MaverickSawyer

Financial micromanagement in aviation, such as in a corporate flight department, is a nightmare to be avoided whenever possible. There's a reason why most such operations are their own companies that simply bill the "parent" company for everything... keeps the shareholders from "helping" with the finances. I can imagine all too well just how much of a nightmare NASA can get to be with the Congresscritters sticking their fingers into the pie.

Following up on yesterday's arrival at Gilly, mapping of the smallest celestial body in KSP was completed. Total biome count: 3. Time to science! I directed Solaris 2 into a descent towards the surface, aiming for a highlands biome. Courtesy of the ridiculously low gravity, even the slightest nudge of the throttle with my low-tier ion engine resulted in TWRs of 2:1 or better. That meant that I could safely land with the solar panels retracted, to avoid any chance of breaking them, and still have enough electrical power to make a clean launch back to safer altitudes before deploying the panels again. Following the successful landing and science session in the highlands, I made a quick jaunt over to the nearby Midlands biome... And the Lowlands Biome as well, gathering science galore. Following this, Solaris 2 was directed into what was supposed to be a high-altitude orbit to loiter until the next window from Kerbin to Eve, where it would act as a communications relay. However, I overestimated the size of Gilly's SoI, and was instead launched into an escape orbit. I opted to not burn any fuel just yet, as the orbit would carry Solaris 2 back into Gilly's SoI in half an orbit around Eve, and then recaptured. Capture burn was a meager 2.2 m/s. Pro tip for you younger players: Time is cheap. dV is not. Other missions and developments: -Solaris 3 was finalized and sent on its way to Moho. -All but two of my Duna campaign missions have finished their midcourse correction burns. The primary flotilla will be arriving over a 21-day window, with only two rather close arrivals, which even then are an hour apart. I can easily handle that. -Launched a crew rotation for my Outpost on Minmus. -Another round of experiments collected and returned from Minmus Station. I'll be able to lower it to a near Minmus orbit here soon... which means even more science! -Speaking of the station, I added a compact nuclear reactor (more of a overpowered RTG to be honest...) to the aft end for additional power during dark periods in the orbit... Standoff spar installation Completed reactor assembly And finally, I designed a mini-shuttle that seats six, as well as a booster that can (hopefully) deploy it. Nearly a third of the part count is just in fins at the business end to keep it flying straight. But, should that not be enough, there's a potent LES/OMS system that did get tested, along with testing the ability of the shuttle to land safely. That part passed with flying colors at Max Q, so I'm comfortable with proceeding to an all-up test. LES test flight Sadly, my game crashed after I reverted to the VAB following the abort test, so I haven't tested it all the way to orbit yet. I'll have to add a docking adapter to my LKO station to accept this thing, too... Hmm. Back to KSP! EDIT: Turns out, it flies great! More pics of the ascent in the spoiler box below... An inspection of the TPS and OMS engines was performed by the flight/test engineer... It seems he's pleased with the results. And, a quick sneak peek into what the station's scientists are up to... The break from the monotony was much welcomed.

I knew about the frame of reference shift for the widgets (pro tip: press "f" to toggle between them), but the debug window trick is a new one.

@Celthon no, that's using SSPXr, if I'm not mistaken.

That's just it: We don't know how safe a pregnancy is offworld. It's a huge gamble with the life of both mother and child.

Aaaaah, okay. Though... I suppose that it wouldn't be all that hard to package a small drill and some sample pieces on a resupply flight. Just make sure that you run a vacuum cleaner nearby to catch the chips!

Yeah, knew that, but... the hole in question is no longer on the station. How are they going to do further investigation?

Uhm... didn't that particular Soyuz already return?

Daily update time! Completed the mapping of Eve in ~2 Eve sols. Transferred Solaris 2 to Gilly, which was a heck on an endeavour, as I was in a polar orbit, and performed several apoapsis raising burns before making a phasing burn to sync up with Gilly. One small MCCB later, and I had an encounter... at over a km/s relative to Gilly. Total encounter window: 8 minutes and some seconds. The burn to insert into orbit with the anemic early ion engine it runs on would take at least that long, but I figured that if I started burning a touch early, I could make the insertion with time to spare. For once, one of my massive gambles not only paid off, but hit the jackpot. I managed to get into orbit over Gilly with a touch over 1 km/s dV remaining and proceeded into a mapping orbit, and promptly found out how much of a pain it is to orbit. 9.7 m/s orbital velocity... I think Val could probably kick a football to escape velocity here! Unfortunately, I was so excited at having arrived, I completely spaced on taking screencaps. I'll grab some tomorrow from low orbit. In other mission news, I finished the second of two long-term science experiments aboard Minmus Outpost, loaded them into the return pod, and shot them home. Agena B was used to insert into orbit (needlessly, it turned out), and the pod continued to a fiery (and horribly off-target) reentry a few days later. Also, the Moho launch window is now at peak, so I have knocked together a new probe to go and visit... Solaris 3 is significantly different from its predecessors (currently en route to Duna and orbiting Gilly, respectively), and has been optimized for the uniquely hostile environment the R&D team expects to find around Moho. There's a few tweaks to be made still, such as fine tuning the launch vehicle and adding a very small solar panel for when I don't need to run the ion engine but do need power for science instruments, as, by my math, I should be getting 5 times more solar flux at Moho than I do at Kerbin. Otherwise, it's ready to fly. Preliminary simulations (read: reverted flight ) indicate that the departure stage is more than adequate, but the launcher is about 800 m/s over requirements, so that's the next big issue to tackle. Ribbon has been updated again to reflect my arrival at Gilly.

Those are some gorgeous engine pods, Raptor.

Hey, I respect that call. Better to err on the side of caution, especially at this point in time.

That's pretty respectable, especially if you have an engineer aboard the mining rig.

Yeah, in the Red Fuji I posted, most of the fuel is on the orbital module, not the Service Module. That's why I had to add the crossflow. Tbh, I've never used the VA engine.

Practical, if parts intensive and needing a slightly modified config for your 0.9375 meter inline parachute to allow fuel crossflow... doing so allows for a healthy 800+ m/s dV.

And now, for something completely different...

@Grogs they're from this ribbon generator. There's a few special bits that have a rule attached to them (the challenge wreath) but I can't recall what the rules were.

I tend to start with a large core module, then add modules to introduce new capabilities to the station. Though, my first LKO station of a save generally wind up something like this: Later stations, with the benefit of improved technology, will usually be more condensed: (Ignore the resupply craft on the left... That was for a particularly heavy run.) I tend to launch the first station part as its own design, then tinker around in the SPH (as it more represents the flight orientation of the station) to add new features and capabilities then remove the section I want to add, save it as a subassembly, then switch over to the VAB for designing the tug section and the launcher.

Nani? The NaN Speed Bug lives? Or, at least a portion of it...

China.

No, I can't use fuel lines because the ship is pictured in its on-orbit configuration. For launch, the habit is tucked behind the capsule so the LES tower can be installed.

It was a busy, and highly productive, day for me today... Returned the second of two VA-Plus capsules to the KSC... again, pinpoint accuracy, landing just outside the VAB. Tinkered with a compact orbital telescope, only to find out that the zoom on it was... lacking. Cue unimpressed face and a new telescope that, although it turns slower than Bob on a road trip (he always wants to stop for rock samples! ), it's actually pretty precise. Used it to scope out Duna, Eve, and Jool and its moons, as those are worlds I have ongoing missions to. It's up in a supersynchronous orbit, so it has a darn fine view. Said goodbye to the Minty Shuttlebug. I haven't been using it much, it's taking up the nadir port of Minmus Station, and I needed to shuffle some pods around in preparation for the expansion module I shipped out. So I sent it back down to Minmus one last time. The crew watched the impact via the telescopic camera on the ventral hull of the station. Many drink bags were raised to that tough little ship, as she will be missed. But, bigger and better things have arrived, including a greenhouse and five (!) new docking ports to support additional modules. Ran a bunch of midcourse correction burns for the Duna campaign, with both of the early launches finally getting their MCCBs completed, revealing an arrival timeframe of ~150 days. The lander will arrive a full 10 days before the orbiter, so it's a good thing it was designed to insert into orbit over Duna before attempting the landing! Ran a science return mission out to Solar space, and brought it back with a large amount of science aboard after 26 days, 2 hours, and 55 minutes on the nose: This also doubled as a stress test for the reentry vehicle design, as several other missions currently use similar or identical RVs for science return to Kerbin... RV peaked at 11.7Gs of deceleration, courtesy of a steep, high velocity entry. Oh, hey, another pretty precise landing! I'm getting pretty good at this. Well, precise-ish. Close enough for government work, imo. At least it's driving distance. And finally, a notable first for me... I made it to Eve. Solaris 2 inserted into a highly elliptical orbit around Eve, and has since made an inclination change to a polar orbit around the Purple Hellhole at apoapsis. The next step is to enter the mapping orbit and let ScanSat do its thing. After that, time to gather what biome-specific science I can from low orbit (This thing left Kerbin long before I had the gravioli detector), then it's off to Gilly for another mapping campaign... I hope. I've never been to Gilly, so I haven't the foggiest what the SoI is. Going to be a fun learning experience. Next on the list: Check in on that satellite pulling high-resolution radar maps of the Mun (It's been at it for a long time now... it should be done by now...), prep for a Dres orbiter and possible lander, and then... Not sure, tbh. I've got Eeloo, Duna, and Jool nailed down pretty well right now, and most are currently in cruise mode, with the second wave of MCCBs for Duna in about 70 days or so. Might be time to go poking around the moons in earnest. And one last semi-KSP related bit... I've now added another ribbon to the cabbage patch in my sig to celebrate my arrival at Eve.

Yep. That's what I was trying to show in the third pic... that part doesn't allow for the engine to draw directly from the tanks on the hab, regardless of the settings. Yes, I can manually transfer, but that's time intensive and is difficult to keep balanced during a burn... and with a total of eight tanks to juggle, four of which are rather small; the Dumplings are cute and look fantastic in that spot, but... not a lot of storage. It's already got a fairly high part count, due to the complicated propulsion bus (I tried to base it off of the Japanese Fuji spacecraft concept, but can't get the sizing of the fuel tanks quite right... ), not to mention the multiple RCS points due to the multi-mission nature of the design. I didn't want to have to redesign the ship between versions if I could help it. As for the radial parachutes... Hmm. Hadn't considered that angle, tbh. Might have to look into it. And monoprop... yeah, no. Monoprop is acceptable for small stuff, but this thing's already taking enough of a performance hit as it is. No need to add to the problem!

Those little ion RCS thrusters make darn fine OMS engines for lightweight orbital probes when you need precision. Like, ~2.5ms orbital period correction level precision. Unfortunately, my current MechJeb software package doesn't like to give me dV readouts for bipropellant RCS, which this technically qualifies as. So... No clue just how good of an engine this actually is.

Okay, gang, got a bit of a technical/gameplay head scratcher here... I'm making a new crew transfer vehicle that I want to be common for both low Kerbin orbit and for missions to the Mun or Minmus, simply adding a crew compartment if I'm going to be in flight for more than 18 hours. Here, have a look: Now, obviously, the dV takes a serious hit because of the presence of the habitat module, which is why I added the fuel tanks to the sides of it: More fuel gives more burn time and more dV. Case in point: By adding that fuel line, I see a nearly 5-fold increase in my fuel supply. Probably far more than adequate for just about every mission I'll be using this thing on... There's a catch, though. (This is where you guys come in.) The parachute used by the capsule is also a decoupler. Fairly straightforward and usually a good thing, as I can clear the docking port off of the parachute well in advance. It does not, however, allow fuel to flow through it. As the above image shows, I can allow fuel to bypass the decoupler attaching the propulsion module to the command module, and I'd been counting on the parachute doing the same. Buuuut, for whatever reason, it can't. So, I'm trying to come up with a solution to bypass that decoupler in flight after docking. I already tried using the KAS extensible pipes, and it... kinda summoned the Kraken. So that one's straight out. and, since it's one vessel, the KAS RTS winch and DMagic's EVA Fuel Lines won't work. I'm sure I could edit the config file to fix this, but that's... kinda cheating, in my books, and isn't exactly a challenge. I want to find an in-game solution for this. So... anyone got any bright ideas?

Ah, okay. Darn.