purpleivan

I didn't do the "in KSP" part of this today, that was 10 days or so ago, but I finally added a new "shocking revelation" to the "The Truth Can Now Be Told" thread.

It has been some time since this reporter last wrote about strange happenings taking place during this nation's exploration of the moon. This reporter's last treatise on the subject was made in the pages of one of the foremost newspapers in the nation. For reasons beyond the scope of this article, this report comes from the perhaps less auspicious pages of the Litcheville Advertiser. This paper, although of smaller readership than that of my previous employer, does provide a fine venue for the sale of used cars, promotion of bake sales, as well as numerous supermarket coupons. Since moving to the small town this newspaper bears the name of, this reporter has, with some reluctance, settled into the simple way of life, away from delights and the distractions of life in the big city. No more mid-morning martinis in downtown bars, in search of the truth behind the façade of that great metropolis. No more mid-afternoon fried clam baskets, washed down with a beer and a chaser, searching for a lead on the latest story. No more cab rides home in the early hours, after conversing over cocktails, with the great, the good and the well connected, about the city's highs, its lows and its seedy underbelly. From pages of the sole news provider of this town that I now call home, I am compelled to relate the circumstances in which I came into possession of yet more photographic evidence, of these strange happenings on the moon. It was a bright and cheerful morning in early spring, a setting at odds with the shocking events that were about to transpire. This reporter shares an office with the only other employee of this newspaper, this being the Advertising Editor. This is a man truly of his surroundings, a local man, with local tastes and local ideas. As someone who has spent most of their adult life in pursuit of the "big game" of the world of journalism, we shared little in common, other than our agreement on sauerkraut being the appropriate accompaniment to a pastrami sandwich. However, on that fateful day, we were to develop a bond, one that can only be forged in the most extreme of circumstances. On the day in question, I arrived early at this office, at 10:27am and was surprised to find my colleague already there. This reported settled down at their desk, to start the work of the day, that being to report on the many delights to be had at the upcoming town hall "mixer", but was interrupted when my colleague returned from fetching the days mail, having noticed the mailman walk past our office. As this reporter is new at the Advertiser, few envelopes arrive here addressed to them. However, on that day, one such envelope did arrive and was passed to me by my colleague. I tore the envelope open, with the speed expected of a newspaper man, eager to take sight of what may be the beginning of their next big story. On opening it, I found a number of sheets of paper, neatly typed, on what appeared to be a high-quality paper. The first of these had 3 short words, across the center of the page. "OPEN THE DOOR". This reporter was confused by what was meant by this cryptic message and the use of all upper-case letters. The use of upper case suggested some importance or urgency in the "opening of a door". Was it urging me to continue pushing forward in my journalistic endeavors, if so, which one. Was it referring to some door of consequence from my past, perhaps the grand doors at the entrance to my previous employer's offices. If so, those doors were now firmly closed to me. I mulled over the meaning of these words, trying to pull some kind of meaning from them, before being again interrupted by my colleague. "I think someone's at the door" he said. Which was strange, as it was a rare event at this small-town newspaper. However, I could not let this potential lead to the meaning of those three words go unfollowed, so I stepped across the room and opened the door to the small lobby area of the office. I looked through the doorway but saw no-one there, however, a sound caught my ear, lower to the ground than my current gaze allowed to see. Looking down this reporter noticed that we had a visitor. This visitor was in the form of a small dog, with what appeared to be a think cardboard tube in its mouth. This little scamp sitting there seemed familiar to me. Possibly I had seen it around the office before, but cannot be certain of that. But, no matter, the door was open, and the dog was there. Between the dog's teeth, the cardboard tube, with paper covering each end, secured with rubber bands, appeared to be approximately one and one quarter inches in diameter and approximately 8 to 10 inches in length. A tube of that size may not at first glance appear to be of great importance, but my instincts, honed over many years in the journalistic trade, told me that it may contain something, possibly something of great importance. In an effort to obtain possession of the tube from the dog, this reporter reached down towards it and grasped one end. It was at that moment that this dog, possibly someone's innocent little pet, revealed its brutal animal instincts, in the form of growl. This reporter thought momentarily of releasing their grip on the tube, but that would have been the action of a coward and not that of a seasoned newspaperman. With that in mind, the two of us wrestled over possession of the tube for what must have been a full 30 seconds, before I released my grip on the tube, to consider my tactics. Although the dog in question, was small, it is well known that these are the most dangerous ones. I believe its type is known as a "terrier", what more appropriate a name could be given to the slavering beast that sat before me, teeth gripped around that tube. A true terror of the animal kingdom. However, this reporter, no stranger to danger, was determined to risk everything, even life itself, in an effort to secure what might be vital information, relating to a potential story, so decided that I must once again wrestle with the beast. However, before that battle could ensue once again, this reporter heard the shout of the word "drop" from their colleague, not once, but twice. At this word, the dog loosened its grip on the cardboard tube, resulting in it dropping to the floor. How it came to respond in such a way to a stranger's voice is a mystery. Possibly it was some form of conditioning, or "mind control" if you will, of the canine variety, which caused it to respond with trained actions to specific human words. With the tube no longer grasped between the beast's teeth, this reporter lunged forward and grabbed it from the floor, before slamming the door shut. There was no telling what the animal had been conditioned to do if it lost possession of the object. So, this reporter could afford to take no risks in their efforts to secure the tube, its potentially priceless contents and the safety of this reporter's fingers. With the tube finally in my possession, this reporter returned to their desk, pulled a rubber band from one end of the tube and pulled out its contents. That tube's contents, a photograph, along with the contents of the other sheets of paper, delivered in the envelope, were of a kind familiar to this reporter. It was the latest evidence, provided by an anonymous source, of shocking encounters on the moon, during this nation's missions to explore its surface. These are provided to you now, the reader, to make your own assessment to their significance. Additionally, in this, the year of 1973, with our space agency's missions to the moon completed, it will surely be but a few short years before our brave astronauts set foot on the planet Mars. Given the frequency of their encounters on the moon with these strange alien creatures, evidenced in the many photographs and described in the accompanying astronaut debriefing transcripts, this reporter is greatly concerned at what encounters may yet lie in wait for them, on that distant red planet. Encounters of a kind, that only you dear reader, can possibly imagine. "After we arrived back from Station 10, after EVA 3, I was setting up the camera on the rover so that Ed could control it to track Falcon's ascent about four hours later. Jim had a lull in his schedule, so was spending that time moving sample bags and other items, to the LM porch, ready for the end of our EVA. I moved around to take a pan of photos of the rover when I saw some dust kicked up by something, out of sight to my right. I turned to look round and one of those creatures was busy folding in what looked like some kind of control sticks on the side of its suit. I guessed from the dust and the way it suddenly appeared out of nowhere, that it must have used some kind of rocket pack to fly to our location. I called to Jim to come take a look, but he was busy on the far side of the LM, so I figured I'd best get another photo of one of these things myself. It took a few seconds to set for the photo and in that time that thing had got to the back of the rover and had started pushing on the back of it, moving it forwards. It moved it far enough that by the time I took it, my shot of it was a-ways off center. I watched as the creature continued pushing, but it didn't get far as after a few more feet the brake must have really bit in and it was just pushing against the back, legs spinning round like in some kinda cartoon. That thing was huffing and puffing hard as can be and getting nowhere. Occasionally it stopped pushing and looked my way, I guess to see if I'd noticed what it was doing. It even did something with its mouth that I coulda sworn was it whistling. At the same time, it looked up to the sky and bobbed its head round a little, as if to say "nothing to see here, just ignore me". Then it would go back to trying to push the rover again. After 20 second or so I decided I should make it clear that I was not ok with this thing heaving our gear across the surface, so I started to move towards it. Straight away, that thing stopped pushing on the rover and hopped back a foot or two, with what looked like the palms of its gloves outstretched, as if it was saying "hey, I don't want no trouble". Then, the creature flipped out those little control sticks, grabbed hold of them and took off vertically, kicking up a bug puff of dust. It climbed straight up about 75 to 100 feet before heading up-sun, of towards the horizon. I continued watching it until I lost it in the glare." I don't know what it is about the rover, but those things seem to be real interested in it. Kept showing up when we're using it. Maybe they just want to get some pointers on rover design from GM."

Sorry for the delay, I've had a rotton cold since Saturday morning, but looking forward to posting my first content since... checks the thread... AUGUST 2022!!! Yikes!

Our brave reporter has passed news to me, that he has found another photo and now just needs to "get his story straight" about how he came to possess it. Knowing this person as I do, their process will likely involve an unhealthy quantity of their favourite tipple, a large pastrami and pickle sandwich (extra sauerkraut) on rye, followed by a long and loudly snoring, nap. Watch this space.

Errr... sort of. I've come close to doing the work for a new "photo" a couple of times over the last few months, but then something got in the way each time and I forgot about it. All I can really say about the future of posts to this thread is "maybe"... if I get the urge and then follow through on it and there's no distractions that pull me away.

Thanks for posting that... saves me making a simple tutorial doc with images. I should have thought of just looking for a tutorial vid, but my day job instincts kicked in and I jumped into putting something together myself. Glad I didn't have to.

Are you having problems understanding how to use the nodes (i.e. the pulling of the handles of the node in the GUI), or is the problem that you know how to physically use it, but don't know what kind of node you need to make to act as a guide for a burn to get to the Mun?

You can use a site such as Imgur to upload it to and then use the link for it there, to add it to your post here.

For those interested in this kind of thing, I can recommend the Youtube channel of Lunarmodule5. https://www.youtube.com/@lunarmodule5 For many years he's been putting together videos that contain the audio for multiple NASA missions, including (but not limited to) the Apollo missions. What they've done for most of their videos is to remove the really long gaps between transmissions, so although they're not fully realtime transmissions, a set of videos for a single Apollo mission will still last multiple days, when played back to back. They also include a lot of still images actual mission footage in their videos, that relate the current portion of the mission. These are interspersed with clipsof simulation software showing the craft and plantary bodies, e.g. the Apollo vehicle heading from the Earth after TLI, manoeuvring to dock with the LEM. I've watched a lot of these (mostly Apollo missions, but also the STS-1 Shuttle mission) and can highly recommend them. Here's a couple of pics to give an idea of what they look like.

Ooo... Ooo... what fact about my playing of the game do I have. Well, I'm going to cheat and post 2 facts (ha!). 1. This one is sort of the opposite of the one in the OP. I didn't make any kind of winged vehicle in my first two years playing the game (not even an SSTO). However, in that time I visited all the planets and moons multiple times. That meant that the first time I visited places like Runway Island, Dessert Airfield and the pyramids, it was by rocket. 2. Back in the days before mods provided handy visual tools for creating manouveur nodes for interplanetary transfer windows, I used a piece of paper with circle of angles marked on it (like a protractor) to identify where in my orbit the node needed to go. I'd hold it to the screen, then find the angle for the node, that I got from Alex Moon's transfer window calculation site, then hold the tip of my finger over the desired angle, pull the paper out of the way, and finally create a node there.

Ok, just a bit of a "huh... what?" moment, seeing the change, especially given it's timing with regard to recent(ish) events. Understood that this is just tying together KSP1 and KSP2 under "KSP"... the game we know and love. Concerns answered.

I think that raises more questions than it answers. Given the current febrile situation re the forum, can you expand on that a bit. Is it known if there any significance to the banner being added?

Found it in ScifiVisualEnhancements_Glows. Should have noticed and checked that... the name says it all really Thanks again @dok_377 for pointing me in the right direction.

Ok, thanks... I'll take a look.

I've recently resurected my game install (mine was pretty ancient) to the latest version, plus updated all my mods, plus I added a few new ones. Everything working fine, except that there is now a glow around the Mun, giving it the appearance of having an atmosphere (see image below). I suspect it's due to a setting in one of the mods in my install, but I'm not sure which one. I vaguely remember having a similar issue a few years ago and it being mod related. I suspected it might be an issue with the bloom settings for the flight scene profile in the TUFX mod, but adjusting the intensity setting to 0 made no difference to the wierd Mun glow. However, it did affect the bloom effect generally in the scene, so I think I can rule out that idea. Just in case though, this issue appeared with the default settings for the TUFX mod (so not me screwing up its settings). So... hopefully someone has come across the same issue themselves and knows what the solution might be. The icons on the right should give a reasonable idea of my mods list and I'll be trying some things later this evening, to see if I can pinpoint the issue. To be clear, this is not affecting Kerbin, so not a general issue affecting all bodies, just the Mun.

All the versions of the boats are now on KerbalX. Cruiseboat Combo Coastal Cruiser Coastal Cruiser 2 Kitchen Sink Kitchen Sink - NoSub All except the Kitchen Sink craft use stock parts. That one has some Making History DLC parts used somewhere on the minisub, plus some Ballast Water Tank mod parts, to allow it to sink. Something you may need to do if you want to be able to use the minisub carried in the Kitchen Sink, is to find a mod to allow you kerbals to sink in water.

The KSS will take a bit of work to get working as a ship file, as there are some mod parts used (for the submersible) that I don't have the mod for and the ship fails to load. I'll look into that and see if I can get hold of the relevant mod and provide version of the ship with and without the submersible, so with or without need for that mod. I've not put a ship on Kerbal X for a very long time, but I'll look into that.

You're in luck @Eclipse 32 as I've found the craft files for the boats, although there are none of the aircraft or the "Juice Moose", as I no longer have those files. Some missing parts errors pop up, for out of date mods like RCS Sounds and Docking Camera, but the ship load and operate fine without them. You can download the boats from here. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16WUtswgSGnB-BA2WqRuNFb_Gg7rE0W92?usp=sharing There are files for 4 boats in there, with the "Coastal Cruiser" being the original ship I started the trip with. At some point I switched to a stripped down version, with just a single jet engine and no ISRU gear, which is either the "Coastal Cruiser 2" or the "Coastal Cruiser 2x"... can't remember the difference between the two of those. There is also the "Coastal Cruiser Combo" that was the Coastal Cruiser on top of a wheel vehicle, to take it to the water. That's the thing I used to start the whole trip in. If you want to get in the water quickly with one of the boats, best use the Vessel Mover mod to get one in the water from the launch pad. Have fun.

I'm not sure if I still have them @Eclipse 32 but I'll take a look.

She's away

Fingers crossed for a launch this time.

Someone asked if it was possible to still land on the control tower on Runway Island in v1.25.5, after I posted some (pretty ancient) pics of a flight just such a landing, in the Creepiest Lonliest KSP Moment thread. So I decided to take a flight there today, with similar, far from a perfect landing, results. Got the thing snagged between the antenna and had to use the F12 menu to free it, before "landing" it on the roof of the tower.

To answer your question... yes... yes it is. I just now made a landing there, albeit with a slightly smaller vehicle, so the whole thing could actually fit on top of the tower. However, things didn't go quite according to plan. It took 3 attempts to get a trajectory that didn't overshoot too much, or fall too short, but I finally made. Launch and staging went fine. Then it was time to deply the chutes. Just eyeballing this so that they were deployed a short time before i'd pass over the top of the tower. The idea was for them to bring the vehicle to a quick halt, but as the deploy altitude for them was the default of 1km and I was about 6km up at the time I released them, I had to quickly run around and set chutes to the max of 5km deployment. Looking good at this point. Almost alighned vertically with the tower and the tanks were about 50% full, so a decent amount for manouvering for the landing. However, I had to find a couple of chutes I'd missed, that we still set to 5km deployment, as this meant my vehicle wasn't hanging fully vertically. The time I spent doing that meant I had to waste some fuel slowing the decent. That resulted in me running out of that delicious stuff before I was properly lined up with the roof. As I was REALLY close to making that landing, I decided to jump into the F12 menu and for thelast 10 seconds or so, give myself infinite fuel, so I could nudge the vehicle over a few metres before landing on the tower. All of which resulted in this. I could be a smartass and say this was my plan all along. That I was going for the much harder "land on the antennas" goal, but in truth I fluffed the landing and got knabbed by them, like a tasty piece of chicken between a pair of chopsticks. To free the vehicle I again went to the F12 menu, dropped gravity to 0.02, then with some light bursts on the engines, got free and landing it on the tower itself. Kinda... sorta. One of the landing legs exploded on impact (I think as a result of suddenly turning gravity back to 1.0). But any landing you can walk away from..... With the landing completed, it was time for the crew to scoot down to the tower top, for their time in the spotlight. I could probably have made the landing without resorting to the F12 menu, after another couple of attempts, including some tweaks to the vehicle setup. But it's still true to say that a landing on top of the tower in 1.12.5 is still possible.

As I remember it took a few attempts, but I was determined to land that thing on the roof. Not a long trip for each attempt, so didn't take too long to accomplish, but very satisfying to nail the landing, even if it was just about hanging on, up there.

My creepiest moments both happened on the creepiest of creepy places... Runway Island. This was back in my early days in KSP (2014) and back in those days I didn't fly anything with wings, just rockets, so my trips there were by rocket up and then parachute down around the runway itself. The first time I went there, I launch my lander/rover by rocket towards the island and dropped onto it with parachutes. The landing went fine and Bob (I think it was him) started to explore the buildings around the runway. After stopping at the control tower, he drove the the open hanger, but a few seconds after venturing inside, the screen went black for a moment, then the view reappeared, with just the lander can remaining of the rover, high up (hundreds of kilometres) over Kerbin. To make matters worse, the lander can was zooming away from Kerbin at many km/s on an escape trajectory from Kerbin. For some reason I EVA'd Bob and grabbed a screenshot of the event. The two slowly drifted apart, but still rocketing away from kerbins at 10's km/s. So Bob decided to just hang out and take in the view, knowing there was no way home. Vehicle and crew lost. My second creepy tale of Runway Island happened when I sent a later, larger vehicle, to deliver a whole bunch of kerbals there, for the "Old Tower Challenge", in which the aim was to get as many kerbals inside the room at the top of the control tower. I launched a test flight, with just Val as pilot onboard, to try out the lande, another "rockets up, chutes down" affair. I don't have pics of that flight, but here is one of the my precarious landing on top of the tower, for the challenge entry itself. The kerbally cargo of which can be seen inside the tower. On the earlier test flight, a landing anywhere near the runway was good enough and Val touched down just off the runway, on the opposite side from the tower. She then left the lander to take a look around on foot. Almost as soon as she stepped off the thing, it started to slowly (probably about 1m/s) float upwards. No engines firing, no-one on board to fly it, it just slowly rose upwards, into the air. I watched it for a couple of minutes or so, feeling very puzzled, as it climbed to an altitude higher than the tower, before deciding to load the gamesave I made afer touching down, after which behaviour was normal. So... if you're thinking of going to the runway island, my advice is don't go alone, don't go at night (spooky!!!) and watch what you're doing in that hanger.