purpleivan

More testing of Velicorover today and so far it's looking good... as long as I don't crash. Driving at sunset probably didn't help. Time to tweak the delivery vehicle.

I'm using a decoupler (left attached to the aircraft on separation) plus a few struts to hold my rover in place. Seems to work fine.

A couple of pics of the delivery vehicle for the Velocirover.. an all stock entry for the upcoming Desert Derby 2018 challenge. Tops out at about 850m/s around 10km alititude. Took Velocirover for a spin at sunset... didn't end well.

Did some testing of the Velocirover and its delivery aircraft, in preparation for an all stock entry to the Desert Derby 2018. That included a sub 18 minute flight from the KSC to the Desert Airfield. Not super quick a time for the airbourne section of the challenge, but the rover is looking very fast.

The vehicle I'm working has a good top end speed on the flat, but has some problems with spinning around, I plan to make this a stock run, so no steering sensitivity adjustment available, but If I can keep the spinning to the minimum I think I'm on for a good time. I've been testing my vehicle at the site and laid out some marker flags for the route I want to follow. Going quite well so far, but had a few mishaps. Ah so close. Started testing out my delivery vehicle today and it looks like I'll be getting a time for that in the 18-19 minutes range, so not quick, but I think I'll catch up time on the rover part. Now where's that airfield? Taking the plane for a spin after dropping off the Velocirover at the airfield. I'll have to sort out my landing to be on the actual runway for the challenge run. Just did a proper end to end run of the delivery vehicle and got a wheel stop time of 17:43 with a night landing. There were a couple of mishaps along the way that probably cost me about 30 seconds, so with some better flying and removing some excess fuel, I'm hoping for a time of close to 17 minutes.

The vehicle I'm working has a good top end speed on the flat, but has some problems with spinning around, I plan to make this a stock run, so no steering sensitivity adjustment available, but If I can keep the spinning to the minimum I think I'm on for a good time. I've been testing my vehicle at the site and laid out some marker flags for the route I want to follow. Just need to build a vehicle to ship the rover there. Going quite well so far, but had a few mishaps. Ah so close.

Hoping to post another couple of chapters next week.

That's of my day job, so given some time I might take a stab at it.

Craziest mission eh? Usually I relate the tale of the Eve Party Boat, but that's forgetting the journey of the KSS Points Pirate. This was an entry for a challenge a few years ago (Mun Landing Endeavour), which gave points for the number kerbals transported to the Mun, satellites put into Kerbin orbit and number of rovers for the little critters to play with. Oh yeah... there was a lowest weight element as well, so no filling Mk3 passenger modules and shipping hundreds of kerbals up there. This was back in the lawless days before vehicles needing to be at least vaguely aerodynamic and kerbals could be toasted in re-entry like marshmallows. I flew a couple of reasonable vehicles as entries, then thought I'd go all out in an attempt to grab points, and so was born the KSS Points Pirate. The fine vessel is seen here dropping it's jets off and going to rocket power. With 32 mini satellites on board, bound for Kerbin orbit, it was more of a frag cannon than a launcher. Soon the Mun beckoned. Then once on the surface, the rover based entertainment was let loose. Will those rovers conveniently stop here... not a chance. Then there was much rounding up of the mini-rovers, as they raced off towards the horizon (many tipping over on the way) propelled by that fiend, gravity. The mini-rovers were not the most stable of vehicles, necessitating the crew to use their head (literally) when coming up with a solution to righting them. With all the rovers rounded up, the crew headed back to the ship. Whereupon an impromtu race ensued.... winner was the one with the helmet with red stripes. Their activities on the Mun surface complete, the brave crew headed home. For celebratory toasted marshmallows.

Oh it does... just reeeeeeally long ones. Give it a few thousand years and those mountains will be covered in snow, just wait and see

I've replied in a few of these "interesting bugs/wierd things that happened" threads usually with two wierd events that happened on the runway island. But one that I usually forget about, was when the mobile set that I'd built for my 2001 A Space Absurdity story went crazy. This is the thing I'm talking about. I made this to recreate the Tycho dig scene from the movie (a lot of Photoshopping was involved), with the set being inside it. But as I was trundling around the compond with it, suddenly it started to wobble violently, and buck around, causing some of the cast to drop through the floor. Ok... not too wierd there, just the Kraken giving it a shake to make its presence know. But what happened then was that the kerbals that fell through the floor (4 of them I think) started running towards the middle of the KSC. Ok I know why they all ran there, rather than just one, I was using the EVA follower mod, to speed up moving them around on the set. But what I didn't understand was what was making the one at the front of the queue hightail it away from the bucking beast, towards the "safety" of the KSC buildings.

I think the issue of the kerbals looking "clean" in comparison with the Apollo gear is largely due to the difference in the materials of the two species of explorers. The Apollo gear has a lot more surface detail, in particular surface undulation, due to the materials that formed the outer layer of the suits and to some extend the vehicles as well. At the end of the day the Kerbal suits and vehicle parts just don't have as much detail on them, to break up the surfaces and so look a bit plasticy. In partular that big round goldfish bowl helmet of theirs does give then a rather unrealistic (if amusing) look, in comparison with real astronauts. I try to get a pretty close look in some ways, such as blurring the kerbal gear slightly where approriate and even adding some noise to them, in an attempt to match that in the Apollo image. That's on top of the lighting, occlusion and shadow tweaks to try to match the scene. One other thing that occurs is that the lighting of the helmets in particular (being white with little detail) often goes into saturation across a large area. That's the pure white patch in the mid rear of the helmet in the last image. Not much I can do about that, other than redraw (or render) the lighting of the helmet. It's possible, but it would take a bit too much time for me to justify. Another thing that makes the kerbals stand out a bit is the difference between the reflective properties of the Apollo and KSP gear. Most of the kerbal stuff tends to look like a dull plastic, compared with the mixture of materials in Apollo gear. Again making alterations to that is a bit more than I'd be prepared to do. If nothing else I'd make a lot fewer of these images. That last issue is one that I find I'm fighting with myself over from time to time. For example in the image below I wanted the smiling kerbal face (couldn't resist) to be visible through the visor, even though it make the little guy look a bit unrealistic in comparison with the Apollo suit. Something I'd like to do (but one of the many, many things that I don't get time for) is to make a fairly accurate Apollo style suit texture set, including normal maps, for our brave little explorers. Possibly once 1.5 is released and wonky normals on the male suit models have been fixed, I might take a look at that. As for "is there a technical limit..." like most things it's all a matter of time. Given enough (big bucket loads of it), the kerbal gear could look a pretty much perfect match for the scene.

Thanks @Orc Glad you liked the pics. The specs of my machine are 670GTX graphics card, i5-3570K CPU and 16GB Ram. Nothing fancy as far as PC's go, but it gets the job done. I occasionally think about upgrading, but at the moment nothing's really pushing me to do that.

Some pics of the Skylab-alike station and Saturn 1B(ish) launched crew that went up yesterday. Some on-orbit assembly required. Here comes the crew. Thar she blows. Almost there. The crew has arrived. A quick inspection. Heading home.

This is yet another one of those "hmmm what to do today in KSP" moments, in which an idea related to something I'd already started, morphs into something completely different. In this case adding some modules to my SSTO launched station, becomes a recreation (sorta) of 70's space station. So today I present for your amusement and bandwidth consumption... Skylab-alike First take one launcher. Give it a quick two stage kick in the rear to orbit. Ah... skylab-alike, looking pretty, looking fine... actually looking like something's missing. Where are those nice shiny solar arrays. So what's this little guy suppose to do. Ah... now I see what you're up to. Ok fella, now go grab another for the other side. That's it, one down, one to go... just gotta line that thing up. That's it... side arrays installed now. Hey... where are you going, this thing's not finished yet. What do you mean there's no probe core on the station and the crew will have to deploy the arrays. Now that's just bad planning. Ok... off to a fiery demise for you and the ballast. Ok... so where do I get a crew from to make this thing look right. Aha... one crew on it's way, travelling in a vaguely Saturn 1B style vehicle. Onto the upper stage now... ... the rather overfuelled upper stage... what a waste. What's that you can see... could it be... it could! Yes... it's a poorly planned station with no probe core. Now that we're docked, it takes just a few second to make the station look like it was intended. Well more or less, one of those side panels looks a bit wonky... never send an unmanned tug to do a kerbal's job. Ok Bill, see that hatch... use it and take a look around. You're responsible for this thing, so who knows if there's more than a probe core missing. Ok... clean bill of health, but let's get back down to Kerrafirma sharpish, just to be sure. Ok... it's not exploded yet... still not exploded, not even a small one., Maybe it'll still be here for a later crew to visit. Ok Jeb... hit the brakes and take this tub home. It's all you can eat tacos in the canteen today. Talking of hot food... things are getting a little spicy outside. A little singed, but those chutes are still in one piece. Cool clear water, just what we need... now where are those tacos.

Some more SSTO launched, station construction pics. Here is a small manoeuvering tug heading from the station, to collect a science module. Lugging it across to the station went easily, but the RCS being so offset from the COM made it a bit of a handful during docking, but made it in the end. I plan to send up a new model with RCS thrusters on stalks, that will position them about halfway along the grabber, to move them closer to the COM.

True.. a good variety of places to visit. Should be some nice slopes in winter. A desert vacation for those who like it hot. Or a dip in the ocean if that's your thing.

For a long time (about 2 years) I didn't make any vehicle with wings, so anything on Kerbin, more than a quick rover drive away, was flown to by rocket. Even the runway island was a place I'd travel to balistically.

Not sure about those figures as the Big-S is 2.0 tons full, not 1.0, so works out to 150 units/ton. That would seem right in terms of balancing compared with say the Mark 1 fuel tank 177.77 units/ton, as you get the capacity plus the benefit of it's lift and heat resistance.

16 mods plus Making History and mine takes just over a minute to load, so not even enough time to make coffee.

What you really want is as a steam engine, that burns them like coal, with the Kraken doing the shovelling. "Allll... aboard"... toot, toot

A few images from the flight I took today, to see how close I could get a probe to Kerbol... the answer to which is 77,509km.

Took a quick trip to Kerbol to see how close I could get... as the PSP was launched today, it seemed appropriate. Things started heating up significantly at around 100,000km and the first of the 16 stacked heatshields exploded at a bit over 80,000. The last of them failed (along with the probe core) at 77,509km.

The same could be said, although to a less degree, to most of the "fastest, lowest, lightest... etc." challenges (which this isn't) or answers to a question (which this is), as the content of the game has changed in so many ways over time. Seeing how the game has changed over time and therefore what is possible within it, is interesting in itself. In my case I posted an old "before heating was a thing" distance and then as I was curious to see what's possible now, flew a mission to see what's possible today. Don't see anything to complain about there.

As those strange tall creatures sent their Parker Solar Probe to their sun today, the KSP decided to do likewise (gotta keep up with the humanses). Here's the highlights. Launch So what's inside... lots of heatshields Heading out of Kerbin orbit. Dropping some of the nukes 1st heatshield is getting a little toasty. ... aaaand it's gone. Just the one left now. The trajectory Snagging a gravity reading before the inevitable. Kaboom at 77,509km This probe was sent on a one way trip, but based on what happened I think it's possible to skim and survive at somewhere between 100,000 to 150,000km, using a single heatshield. Much below 100,000 they start going like popcorn.