MaverickSawyer

Soooo... A stock take on Infernal Robotics, then? I'd be down for that. A rotator plate, a hinge, and a piston (in a few sizes) would probably be all we really need. It would open up a lot of new designs and missions. Stock Canadarms, folding rovers... Hmm.

Yeah, and SQUAD put in a memorial for Neil Armstrong after he died. Having some new Easter Eggs related to spaceflight wouldn't be unwelcome. Now, not saying that every mission that's landed on another planet should get one, but some notable missions should be honored. Opportunity certainly counts in my book. Thanks.

It's just a turbojet engine that takes in liquid and outputs supercritical fluid. Pretty straightforward operational theory, at least. *shrugs* Practical application of said theory, though...

But, the update that it comes with might, if there are significant under the hood changes.

Hmm... Seeing a new RTG, surface mount radiator, truss sections, and possibly new probe cores.

Okay, given the recent posting from KSP Loading... I'm going to revise my prediction. It's a launch site on the Munar surface. Console players are confirmed to be getting it in their next update with their equivalent of Making History.

I've got a Delta II 7920 and an Atlas V 53x (no upper stage) for you guys... Delta II - Needs Smart Parts to control the staging of the boosters, the extra launch clamps from the "Extras" folder in BDB, (fixed that), and TweakScale (for the Smart Parts staging controllers) Atlas V - Should be plug and play. I'll start cranking out some others and upload those as well. I'll update this post as they become available.

Good points. I'd forgotten about Odyssey and Hubble. Now THAT'S one that will unleash a flood of tears when it falls silent...

You can set the docking ports to not allow crossfeed, or you can simply use the flow priority tool in the context menu to put it lower on the priority list for the engines to draw from.

I know that "every gram counts" in spaceflight, but I can't understand why you would willing opt to NOT be at least dual redundant on spaceflight hardware, especially manned. Maybe it's my aviation-centric background and training, or maybe I care about safety and reliability more than costs and schedules... But I'm deeply concerned by this trend, not just at NASA, but across the industry as a whole.

Funding isn't the issue in the long run. It's a lack of courage to take any risk. NASA is flat-out, pants-fillingly terrified of another astronaut dying on a mission. The only reason they're not terrified of the ISS is because, in an emergency, the crew can evacuate the station and be on the ground in, what, under two hours? Going to the Moon, that's 3 days, minimum. They look at Apollo 13 as a case of "We dodged a MASSIVE bullet there" instead of "Hey, they found a way to make it home safely despite the odds being heavily against them".

Heretic! Unbeliever! All joking aside, it is sad to see one of missions that truly cemented my fascination with Mars finally come to an end, especially like this. I mean... Opportunity was active for nearly half my life. I think that only the ISS, Cassini, and the Voyagers have been active missions for longer.

I guarantee that if they miss a flaw in the heat shield design, that will be even more deadly to the project. Loss of vehicle, even without crew, will put a rather abrupt end to any further attempts at NASA doing an in-house manned spacecraft.

So... They're ignoring the lessons of Challenger and Columbia all over again. They're putting schedule above safety. How hard could it possibly be to put in a dual-redundant data capture system if it's that critical to the mission and they're that worried about it failing? Or plan for all the alternate modes of data acquisition anyways, since you can cross-reference them against each other to get a better idea of what is/did happen? Better yet, put the avionics box in a spot that technicians can get to it and quickly swap it should it fail before launch. Now THERE's a novel idea.

Shouldn't be all that hard to add one at the right location, though... maybe have it do Morse code of the "final words"?

Clear skies and following (and gentle) winds, Opportunity.

Can confirm the bug with recycling has been resolved.

Uhm... How is that not exploding? Did they change the wheels recently?

Yeah, all I remembered of the UFO's location was alongside a bay, up the hill a bit. Given how the map smears stuff out up there, and the relatively small actual area, I wasn't terribly concerned with the precise location. And the temple is really close to the Desert Airstrip, so that was another "ehhh, close enough". It's more of a guideline, anyways.

Put down an hour's in-game time driving earlier... "Trees??!?" "Yes, Stigmun. Please try not to slalom through them... You know how I feel about spilling my koffee." "..." The blue line is the progress made on that leg of the trip after about 30 minutes or so... Sun's going down, so it's getting a little dicey to keep driving for now. There's no rush to complete the journey in any fixed amount of time, so nights will be spent doing other tasks, like prepping the next few modules for my LKO station, planning how to boost it to a higher orbit of 260x260 km for new MOLE science projects... stuff like that. Final position as night fell. Making respectable time.

Either way, we, the outside observers, win.

After a multi-day delay due to range safety constraints and bad weather, Stigmun and Hamlin are back on the move. Transit back across the Splashdown Straits was achieved without difficulty, and they proceeded to the KSC launchpad to pick up some more fuel. The fuel tank has been stashed aboard the rover to provide a significant increase in range, as the fuel cell is barely being used at cruise conditions during the day. So, the first refueling in the field is probably going to be a ways off. Also found out that the Buffalo Crew Cabin has a monitor inside that you can load up with any images in your screenshots folder... So I copied the preliminary route image to the folder and loaded it up on the screen. Granted, the route's now completely out of date until after I clear the Desert Airfield and the Temple, but after that... who knows? Now that that's been taken care of, the team headed out to the north, hooking around Booster Bay in an effort to avoid the mountains to the west of the KSC... There have been several discoveries along the way... "Hey... is that grass???" "Looks like it." "I want to taste it." "No, Stigmun. Let's keep going. There's a Highlands biome near here we should visit." "Spoilsport." Aaand that's where I wrapped up last night IRL. Just getting back to the rover now, so onwards we go! Next planned stop is up north, at the poles... there's a few untouched biomes up there... and the anomaly sensor picked up a spike of something up there, so Stigmun and Hamlin are both curious to see what that is.

Thanks again for all your help... I've repositioned the rig next to the base and left it alone for a while after building it... Gotta admit, it's working quite well! It's working a heck of a lot better than I'd anticipated. Shipping out the refinery parts now, so I'll see how that goes. I am using the 1.25 meter version, due to the smaller size of both the part and of the operation at present. I understand that it'll shut down after a while, as I noticed that it needs 100kW of cooling... but max core transfer is 75kW. I'm just glad I'm not expecting to do very large fuel loads right now.

Launched my first mission to Jool in, well, I think ever. At least my first serious one, instead of enabling unlimited fuel and running a Vector and a fuel tank until I was at a fairly ludicrous speed (to Jool in a month!). This one's built around Probes Plus and Bluedog Design Bureau... Launch of the Jool Explorer atop an Atlas V 502G... Ejection burn for Jool. Kerbin and the Mun from 63 Mm above Kerbin... Minmus, captured a few minutes later... Our destination... Jool. The above images were captured using the camera aboard the Jool Explorer... The camera is one of 19 (!) experiments packed aboard the craft, not counting the ones aboard the Laythe probe... The plan is to do a slingshot around Jool towards Laythe, drop the lander on a descent course, and divert the orbiter so that it skims past Laythe and uses the moon to capture into a highly elliptical orbit around Jool. That'll shave off something like 450 m/s dV needed to prevent the orbiter from slingshotting into the black, allowing me to run further flybys in the future with that extra fuel. That 450 m/s is around 15% of the entire fuel load, btw... so with a little luck, that's going to turn into a LOT more passes. Cruise phase is currently the name of the game, as it'll take the whole package the better part of two Kerbin years to make it to Jool... I also checked back in on my Minmus Outpost's mining rig after the new, full-size crew arrived... That's a lot better than I'd expected! I've launched a refinery package to the base to start making use of that ore, but that's... (looks at Kerbal Alarm Clock window) nearly 8 days to go still. I think I may have a full load of ore waiting for me at the base when the refinery arrives. So... do I design the fuel shuttle to carry monoprop up to the orbiting station to fuel the lander that I have there, or do I simply make a transfer pod to go between the two facilities? Decisions, decisions...

Huh. Saw that video and downloaded the pack... Lander looks excellent and all, but... Holy. Cow. Seriously overpowered. I mean, the lander has over 2.7 km/s dV on its own. The antennas ALL work from Eeloo. and the cruise stage engine has a vacuum Isp of 600 SECONDS. I've been tinkering with different edits to the config files to correct these, if you're interested in a balancing pass, @kunedo...