purpleivan

Chapter 2: Band on the Road The clear ocean stretched out as far as the eye could see in one direction and an empty, unending beach to the other and Heywood had it all to himself. He sat in a perfectly formed chair and sipped on the finest sugary cocktail that Kerbin’s bartenders could devise as he lay there soaking in the warmth of the sun. “Perfection” he thought to himself “I could stay here forever”. He wiggled his little green toes in the yellow sand and took another sip from the glass, then out of the corner of his eye he noticed something at the waters’ edge. It was an engineer, he couldn’t put a name to them, but why would he, he was just an engineer after all, a means to an end. So he put all thought of this interloper out of his mind and focused on the important task of getting himself “hydrated”… taking a large slurp of his cocktail before leaning back in the chair. The distant figure by the sea became a voice. “Heywood, we need to talk about these new parts I requested. They’re expensive, but they’ll make our flights a little bit safer”. Just ignore him he thought, he’ll go away, they always do. “Oi… Heywood” shouted the waste of the colour green “did you read my report”. “Heywood”, how he hated to here that name coming from others, when there were so much better ones to use. Dr Kerman, Sir, Director, maybe Emperor... mmm, I’d make a fine Emperor, everyone would say so. Then more sounds shattered his peace. “Woody” came an approaching chorus of voices from along the beach, “We’ve gotta talk about getting the break room a proper table”. Heywood shuddered, it was kerbonauts and lots of them and all using his nickname from college. How he loathed both. “Oi… wake up” came the voice of one of the rocket jocks, who by now sounded like they surrounded his chair in the sand. “Wake up Woody, we need to talk about my bonus, its three years late” and proceeded to poke him in the ribs. Your bonus, what about my vacation that you’re spoiling, why won’t you all just go away and leave me in alone. “Vake up Heyvood… Hevood, it is time to vake up” the voice sounded a little different, but there was still an annoying digging into his ribs. “Lazy Kspudnik, get out of bed” shouted the voice that Heywood realised was not one of his drones at the KSP. He cracked one eye ajar slightly, before jamming it shut again “Ow… turn that light off, I can’t see a damn thing”. “Niet, ve need it to… er… see you clearly, in case of, errrm… space rot” replied what Heywood now realised was Dasilly Kerman, the medical and science officer of the KISS ship, the KSS Keonov, who was clearly sniggering. “Ve are only two days from Joool and ve have been instructed to vake you op” came Dasilly’s voice again, so Heywood cracked open his eyes , both of them this time and stared upward at the EVA hatch in the ceiling. “Hmm” Heywood thought, “two days from Jool… medical officer on the Keonov… EVA hatch in the ceiling…. but that must mean…” For reasons of brevity the following 2 hours of screaming have been edited and for the sake of our family viewers the expletive laden tirade has also been removed. Sometime later Doctor Kerman sat at a table in a room adjoining the command room of the Keonov, accompanied by its crew. Fortunately for his nerves, the ship came with a fully stocked bar, an addition that its commanding officer, Captain Valentina Kerman, had insisted upon on hearing that the KSP director would be a passenger on the mission. She said something about “dat kspudnik not setting fooot on dis ship if I have to be sober” he recalled. His shock at finding he was on the Keonov and about to arrive at Jool, instead of back on lovely Kerbin, in his even lovelier office, was due to his understanding that it would be one of his kerbonauts that would be sent on the mission rather than himself. An agreement to which was something could swear he had made with his, urghhh… boss, Victor Kerman, in the last few minutes hat he could remember before waking up on the KISS ship. Immediately after this agreement was signed; which he recalled being done in blood, using a quill made from the tail feather of a long extinct bird, he vaguely remembered a playful game of chase around the KSC grounds, with Victor Kerman and some of the security guards, until his executive transport pod ran out of power, followed moments later by a sharp jab in his neck before falling asleep. Heywood glanced around the table at his fellow travellers. To his left sat Captain Valentina and to his right was Dasilly. Sitting across the table from him were the two remaining crew members, Max and Irena, both engineers. The crew had originally been larger, but shortly after the announcement that he would be joining them as a passenger, several claimed to have contracted “da spaaace measles” and insisted that they should remain on Kerbin. So what all important reason did they have to wake him from wonderful sleep? Perhaps it was all called off and they were going home. The thought cheered him up for a moment before realising that it probably wasn’t possible for them to just turn around and head back to Kerbin. Something to do with that physics stuff that his engineers kept insisting was important. “Doctor Kirrman, we have important information about the mission that you’re government insisted we wake you for” stated Captain Valentina, somewhat sternly. Perhaps they were turning the ship round and going home after all. Those amazing engineers had found a way. Oh praise the Kraken Heywood thought, his mood lifting once more. “Ve have detected anomalous readinks from da moon of Vall” the Captain continued. “Arrrrgh”… Heyood exclaimed… damn you Kraken and your lazy engineers, he thought and his head sank to the table which he preceded to pound with his fist. Once the table thumping had ceased, Dasilly Kerman continued what Heywood assumed was going to be one of those boring science talks. “Ve have detected signs of organic compounds in small area of Vall” he said. He was right… it was going to be one of those boring science talks. “It’s pronounced Vall” sighed the KSP director. “Da… Vall” Dasilly repeated, continuing his onslaught on the correct pronunciation of planetary bodies. “It’s Vall” shouted Heywood, lifting his head from the table. “Niet, whole verld knows it is Vall, insisted the Captain “it is only da lies of your KSP that would convince anyvon dat it is said Vall”. “Look at the monitor, you guys can’t even spell it correctly” said Heywood, jabbing a stubby thumb towards the screen on the wall. “Err…. Dat is not correct spelling ve know… is typo” admitted Max sheepishly “It been like dat since we launch. Ve meaning to change it but has been so busy with da ship flying and sciencing stuff”. Ok, Heywood thought, I guess these weren’t the first Kerbals to hit the wrong key on a keyboard, we’re not really built for intricate work in the fingers department, pie eating that was another matter, our hands are perfect for that, but Ctrl-Alt-Del can be a bit of a stretch. “So… what are these readings from, er… Vall” said Heywood, using the pronunciation favoured by the Keonov’s crew, to get past that argument. “Der are chemical signatures of organic compounds and chloroform” stated Dasilly. “Don’t you mean chlorophyll” corrected Heywood. He didn’t know what chlorophyll was but had a vague recollection that it was something to do with plants and they were organic, weren’t they. “Neit, chloroform” confirmed Dasilly “Der is also chlorophyll, but with der being organic compounds, da chlorophyll not so unexpected”. Doctor Kerman leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin, deep in thought. “So maybe there are some plants down there… so what, I mean it’s not like we have a shortage of them, they’re all over Kerbin” he said after some deliberation. “Plants… on da moon Vall, is not surprise to you” Dasilly questioned. “Nope” said Heywood confidently. “Da moon dat have surface temperature of -140 degrees in da sunlight” continued Dasilly. “Er… if you say so” replied Doctor Kerman, suddenly not sounding so confident. “Vell, even if plant life, something dat have not been found once on over 10 surveyed worlds, is no surprise, perhaps we should, how you say… check it out” the Captain enquired. “Well…. If you must” replied the Doctor. “Bler, Blip… Bler, Blip… Bler, Blip, Bler…” “Vill you stop making dat stupid sounds Doctor Kerman” snapped Valentina, annoyed at Heywoods attempt to making the approach towards Vall, of the probe that the Kernov had recently launched, sound more interesting. “But it’s so boring. There’s just a stream of numbers and some grainy video. I mean, it’s not even in colour” retorted the KSP’s esteemed director. “Da, is data, vat did you expect” replied the ship’s captain. “Everyone knows that space probes and satellites and other… erm, space stuff makes really cool sounds, otherwise nooo-one would watch them” answered the rather testy Doctor “I mean ours always do”. Unknown to Doctor Kerman, the staff at the KSC routinely added sound effects from sci-fi TV shows to recordings of transmissions from their various spacecraft to keep the director’s attention during meetings. “Dis is not a movie Doctor Kirrman, dis is real space exploration” Dasilly corrected. “There’s a difference?” questioned Heywood “I mean, I am a director”. As one, the crew of the Keonov glanced upward and sighed before returning to the work of preparing the probe for its landing on the surface of Vall. The probe sailed silently over the surface of Vall, its various sensors returning data on the terrain below it and its chemical composition. As it descended through a height of 500m from the surface of the icy moon below it, the landing legs were prepared to be deployed. “Max… press da G button” instructed Captain Valentina. “No response from the landing legs Captain” the engineer, who was responsible for guiding the probe, since the crewmember originally assigned the task, was one of those suffering from “space measles”. “Press again, it sometimes not verk on first press” advised Valentina. With a second tap of the G key, the legs under the probe deployed and its decent continued. “Now ve put on lights” queried Max. “Da… push L” Valentina started. “Key… da I know” interupted Max, squidging his index finger into the keyboard “Dis is fun, eh Captain?” Valentina flashed her engineer a stern look. Yes it was fun, but there was no way that she was going to let that kspudnik from the KSP know that. She had an entire nation’s appearance as single minded, disciplined explorers to keep up after all. The lights of the probe shone onto the shiny surface of Vall; its surface a mixture of small ice crystals and fine dust. While the crew had been hard at work taking the probe from the relative safety of the Keonov, to the icy surface of the moon that they were passing by at great speed; a certain KSP director was slowly creeping up behind the probe control console manned by Max. “Ve are receivink chemical composition data now captain” Dasilly announced. “Oxygen… carbon” he read out. All eyes free from other duties were locked to the readout of the chemical sensor “Chlorphyll, it’s chloro…” shouted Vasilly “Ah… niet… my mistake, is chloroform”. Everyone sighed, except Heywood, who chuckled and continued to edge towards the probe console. “Maybe there’s some down in that crater” he suggested “we should take the probe down for a closer look”. “Niet, ve must first assess suitability as landink site, analyse da data dat we have received, run simulations…” started Captain Valentina “No time to be reasonable” shouted Heywood “it’s an emergency, all hands on deck, I’m taking command” and with that, lurched forward and grabbed the probe control manipulator from Max’ hand and yanked it to the side “Give me full speed and hold on tight” “Give me full speed and hold on tight” is the catch phase of ships’ captain Pike Kerman in Heywood's favourite sci-fi show “The Space Race Fun Hour” (content suitable for the under 5’s) By now both Max and Irena had a hold of Heywood and were attempting to pull the probe control from his grip. “No… le’go… I wanna fly it” screamed the Doctor as the probe careened towards the center of the crater. “Chloro… chlorophyll… sweet Kraken” shouted Dasilly over the sounds of the struggle, still staring at the chemical composition readings. Max momentarily ceased his efforts to wrest the controls from their over excited passenger, to point at a rapidly approaching object on the video coming from the probe. “Hey… is dat tree”. The lights of the command room of the Keonov momentarily blacked out as did the video feed and all other data coming from the probe. At that precise moment a small probe, sent by small green creatures, from a small blue planet, many millions of miles away met its nemesis, in the form of a moderately sized pine.

I installed this just on the off chance that it would work with 1.2, but unfortunately not. If there's any chance of getting an update, I'd be interested as well... less for animation, that just putting kerbals into interesting poses for wallpaper and story images.

You can enter a space station challenge (unfortunately this one closed a long time ago) and make something like this. The station (called KOSTAR) included four mini landers that could (just about) do a trip to the Mun surface and return to the station, plus the four arms could detach and return the whole crew to the surface of Kerbin. Almost forgot that I made a sort of documentary style video about it (well the launch of the first couple of components anyway).

Fuel storage... lots of fuel storage. Huggins of orange tanks dripping with the stuff. Then don't get around to doing anything with most of the stuff that you've spent so much time shipping up to it, then replace the whole station with an even bigger one, with capacity for... more fuel. At least that was my experience anyway, although most of my station building took place before the inclusion of ore mining/refining in stock.

I've always played sandbox as an aside to sandbox. Since it became part of the stock game, I've played three career mode games, each time building up through the tech tree to its completion, but it was always as an "ok... new major game version, I'd better play through this" attempt, rather than any commitment to playing in career mode. For me, sandbox is what I reach for when a new version comes along, or I'm just getting the itch to go interplanetary again. Whether in career or sandbox there is so much more than just maxing out the tech tree. As has been said before "boots on all bodies" (and bringing them back to Kerbin... I'm looking at you Eve). Build insane vehicles (huge stations that serve no real purpose other than looking cool and being fun to put together, insane rovers that have no place on Kerbin, let alone going to other worlds) Challenges... whether you're number one on a leader board, or just having a crack at one for the fun of it, these can be challenging, educational and entertaining (take a look at the major ones like Jool 5) Mods - new planets, new vehicles, new challenges Self challenge - who cares what about some random contracts or challenges when you can set your own goals... you have a whole planetary system to play with, go nuts! Any and all typos are the responsibility of WINE Industries and BEER Inc... it's 1:am on a Sunday morning after all

Agreed on "Last Man on the Moon"... a very down to earth (if that's possible) documentary of his experience of the Apollo 17th mission.

Another image in the series of released by NASA, was made available to the press today, this time showing a footprint of one of the alien creatures. According to one of the first astronauts to walk on the lunar surface. "Those things seemed to be intent on leaving their mark on the surface. Mostly it was just like us, step by step, but other times it was a bit more dramatic, especially when they flew around on those rocket packs... they'd crash land more often than not. There was this one time, one of these things flew in from outta the sun, flashed past me by only a couple yards, then I guess it forget to check its forward momentum, because he smashed into ground real hard... must have rolled a couple hundred feet, kicking up a big plume of dust behind it. I figured the fella was toast, but after a couple seconds of lying on the ground it leapt up onto its feet like it was nothing. Wherever these critters come from, they build 'em tough." In another image from a later Apollo mission, an astronaut is seen saluting one of the creatures. "Al was outside the LEM, just after I'd entered and I thought I'd take a photograph of him through the forward window. Just at that moment, one of these guys that had been hanging around the landing site pretty much since we arrived there, came into view. Al told me later that given that these were fellow explorers, he thought a salute was in order before we parted company."

I actually had something like that planned

Here's a wallpaper image I did for Wolfair Corp based on one of his screenshots.

Yep... another one joining the queue

Orange tanks.

I managed to find some time to take a look at your wallpaper image this weekend, so here it is. Hope you like it. I'll have a crack at this, but it might be a few weeks until I get to it.

Agreed. In the first few months of playing the game I used these all the time, especially when sending up large amounts of fuel to store in Kerbin orbit for missions going further afield. But now I almost forget that they exist.

In a crate in a huge secure warehouse somewhere I imagine

This evening new images were received showing more encounters on the moon as well as further evidence of the aliens' activities in earth orbit. One member of the Apollo 12 crew commented on the actions of the alien creatures during their mission. "Arrhh.. on 12 they kept getting in our shots. 11 had got a bunch of pictures of the little critters, so we were just focusing on getting good photographs of our landing site, without these guys getting in the way... something that could be given to the press when we got home. It was hard enough to take a decent photo with that Hasselblad strapped to your chest, but those guys kept getting in the way. It was as if they were doing it deliberately... jump into our shot any chance they got. But the worst thing they the would do would be take to off on those little rocket packs of theirs, just as I'd release the shutter. Half of the photos we took up there were just a cloud dust... we must'a wasted half our film that way." On an earlier mission that tested Apollo equipment before the first lunar landing was attempted, an alien spacecraft was captured on film during an EVA. The mission's command module pilot describes the experience. "I was doing a stand up EVA on day 4 and Rus was taking some pictures from the porch of the LEM and were just about to close up when this huge vehicle, I mean this thing ginormous... way bigger then the CSM and LEM combined, move out from the other side of the LEM into my view. At the time it look something like the Dyna-Soar X-20 that Boeing had been working on, but a lot bigger and I was getting a great look at it. When it stopped moving from around the rear of the LEM, the top half of it cracked open, two big doors swung back and inside it had a large interior space with some kinda module and some other equipment in there. Rus finished of the magazine he had, taking lots of pictures of it. We even got some good ones of the underside of it when they rolled that thing over. After a couple minutes it rolled back around which meant I could get another look into the interior of it then, what I assumed was a solar array sprang up from near the rear of the of that thing. The array seemed to orient itself towards the sun, but just as it seem to be getting good alignment, the craft started rolling again, this time bringing that big array swinging round towards the CM. I only had a moment to react, so I ducked down and swung the hatch half closed over my head and the next thing I new I had a cloud of debris around me. Darn crazy vehicle had swung that huge solar array right into the side of the CM and smashed it to bits... CM was ok, but that array of theirs was toast. After that we decided we'd better get some distance between them and us, so Houston gave us some burn numbers to get ourselves into a higher orbit. After our return the engineers took a look at our photographs of the alien vehicle and they got real excited. Apparently it had some design characteristics that they were interested in for the Space Transportation System that was going to follow on from Apollo. So I wasn't too surprised when I saw the designs for the shuttle a few years later and it look the spit of that crazy thing we came across up there."

Thanks.

Another image was released today showing one of the alien creatures in close proximity to a astronaut of Apollo 17. According to one of the crew. "A couple of these creatures had been shadowing our activities on the lunar surface since our arrival there. On EVA 1 we raised our flag and it seems this is part these aliens procedures on the surface too. But just seconds after putting their flag up, they must have changed their mind about where they wanted it. Strange thing is though I never saw them take the flag down, it was just there one moment and gone the next, before they headed round the far side of the rover from us, to go plant it there. I actually got a clear view of the face of one of these little guys towards the end of that EVA. Usually with the glare from the sun on their visors, their faces aren't that visible, but there was this weird moment when the creature closest to us must have decided it was time to eat. It just flipped its visor open for a moment before ramming what looked like an oversized cup cake into what I guess was its mouth, then slammed the visor down and started chewing away with what looked like a big grin on its face. These creatures must be more evolved for a the space environment than us, either that or they really like cupcakes."

Yep... it might be a while though as I have a lot of other things going on right now. Probably a couple of weeks or more.

You'd steal it like this (well... Jeb would).

That moment that you realise that with your ship in orbit, the paying passengers that you had planned to take on a combined Mun and Minmus excursion are still back at the KSC. No problem just send them up in a cheap vehicle to rendezvous with the excursion vehicle. But then there's the moment that you realise that tourists can't EVA and your cheap vehicle to lift them to orbit was built without a docking port. I also had a moment of realisation similar to 5thHorseman's when I sent a manned rescue vehicle to Mun that only had one (obviously full) seat. The solution was to have the rescued kerbal hang on to the ladder and after liftoff from the surface repeatedly switch between controlling the vehicle and the guy on the outside to move him to the top of the ladder, to stop him sliding off. A slow and rather irregular ascent, but it made orbit.

In more images released today, the strange alien creatures that shadowed the Apollo space program, can be seen in close proximity to the various vehicles of Apollo. An astronaut speaking on the condition of anonymity described the activity of an alien rover vehicle at their landing site. "We'd just got back to the LEM from EVA 2 and had just finished the close out procedures and I decided to take a couple shots of the rover next to the flag, when all of a sudden a couple of these little guys, that the previous crews had told us about, shot past on some kinda rover of their own. They were really tearing it up out there and we were considering our abort options, 'cos we were concerned about them crashing into the LEM, when all of a sudden they stopped and hopped off that rover of theirs." The two of them walked around for a couple minutes, took a quick look at our rover... seemed 'specially interested in the TV camera... started yanking at it, thing almost snapped off. Weird thing was that although the pair of them left their rover, they only seemed to move around one at a time. While one of them would be taking a walk, the other just stood there like a statue... kinda creepy really. In the end they got back on their rover and took off round the back of the LEM... didn't see them again after that." "On the way out the CM pilot was taking some film calibration photos inside the capsule and the processing guys must of had the shock of their life when they developed this one, as one of these creatures was right outside the hatch window. We never noticed it at the time, I guess it was drifting past just the moment the photo was taken." On an early Apollo missions one of the alien craft attempt a docking with one of the American spacecraft. "The LEM had just detached from the CM and was in a roll so that we could inspect it when I noticed an unidentified object approaching at high speed from forward of the spacecraft. It was traveling at a heck of rate straight at us, but when it was about 100 feet out, it fired what looked something like our retros and slowed down to a foot or two per second. After that, the vehicle maneuvered in towards our docking port and seemed to make an attempt to connect with us. I didn't expect the vehicle would be able to dock with us, couldn't imagine that their equipment was compatible with our, but that didn't seem to stop them trying. They must have bumped into the docking ring 3, 4 times before they gave up and each time they hit, their vehicle would wobble around like crazy before they backed off and tried again. Just glad the LEM could still dock with us again after the hammering the docking gear had taken."

I'm thinking of taking a vacation to Florida later this year (possibly October) specifically to visit the Kennedy Space Center and I'm looking for suggestions for other astronautical and aeronautical places to visit in the area (within say 100 miles of the KSC). If there is anything particularly good that's a bit further afield (taking a short flight would be a possibility) but it would have to be something that was possible to travel to and from in a day from the KSC area. So any ideas?

Now that it's a sticky, I'll have to make some more images... errr... I mean obtain from my secret source, deep within NASA I had already planned to tell more of the secret encounters of Apollo astronauts and Kerbals, but work, Christmas/New Year and my 2010: The Year We make Kontakt story thread got in the way.

Thread the needle and blast them through one of the moon arches.

Kicking off 2017 with some screenshots. A rescue vehicle on its way to Minmus to pick up a paying passenger. An asteroid grabber waits in Kerbin orbit for its chance to snatch a space rock. Fiery dawn ascent of the asteroid grabber. Happy landings... and rovering, EVAi'ing, submerging, grabbing, ISRU'ing, Science'ing and general crazy contraption building in 2017.