupant spacecraft. These can be remotely operated with a probe core. The usage is rescue contracts, as it saves me from having to launch a new rocket for every rescued kerbal. Rescue contracts are fantastic, because they give you free astronauts and pay you to do it, all you have to do is go get them. Historically I farm them to get a large corps to staff all the stations and bases I end up building. I put this thing in a ~300km circular orbit. Good enough for getting the LKO rescue kerbals without having to orbit phase too much or spend too much DV. But it should also be good for to the higher orbit kerbals, since I wont have to dig my way out of the gravity well quite as much... I then proceeded to do at least one more rescue contract. I might not document every kerbal I rescue, so don't be surprised if new names and faces just appear on the registry.

Chapter 3: More Boosters Well, this is Kerbal SPACE Program, so maybe I should stop faffing around with planes. After much more agonizing than I am willing to admit, I decided to settle on the first of my ten launchers. Since as per the standard lifter challenge I am to use the same ascent stages over and over, I wanted to make sure the design was a winner. I ultimately went with this simple asparagus design using swivel boosters. I'm not a big fan of SRBs and the lack of control they give. The cost savings aren't worth it. But I will take full advantage of the Kerbal's ability to rig up unrealistically complex fuel crossfeed systems to make efficient rockets. This launcher is actually a bit overengineered for the spacecraft as I discovered I'm putting on it now, but I want flexibility in my launchers. The launcher is only ~21,000 kerbucks, and especially as I unlock more expensive science and communications parts that will be more than enough to orbit any probe or satellite and not even be the lion's share of the cost. As for naming. I wanted to reference the Mercury program. Mercury is a planet, but not one that exists in the kerbol system. But Mercury is an element, a metal that is liquid at room temperature. So logically following that weird train of thought I decided to name my rocket after another metal that is liquid at room temperature. So my launcher got christened the Gallium. I figure I can probably not only fufill my promise of not naming everything "boom bucket", but establish a naming scheme using the periodic table. Additionally, this isn't clearly defined in the challenge thread, but for the sake of my own sanity I will simply assume any engines on the first stage count towards the challenge. I am free to modify the upper stages and payload spacecraft. Gallium 1 Liftoff. I had to focus on flying the rocket as this spacecraft seemed a bit unstable. I brought Bob along to do space science stuff. Orbit Typically once you get into space, you get a contract to return from orbit. Some players might miss it, because they bring their spacecraft back before checking the mission control for new contracts. But in the early game, its a good way to earn a lot of extra cash. This time the contract was slightly different though, as it also asked that I rendezvous and exchange crew between vessels. I took it anyways, figuring that an in-orbit crew exchange would happen sooner or later. Bill and bob went to a higher orbit to do high space science. Reentry Jeb and Bob. They look happy to have survived their first jaunt into space. I haven't told them they have to walk home yet. Now then. I didn't want to have to launch two spacecraft just to get the small payout for an in-orbit crew transfer. Luckily a rescue contract came to my rescue and I was about 99% certain that transferring the kerbal would fulfill the transfer requirement (it did). Rescue contracts are some of the best ones, because you get free astronauts out of the deal. Regardless, modified the upper spacecraft. Jeb and Bob's jaunt in orbit earned another 300 science and as I continue to fill out the tech tree I unlocked the Gemini capsule. I know the thing has some other name in the game, but its the recreation of the Gemini capsule so that's what I think of it as. I don't think i've ever even used this thing, and its a nicely modeled part. It seemed fitting for this first rendezvous mission (and actually has built in reaction wheels, unlike the spherical pods.) Guess who completely forgot about upgrading the tracking station. Luckily i was able to set Leah's pod as a target and just preform the rendezvous with brute force. Leah safely onboard. It did fulfil both contracts as I had hoped. This thing was hilariously overengineered. It had a whole upper stage that I didn't even use. Leah: "My Hero" Jeb: *Puts on Sunglasses and walks away

Oh by the way, thank you for following this thread. . I see by your profile picture, you are also an appreciator of the best Disney movie ever made.

Chapter 2: If I had a million kerbucks... Well i'm back. Anyways normally in any other playthrough, I would try to get into orbit or go to the moon now. I've done it before with only the tier 1 space center buildings and no patched conics, though it's hard to do. I actually think I'd like to try something less ambitious (maybe more ambitious, depending upon how you look at it) and try to get some upgrades done on the KSC. All I have is the tier 2 runway and tier 2 astronaut complex, so I could get EVA reports while faffing around with planes. And for that we need money. The upgraded research center is 451,000 The upgraded VAB is 225,000 The upgraded tracking station is 150,000 The upgraded mission control is 75,000 The upgraded launchpad is 50,000 We only have about a quarter million funds. We need almost a million. (951,000 + a cushion for craft) So lets see what contracts are available... These survey contracts pay quite well, and if you have a decent plane you can complete them on huge profits. some of the contracts require you to be above a certian altitude (typically 16-19km). That is far too high for the Condor 4 to reach, it can only get to about 12km. Took two more doable contracts. I didn't realize until after I accepted it that it was a quarter way around the planet. Though throughout playing this morning I got remarkably good at the niche skillset of leaving a plane flying on x4 warp while I get up and do other things. The condor 4 has the range to get just about everywhere on the planet but it is not particularly fast. "Another Happy Landing" Third contract. Took Jeb with me this time, the locations were clustered up by the north pole. Jeb has already flown to the north pole once... Actually managed to set down a Condor intact and get science data. Interestingly, Kerbin has 3 distinct polar biomes and I did not know that until. There's the northern ice shelf, southern ice shelf and just generic "ice shelf" which judging by the online map I looked at, the generic ice shelf is portions of both the north and south poles. Also just noticed Minmus photobombed this picture. I then built this abomination hooptie rover to do some science around the KSC and complete some more scientific survey contracts. The downwards facing Juno engine existed merely as an electric generator as with limited part count, no solar panels and only the smallest batteries, there isn't much I can do. Apparently this is a valid way to take a surface sample. Between the advance, individual payouts and final payout these contracts can pay over 100k kerbucks. And doing them is super easy and less time consuming than flying around in the condor. Seriously if you ever get soft-locked in career with next to no money, decline contracts until you can get one of these. Also the amount of early game science you can grind out of the space center is pretty insane. For the final condor flight of the day decided to go 3/3 Success and second successful landing. Jeb seems to have better luck than Val. Managed to grind out all the funds needed to upgrade everything I wanted to except the tracking station. I won't really need it until I start flying munar missions. But I want to keep in line with the contract progression so just doing an orbit first will satisfy that. Since I want to follow through on that launcher challenge, being in this position means I can begin to prototype rockets that I could use for a good long time. The 300 science from around KSC plus scraps from contracts and landing in various biomes around kerbin means I'm quite high tech for someone who hasn't even left the atmosphere yet. I should be able to post the tech tree soon. If I have more time to play tonight I will begin launcher development and post on that.

So... I'm flying some missions for chapter 2 right now and I remembered seeing this challenge when I first wanted to do a fresh KSP playthrough. It seems pretty barebones more of a concept or roleplay type thing than anything else. But I think I'm actually going to try and pursue using a set of standard launch vehicles once I go to space. I'm not going to count the boom buckets twoards the total because those kind of had to be built out of necessity... Plus my old wheel challenge I never got around to. So this is at least two objectives that I will be working twoards.

Chapter 1: Playing With Planes Don't ask me why we started with chapter 0. Regardless, I've never played around too much with planes in this game. For all the maniac hours i've put into it, I've mostly built rockets. It might just be that I'm inexperienced, but it seems like planes are hard. I created four designs (Condor 1, Condor 2, Condor 3, Condor 4). The general review was as follows: Condor 1: Probably the best design. Didn't really have any flaws besides randomly exploding when I tried to land it. Condor 2: Exploded if I so much as sneezed in its general direction. Condor 3: Liked to wobble off its wheel base when taking off. I put parachutes on it to help me land at remote locations. Condor 4: Similar design to Condor 1, but with retractable landing gears. This seemed the best at landing without exploding, but I still crashed it several times. I also found out way too late that the hatch was obstructed by a wing. Regardless these survey contracts seem to actually pay decently well considering most of the markers spawn very close to KSC. Took jeb in the Condor 1 to visit the island airbase and the old school parts. This is the only image of the Condor 2. No matter how hard I tried to gently land this thing, It would explode, it was made out of tissue paper and dynamite. I had ambitious plans of exploring kerbin biomes by bringing bob along to reset science experiments as we went. Didn't pan out. I also got jeb to the top of the steep mountain. (I forget what the community here calls it, 2K i think). There were several harrowing failed attempts. After Jeb was ready for a break from my antics, I took Valentina on a long-distance flight. Buzzed one of the comm network dishes on the way (this screenie isn't the best tho, I dont know what that turquoise triangle is...) Valentina was on a mission to visit the northern launch site. I've never been here but this pad actually has a pretty cool model and a working ladder. Val and the Condor 3 I sent her in. Val also flew to the south pole. I discovered that the Kraken lives yet as kerbals love to stand sideways right at the pole. "Any touchdown you walk away from is a landing" -Jeb This was a Condor 4. This seemed to fly and land the best of all my plane designs. I still managed to crash this one though. Jeb arrives at the north pole, confirms santa claus isn't real and that he isn't getting a 3.75m command pod. I also took this contract. This actually pays out pretty well considering I already have working airplane designs and that this is still the early-game. Easy peasy with a condor 4. There was also the flight of the boom bucket 4, to test some parts. Success on that part.

I'm not sure which direction I'm going to go with this. But the basic plan is just to document my playthrough that I'm starting up. This might be a bit 'boring', as its going to be an unmodded playthrough on normal career difficulty. I know I plan to divide it into "chapters" and set some custom goals. Some months ago I took a random challenge for a single launch to Dres mission. I might try to weave other challenge missions into this career playthrough if I can. This is really more for me than anyone else. I've heard that journaling your progress will help to stop you from losing interest in your saves, and that is a frequent problem I have here. I was planning to do a full playthrough and land on every planet grand tour etc etc before KSP2 came out, but that didn't pan out. The save actually wound up getting corrupted (probably due to one of the mods I was running) Anyways I think we all know how this starts... Chapter 0: Boom Buckets Regardless I jokingly called my first rocket the "boom bucket". Things might have more cool and serious sounding names down the line. This got me 30 science. Enough to unlock the thermometer, barometer and liquid fuel tanks. I took two more contracts, one to test the parachute and another to test the swivel on the launchpad. I'm thinking I'd like to try exploring kerbin with planes once I can. Usually I go straight to space. Boom Bucket 2 flew over to the grasslands. Took a few EVA reports from around the KSC so I could unlock the materials bay and really get science production going. The Boom Bucket 3 flew twice. With the better science returns from the materials bay I was able to get the aviation node in the check tree. On the second flight I managed to land with the upper liquid fuel stage on the grasslands. There we go. Hopefully I can scrounge together a half-decent plane with the pretty basic tech in the next chapter.

Depending upon how far away you were when you decoupled and how much time you had before kerbin aerocapture, could have gotten out and pushed with the EVA pack. Theres probably a lot of "normal" scumminess on my part. Reverting after a probe loses power or kraken attacks. Using timewarp to stop a ship from spinning. Ill skip right to the things I'm probably in the minority of. I exploit lab modules for science in career mode. A lot. I've never been to Moho, Jool, any of its moons, or Eeloo despite having played this game for over a decade. I still regularly install the outer planets mod.

Successfully set up a mun base. Was testing for an upcoming Dres mission.

Nope I've had that problem too. A great first sub for this challenge BTW thanks. Saw your imgur album a simple but elegant solution.

Single Tank To Orbit Challenge: The Goal: For purposes that should not be disclosed, Jebediah needs fuel. A lot of it. He pointed to the biggest bloody fuel tank on the market and said "That one. I need it in orbit." But he's on a budget and wants the task completed by the lowest bidder. Get one fully filled S4-512 fuel tank into low kerbin orbit for the lowest amount of funds possible. The S4-512 has 28160 units of oxidizer and 23040 units of liquid fuel, and weighs 288 tons. If you do not have Making History DLC or simply wish to build in a different configuration you can use other tanks. (3 Kerbodyne S3-14400's, 1 Kerbodyne S3-3600, 1 Kerbodyne ADTP-2-3 and 1 Rockomax X200-16 will bring you to within about 0.3% the amount of fuel and mass.) The cost in funds of these tanks is actually less than a single S4-512. For that reason the cost of the payload whatever it is will be subtracted from the scoring. You can use any configuration of tanks you want actually as long as the required amount of LF/OX arrives in orbit. But in the spirit of the challenge a few large tanks would be ideal. Category 1: This is for the cheapest spacecraft to put on the launchpad, or non-reusable launchers. The total vessel cost minus the cost of the payload. vyznev: 391,432 (first entry) Category 2: This is for the lowest cost after vessel recovery. For SSTOs or recoverable boosters. The total cost of the vessel minus the cost of the payload and any recovered parts. [Leaderboard to go here] Rules: -No ISRU. No mining the launchpad or sending the tanks up empty and filling them at minmus. -Single launch. -No modded parts. Stock and DLC only. -No clang drives. -No cheat window. -The cost of the fuel payload is only for the tanks and fuel themselves and is subtracted from the final cost of the rocket or spaceplane. Any attached probe cores, fuel tanks that are used by the ascent stage or other such items that are delivered into orbit or not part of the payload are not subtracted from the cost. Documentation: I'll do this mostly on the honor system. One screenshot of the fully assembled craft in the VAB. Any major staging events or milestones in the ascent profile. And a screenshot with the payload in orbit with the resources tab visible. Make sure you know the cost of the fuel payload so you can subtract it from the cost of the launcher. Videos are fine too.

Spend 4 hours designing mission in career mode. Lots of docking and whatnot. Begin interplanetary transfer. Come up 300ms short in DV department Try to quickload from pre launch, quicksave instead.

In sort of a repeat of yesterday I went out for another asteroid. Though this time it was a contract as I was looking to earn more funds, and I needed to get a C-class asteroid which is much heavier. I decided to experiment with a reusable LV. A good use for the expensive Vector engines. There were several iterations of this craft, most of which exploded in a rather satisfying way. First I tried rearranging some parts as it was getting krakened. Dialing down the Vector's... vector ultimately seemed to be what fixed it. I love the Vector Engine's blue and purple thrust plume. The LV was a dumb, simple design that doesnt take a lot of extra design work or gameplay time and tedium. A big booster with chutes designed to get the craft sub orbital. Its upper stage has copious amounts of delta-V with the wolfhounds. The booster then drops back onto Kerbin and lands with chutes for reuse. It got the craft sub-orbital barely slowed down in time before the chutes deployed, and still hit the water at ~10m/sec. I lost the big tanks but managed to recover the pricey vectors. I could have reverted the design and remade it with plane fuselages or more chutes but decided that was good enough for now. I'll revise the design later. Its a good concept for launching big things in career mode that needs refining. Found a C-Class roid going through Kerbins SOI. With much orbit finagling I managed to get an intercept. The upper stage of this craft had copious amounts of DV (~3.5kms) Got her. She was actually on the extreme low end of mass for C-class asteroids, like 46 tons or something IIRC. Good thing considering the discovery I made. The asteroid was docked with this little claw tug between it and the ship. I was thinking I might want to do something else with it in the future, perhaps build a station onto it. But it wobbled like crazy at anything above bare minimum thrust. I tried playing with the COM, turning on and off reaction wheels and nothing seemed to help. Luckily I was way out in kerbins SOI and I could take my time with engine burns. Success though. Walked away at least 500k funds richer. I rolled on KSPnerds random challenge so I will be going to Dres next.

Spin my wheel. Difficult challenge, completely stock gameplay and I'll do it in my career save.

In the past week or so I came back to playing this game having not played it for... Id estimate about five years. I started up a new career save (lots of shiny new things to play with and the game runs smooth as butter on my new powerful gaming pc. I look forward to seeing how far I can take it...) Anyways found an A-class asteroid had somehow gotten into a wacko polar orbit of Kerbin and decided to capture it and bring it to my munar space station. I remember this happening a few times when i played back in the day, usually the Mun or Minmus would sling it into kerbin orbit, but this polar orbit didn't seem to have any way of touching either satellite's SOI I don't need it for the ore. Anyways from a gameplay perspective this was a pure vanity project. It wont provide a ton of science or complete a contract. I just wanted to do it. The crazy eccentric polar orbit thankfully made it very easy to adjust into an equatorial orbit and get a mun capture. Though it took a long time. The craft I used had almost 3kms on the upper stage (Thanks, Wolfhound engine. I will not be abusing your absurd vacuum ISP at all...) Docked up to the Munar kitbash station.

Dres labeled 'Boring'. Who drew this?

The day of reckoning has come. I was finally ready to send off my Mun base. I had a nice site picked out; there was both metal and fuel ore, with the only real hurdle being that the highest concentration of both was within the Mun canyon. But before I could even get to launching I had to resolve some technical troubles on my desktop. These troubles... did not get resolved, so I resolved to move the save to my macbook, and the little mac hamster in my computer had to run on his wheel as fast as he could to keep my heavily modded ksp running. But it did. (Thank goodness for performance improvements.) Then I ran into a number of troubles with the actual landing of the base on the planet. The my first attempt was widly unstable and exploded about 30km above the space center. The second attempt came up about 70m/s short on the Delta-V budget and the result can be seen below. Once we got Mortimer Kerman to stop hyperventilating, I made a third attempt at launching the base and finally landed but was a little off target. Allow me to reiterate that this base is meant to be in the bottom of the mun canyon.. Once all the modules were safely and securely in the bottom of the canyon, I docked them together and looked for a nice flat spot... All set up. Everything that launches from here is gonna get to do a death star trench run on the way out for added coolness. Time to start banging out upgrade modules... Once crew were are board. (shuttled in separately on an overbuilt lander for safety reasons ) I started scrapping some of the original modules and building new ones. Without KIS being updated for 1.2, I can't place survey stakes, so I was forced to get a little creative with launchpads and how I deployed base modules. Though the base as it is now looks pretty darn cool... Thankfully I can now build for free and tomorrows plans will be: -Better life support for this base. -Unlimited relays and rescue missions. (Rescues in orbit around the Mun just got a lot more appealing.) Plus this base is the most comm-blackout place in the universe considering it is never facing kerbin. -Science modules.

Cute lil rocket you got there...

Mostly busywork in my career, and technical troubles with my computer and my mods. My computer's been silent ever since I moved it upstairs. I've been having some problems with my mods. Nothing I can't handle, but problems nonetheless. Today it was contract packs that caused me greif. I attempted a contract for a relay satellite that I failed and was penalized 960k funds the moment I loaded my craft onto the launchpad. One SFE later I was back on track. I then moved some tourists to and fro my space hotel with my 10 kerb 'spam cans'. I don't have screenies but picture four mk1 crew cabins between a 2.5m heatsheild and a mk2 lander can. Just under 50k funds a pop and can reach my space hotel in a 400km orbit. I have USILS running on this career so I'd like to get them home from the hotel before they chew though the small supply of food I have there. But the "return" contracts seem to be having problems calling the names of kerbals that are on the hotel, and are instead generating new Kerbs. I tried recovering them straight from the LP, and I tried sending them up to the hotel and then recovering them. Don't know what's going on there, but I forsee another SFE just to clear out my AC roster. Also due to my terrible planning and understanding of how to go interplanetary, My moho orbiter shot by at 4km/sec, and with only 1.6km/sec in the orbiter, it was a pretty brief flyby. On the bright side, I'm finally in a position to put up my EPL base on the far side of the moon. In my seed that East-West canyon on the far side is ripe with both MetalOre and regular old Ore, meaning I can build and fuel up spacecraft with minimal worries about going crazy flying fueling/mining missions. My space program seems to be perpetually broke so perhaps once I have a self-sustaining base in where I can build modules for 'free', I'll start turning a profit. Launching from an airless moon with only about 600m/s to orbit will have its benefits too...

I'd go engineer, but I think I embody a bit of all of these.. To me building my own lineup of spacecraft, each with its own purpose and specifications is what makes the game fun. I tend to make a lot of spacecraft with different iterations, changing fuel tank sizes and payloads on the same basic rocket. In my current career I have 4 slightly orbiters built around a Lithobreak 4k command pod. I also LOOOOOVVVEEE building stations and bases. I tend to try to avoid explosions and crashing and ensure that my spacecraft are reasonably safe. Probably a product of me playing a lot of career mode with quick-loading reserved only for when game-breaking bugs strike or. Can't say I don't enjoy booting up sandbox when I need to check if an idea that seems really stupid will actually work. I have very little knowledge of real-world spaceflight outside of KSP and a few of those 'What KSP doesn't teach' videos that Scott Manely has done. (Good vids btw). Most of what I know about space actually comes from playing this game. My efforts to optimize spacecraft and maneuvers are often pretty rudimentary. (Direct transferred to Moho yesterday, >2km/s.) That isn't to say I don't try with KER and and a DV chart, since I generally fly the same spacecraft on a lot of missions. As for being a flight director. I think I'm this the least out of all of them. I was a part of A DMP server for about 24 hours and I will admit building space stations with other players is a blast, the constant lag and being unable to choose my own suite of mods was kind of a turn off. The server was sadly closed, and I wish I still had the option to play. I did host the Minmus Tower Challenge though...

Well I decided to explore kerbin for anomalies on my hardcore career mode. I apparently left scansat window open a little too long and while I wasn't there to monitor my plane, Mirbeth K. gleefully flew into the side of a mountain.

*godzilla noise*

The "Place a relay satellite with lots of dishes in orbit around Kerbin" contract fails as soon as I load a vessel on the launchpad or in orbit.