captainb

With 6 days remaining before the Jool transfer window, and all crews returned from Minmus, it's time to begin launching mission hardware to LKO. The Trinidad Core stage is first to go up. It's the most expensive vehicle I've launched to date, costing 429,000 funds. Some of those funds can be refunded if the core booster can land back close to the KSC, but for now all eyes are focused on the launch of the Trinidad core stage which will be home to 4 Kerbonauts for several years. Fortunately, the launch is a resounding success as the Trinidad is placed into a nearly circular 120 km equatorial orbit! She now awaits the arrival of 2 sets of saddle tanks to complete the vehicle.

Do the engine plumes look like that out of the box or do you need Real Plume?

I'm going to be recording some gameplay videos of my career save and would like to incorporate some cinematic shots during launch with the HUD (navball, stage indicator etc.) hidden. Off the top of my head I can think of 2 solutions, neither of which are acceptable to me. Option 1: MechJeb. - I could setup MJ and have it fly the launches to the desired orbit on autopilot and focus on recording the gameplay sans HUD. However, I've never had MJ installed and want to fly my missions manually. Option 2: Separate Takes - By this I mean I would first record the launch footage on a 'dummy' launch without the HUD not caring if I ended up in the right orbit, then revert the flight and fly the mission 'for real' with HUD on. I could then potentially splice footage of both launches together to create something that looked believable. However this approach seems disingenuous to me and I would like to avoid doing it. Are there other ways of going about this besides these above options? If so, do I need additional video/camera mods or other software? I know I have seen videos of launches without the HUD active (ie shuttle recreations, cupcake lander) but I can't find any atm and don't know if any are for missions where the outcome mattered. TL;DR Is there a way to fly a 'real mission' to a 100km orbit without having the HUD show up in the video footage? Thanks for the feedback guys. In the end I wasn't confident enough in my piloting skills to fly w/o the HUD as my launch vehicle has a nasty tendency to flip out and RUD if the nose gets too far from prograde. I ended up just recording with the HUD on and used the Hullcam VDS Continued mod to get some cool camera angles. If you're interested you can find the video in my mission report here.

Its making me nervous just looking at the steep slopes in your screenshots!

I guess just something to keep in mind for later then

I'll be the first to admit I know nothing about mod development but, why would you reinvent the wheel when it's already been done before? If you were going to have a try at incorporating this feature, @cybutek already has already done it for KER, perhaps he would be willing to share parts of his code or give you some pointers?

Its been awhile since my last post, but I've finally gotten around to unlocking enough of the tech tree for the Trinidad and daughter vehicles! This means this post is the final installment of career progress before I get on to the actual Magellan Mission. You know the good stuff. So humor me for one final installment and then we will get on to the main attraction. In this installment of Career Progress (Part 3): The veteran crews active on missions at Minmus and the Mun are recalled to Kerbin in preparation for crew selection for the upcoming Jool transfer window. Since none of these vehicles are re-entry capable, the assorted vehicles are docked to Kepler Station which is in a 300 km Kerbin equatorial orbit. A Crew Recovery System (CRS) is devised last minute by KSC engineers that will carry 7 kerbals through re-entry to land back at Kerbin. The CRS is sent to the station to await Jeb, Val and two of the more experienced scientists en route from Minmus. Meanwhile the rookie kerbonauts rescued from Minmus orbit are taking the scenic route back to Kerbin with a load of Minmus science data. They stop off to orbit the Mun as a training exercise to advance their skills to lvl 2 before splashing down at Kerbin in dramatic fashion. http://imgur.com/a/XyOEt

Ship design looks sharp with the LH2 gold foil tanks and the tripple nuke engines, very Constellation-esque! Regarding radiation accumulation, could swap Jeb for Val halfway to Duna to keep individual rad exposure down?

Are the crew capsules from NFT? Also, have you tested the rovers extensively in Duna analog environment? Looks like they could be prone to tipping.

I have Konstruction on the list. I don't know what AYBABTU means.

I am considering starting a colonization/base-building save. This would be a new game folder with its own mods starting with the full tech-tree unlocked but a limited amount of funds too keep things interesting. The objective would be to established manned bases with 10+ Kerbals on each of the land-able bodies in the stock Kerbol system. Core mods would be: for the base modules, for constructing bases on-site, and most likely or similar for roving around once at the base. I would also use KAS/KIS and some form of life support mod. I'm debating between Kerbalism and TAC-LS. Kerbalism sounds cool because it has resource use in background, and minimum housing space/comfort requirements, but I'm nervous because a lot of things seem to break when using it from what I've heard. TAC-LS would be a simpler system and not as likely to break other things but wouldn't be as realistic from a living space perspective. So now to the questions: Has anyone tried something similar, and if so, how did it turn out? Does Kerbalism play nice with Kerbal Planetary Base Systems and long-term surface habitation? Is using life-support do-able with multiple colonies with or without in-situ life-support production? Am I insane for wanting to try this?

Because the Saturn V doesn't exist any more. None of the tooling, skilled tradesmen, insider knowledge exists any longer. Building a Saturn V today would cost the same or more than building the SLS is costing. And you'd be stuck with an ancient, decrepit, and heavy computer system actually the whole rocket.

Amazing. I wonder how many of those shots are false color/color enhanced? Or are parts of mars really blue?

as do I

@zanie420 I really like your SSTO spaceplanes. I've never made an SSTO spaceplane w/o using rapiers.

How are you getting the ring and hangar structures to form a closed loop? Also, what is the part count?

I prefer to fly casual myself

Your crewed lander looks like a wedding cake.

Is there a way to set the length of time spark sounds and effects are occurring? I'd like to have them fade out sooner as they seem to persist long after the collision is over. I looked in the settings and MMconfig file but didn't see anything relevant.

I'm now getting much closer to unlocking the remaining tech tree nodes required for the Magellan vehicle architecture. Halgun's driving has calmed down enough to reach the Midlands without further incident after about a 17km drive up from Tosche Station. Now they just need to make it back. In addition, a solar relay sat was launched to lead Kerbin in its orbit. This is 1 of 2 identical sats planned to give better comms coverage to interplanetary missions such as Magellan, when they are far from Kerbin. Lastly, Gilbart and the Asteroid Prospector successfully captured Rocky into Kerbin orbit. However, the orbit is far from ideal, since the asteroid began spinning wildly after the thrust vector was found to be mis-aligned from the asteroid CoM. Further efforts to refine the orbit were largely unsuccessful. For now the plan is to do a Mun flyby and then leave Rocky behind until a better asteroid maneuvering vehicle can be developed.

Good to know. I haven't bothered with the command prompt version yet, but I bet there's a version for the GUI as well. Does it work well? No confusion between different installs?

Is there a way to manage mods for multiple installs separately?

I got a little bored with testing, so I thought I'd share some progress from my career save. I still need 3250 science points to unlock the remaining nodes on the tech tree which will be needed for the Magellan mission. Minmus will provide the brunt of the science haul. In an effort to collect data from hard-to-reach biomes, a science rover was launched to rendezvous with the Tosche station at the Minmus Lesser Flats. After an uneventful flight and landing at Tosche station, some spectacular mishaps were had when Halgun exceeded the rovers safe driving speeds - causing the rover become airborne and flip end over end. Strangely, the dash cam was turned off during the crash, but here's a recreation of the event by the scientists back at KSC Amazingly, no-one was killed during either mishap, and the rover remained functional with all science instruments intact. Halgun received a stern talking to by mission control: "Rovers are for driving, not flying!" and the rover started it's drive up to the midlands at somewhat more sane speeds. In addition, the transfer window for Moho arrived so a small probe with lander and relay sat was dispatched. It should arrive at Moho in 126 days, far too late to be any benefit to the Magellan mission. Finally, Gilbart Kerman was sent on a mission to rendezvous with a near-kerbin asteroid and test asteroid mining capabilities. The secondary mission objective is to capture the asteroid into the Kerbin SOI if enough deltaV is available.

Naw, just Powerpoint.

I've been giving some thought to how many crew I want to send on the Magellan Mission. The requirements that play into this decision are as follows: All crew must return to Kerbin at the end of the mission The crew need enough living space to be comfortable on this long duration voyage. I don't have life support mods installed but my arbitrary rule of thumb is 1 kerbal per every 2 seats Every kerbal on the mission must land on at least 1 moon The science lab should be manned by 2 scientists whenever possible while inside the Jool system Initially I had considered a crew of 3, with 2 scientists and 1 pilot. But I worry about losing full control of vessels if they go out of comms range (behind moon etc.) For this reason, I've decided the bring 4 crew composed of 2 pilots and 2 scientists. This raises an additional problem: The Trinidad has a Mk1-2 capsule which can return 3 kerbals back to Kerbin. Since Laika will be left in Laythe orbit, there will be no more reentry capable vehicles aboard the Trinidad when she returns from her grand voyage. For this reason, I've designed a crew shuttle to take crew to and from the Trinidad in LKO. Here she is: In testing I've found the Lynx to be very capable. She has good pitch authority and can maintain 25o pitch on assent. Plenty of power is generated by the 4 RAPIER engines, which reach a TWR around 4. This makes it easy to zoom-climb to an apoapsis of 40,000m before switching over to closed cycle mode. She makes orbit with about 600 m/s deltaV to spare and carries a crew compliment of 6.