purpleivan

This evening I landed my first space plane (sent it up last night). Ok, that's not a big deal to regular wing merchants, but for a dyed in the wool rocket jock, like yours truly, it was quite the experience. It took a few attempts to get a vehicle together that would actually make it into orbit (or even to the other side of the ocean), but once I had those wonderous Whiplashes strapped on, it was plane sailing. Well, I got into a 75km orbit with about 15% of fuel remaining and just about dragged it down to a landing on the Island runway. I overshot the KSC and was a little off track for a landing there also, but handily I was pretty much lined up for the island strip. Just a shame the runway there wasn't a little longer, or remembered to pack a parachute. It was fun to finally have a crack at sending a spaceplane up and making a reasonable accurate landing, but the time, the time... it takes soooooo long compared with my usual rocket based entertainment. Still going to be taking a crack at this again in the near future though.

Ok, I'm going to throw in my two cents on this, not as a game developer (30+ years in the industry) but simply as a player of the game. I also don't want to jump into the hornets nest of what Squad should prioritise, or how much the game is "doomed" or not. This is simply about by experience playing a game. I've been sending my little green thrill seekers (and not so green probes) around the Kerbol system for a few days short of two years now and for the first six months of those I had zero mods installed. No KER, Mechjeb, Scatterer, parts packs etc. etc. etc. and at no time did I think "wow... this game is broken", I was simply enjoying what for me has best $25 I have ever spent. With no plugins I made it to Mun, Minmus, Dres, Duna and Eeloo with return missions. I set up two large space stations in Kerbin orbit, one of them pretty large. It wasn't until I set about an Eve surface return mission that I installed KER. This wasn't achieved through a deep knowledge of orbital mechanics and the ability to make DV calculations of multi-stage vehicles, but by trial and error and rule of thumb. Is that accurate to real life astronautics, hell no. Was it an efficient way of getting around the Kerbol system, not a chance, as almost every ship I sent out, I had to rescue with a refueling tanker (even had to send two once) to bring them home. Would I have made quicker progress to these and other bodies if KER and other add-ons had been a part of the stock game, sure I would. BUT... it was amazing fun and that ultimately is the point of a game. Almost every mission was an Apollo 13, where I was forced to come up with a daring rescue plan to bring my little green guys home and at no time did I think that I had to have some add-ons to make the experience worthwhile. Regarding the point about not wanting to end up regretting spending money on KSP, I would simply ask how many hours do you have logged on the game and how much did you pay for it. I have about 2000 hours, for the princely sum of $25. Compare that with the many $50-70 experiences with triple A games that provide perhaps 25-100 hours, even with replay at higher difficulty levels and KSP has been for me, remarkably good value. I know that this can all seem as some kind of fanboy drivel, but I have plenty of gripes with the game (don't get me started on reliably positioning maneuver nodes and sliding landers) in it's previous iterations as well as its current form. How annoyed was I that I had to edit save files to bring unresponsive kerbals back to life and free un-undockable vehicles from space stations... really annoyed that how. But through all of that, the positives have been so massively outweighed by the positives. The usual disclaimer: This was my experience, but experiences may vary.

Excellent... most entertaining video I've seen on here for a while. It even included the extinct volcano hideout.

Although VR would probably be an interesting thing to experience within something like KSP, there's a bit problem with it for this particular game; controls. Even with Raster Prop Monitor allowing the player to remain in IVA throughout the mission, you really need to us the keyboard for sufficiently rapid control of the vehicle. Some controls could be moved to the VR systems' controllers, but these would not be sufficient to handle the number of actions that the player would need to access quickly, in order to control the vehicle sufficiently. Control is one of the biggest issues that a developer needs to address when working on a VR project (I'm currently in the early stages of one now using the HTC Vive) and that experience tells me that KSP as a whole simply isn't a good fit for VR for that reason. One part of KSP that probably would work well with however is EVA, as the controls are much simpler.

My moral rules. 1: Vehicles should be designed as hideously ugly as possible if it gets the job done (to ward off the kraken) 2: All kerbals are expendable (this they should know, if they read the really small print) 3: Leave as much debris littering the system as possible (how else will Kerbalkind make its mark on the universe) 4: If taking a good photo of a launch/landing/docking/... well, anything, results in the total loss of the vehicle and all crew, then so be it. You can never get enough good images for the piccy hungry press 5: Fuel efficiency is for wimps, burn as much, as inefficiently as possible at all time (how else will we drain the massive lakes of LF,LOX,Xenon and mono so that they can make way for development) (Sounds of a struggle, breaking furniture... you get the picture) "Er... sorry for that brief outburst from our soon to be EX director of marketing. The KSP would like to take this opportunity to restate its commitment to a safe, economical, environmentally sound and stylishly designed space program."

A bit of (not so) Rapid (not Un) Scheduled Disassembly Ejecting the various redundant parts on the Eve Redux before it's ascent to orbit.

Part 4 - Ascent After much waiting…. well… warping, the mining was done. The Eve Redux was fat with fuel ready for the climb up through the soup to orbit. First thing to do is to drop the mass of all those parts connected to the upper part of the lander, that won’t be needed for the ascent, these being the parachute packs and the “tail” of aero parts that steadied the vehicle during its decent. This was accomplished with the help of a Sepratron on each of the sections to be detached. It took a few seconds, even with the Sepratrons pushing the sections outward from the vehicle, due to the density of the atmosphere at about 1km ASL, but eventually all of them cleared the vehicle and fell to the ground with a satisfying fireworks display. Ok, all those bits are safely detached and not snagged on anything that’s about to go zooming upward. Sorry for all the litter Eve. The ISRU components separated from each other as well for some reason at this time. I had hoped to leave them on the surface as a functional fuel generation base, but oh well. Light ‘em up! All engines at the base of the vehicle, 5 Aerospikes, four Reliants and 4 Vectors rapidly push the ascent vehicle away from the ISRU base of the lander. With the Vectors providing a lot of directional thrust the vehicle was pretty easy to straighten up after launching from the slope that had been the Eve Redux’ home for the past few months. Time to drop the Vectors and the big tanks that have been feeding them after they’ve helped to punch the vehicle up 6km. Maxisa looks very concerned, maybe she knows something I don’t. At close to 16km it’s time to drop the first set of four Reliants. This went smoothly and the vehicle has good speed; things are looking good. Ah… should have kept my fat mouth shut as this is not so good. When I started to ease over the angle of ascent at about 26km, it pitches over way too far and I cut the engines It rolled around twice, each time I’d fire up the Aerospikes when they were pointing within about 45 degrees of the intended direction, so that at least some effort was still being made to get this thing where it needed to be I’d put small fins on the outer group of aerospike stages, but I messed up somehow and only attached them to one side of each tank, which most likely didn’t help. By the time it’s ascended to 34km the Eve Redux finally is stabilised with the remaining 5 engines continuing to push it on towards orbit. Phew! At least it’s survived this little mishap. Once it’s into the mid 40’s km the speed of the vehicle is giving it a nice red fiery glow. Time for the penultimate staging, with the dropping of the four outer Aerospikes. Things are looking good. As I try to adjust the ascent trajectory of the vehicle it pitches forward once more, spinning around four times, so it’s back to turning the engine on and off at the appropriate times, to keep the right movement going. Between 60 and 90km the vehicle is virtually un-thrusted, but hey… let’s see how this turns out. Finally out of the soup and thrusting parallel to the surface now. Things are finally looking up… or sideways… or something. The camera flips round about the vehicle… it’s in orbit. There’s still fuel in the Aerospike stage and I leave that to burn until I’ve pushed out the AP to 443km. Time to separate the final stage. Er… not so fast, it’s empty. Don’t know what happened there as it was full at takeoff. Time for a little fuel transfer, so I drain the Aerospike stage fuel into the tank for the final stage powered by a pair of Twitch engines. Enough fuel to half fill its tank. After separation we’re left with the tiny upper stage of the ascent vehicle, but we have plenty of fuel for circularising the orbit and rendezvous with the return tug vehicle. Back on the surface at the launch site, the Eve Redux has left a healthy collection of kit for any local scrap merchants. At least the Eve Redux itself is safely in orbit now in one piece.

They're making em big these days

Maxisa Kerman with the Eve Redux.

Part 3 - Landing After one more dash through the atmosphere to bring the elliptical orbit into something a little more circular, was that when I fired up a pair of the Vector engines to adjust my orbit, so that my next pass through wouldn’t send me crashing to the surface, nothing happened. Oh the engines lit up fine, but all I did was burn fuel, with no change to my trajectory. Hmmm… strange I thought. Why could that possibly be? Then a thought occurred to me. As my engines were behind the protective shroud of the inflatable heatshield, perhaps the modelling of the thrust from them was being negated by the ejected mass hitting the inside of the shield, pushing the vehicle backwards with the same thrust that was pushing it forwards. I thought it unlikely, as it seemed a little too realistic (assuming that it would actually behave that way in reality), but I thought I’d test this by Hyperediting another lander into Kerbin orbit, and firing the engines before deploying the heatshield. Lo and behold the vehicle behaved as normal with a rapid change in velocity. Ok… what to do next… this is what. I decided that rather than scrap the whole mission, I’d do an “in place update” by hyperediting a new version of the lander into Eve orbit and editing the save file to put Maxisa in the driving seat. “CHEAT” I hear you cry… “Shame, shame on you”. Ok, strictly speaking it’s cheating… or as I prefer to call it, not wasting an entire evening doing “almost” exactly what I did the one before, so I decided to go with my ever so cheaty “plan B” The new lander came with a couple of small outrigger engines attached to the base that I would detach and then use the AGU’s on them to re-attach to the fuel tanks above the useless Vector engines (but with access to the fuel they contained). I didn’t bother putting any solar panels on the outriggers, so I had to be quick about getting them re-attached to the Eve Redux. Once both were attached, I detached the gantry that they had been connected to, leaving me with my original vehicle, with an un-deployed inflatable heatshield and a couple of outrigger engines that sat outside the protective envelope of that heatshield once deployed. I could have just not gone with the outriggers and instead just fire up the Vectors as originally planned, now that the heatshield was not “getting in the way”, but that seemed like a cheat too far. With my new configuration of vehicle in place I had the means to adjust my orbit to make a few more passes through the atmosphere above a “you’re going down to the surface right now” altitude. Once I was in a more appropriate orbit for a descent, I set a manoeuvre node with a PE of 35km then deployed the heatshield Then I lit up the outriggers at the appropriate time and waited for the Eve atmosphere to do the rest. As expected the Eve atmosphere did a good job of quickly decelerating the Eve Redux and the speed quickly fell off. In the process the outriggers, their usefulness at an end, burned off with the expected firework display. Ok… now were back on the original track, with the heat shield deployed and the pair of Vector’s behind it ready to slow the lander at the very end of the descent. Ok.. I forgot how deep the atmosphere on Eve is, so I’m still here burning down to the surface. Finally the vehicle slowed enough for it to pitch over into a more vertical orientation and I remembered that I have airbrakes on this thing, so they were deployed. Getting close now, so it’s time to deploy the chutes, which I did about 2.5km above the surface. With the heatshield detached it was possible for my Vectors to have some kind of purpose, in this case bringing my lander down to a nice slow touchdown. Congratulations all round to the guys back at the KSC, the Eve Redux is on the surface of Eve. But what’s this… why are my chutes still deployed… it’s not stopped moving, that’s why. Yep, I’d landed on a slope, not a steep one, but steep enough with the new physics to have the vehicle slide along the ground at 0.5m/s which meant that my vehicle thought they still had a job to do. Finally, after all the sliding, the twisting around I made to the vehicle and probably hitting a marginally flatter bit of terrain, the Eve Redux came to a halt… well, almost. It was still moving at about 0.1m/s, but that was slow enough for the chutes to disappear and for me to be able to make a quicksave. With the lander “stabilised” the drills were deployed and the Convert-o-Tron 250 fired up to brew Maxisa some tasty fuel for the trip home. With them doing their part for the return journey, Maxisa went outside to taste the Eve air (something she quickly decided was a bad idea before jamming her helmet back on) and planting the obligatory flag. For the eagle-eyed among you, this is the point where I fired up my game with Stock Visual Enhancements installed... I'm a now big fan. Here she is getting that all important “me and my lander photo” that the people back home always want to see. While here she can be seen in a close-up of the ISRU gear going about its all important work. Finally she climbed back into the Mk2 lander can at the base of the vehicle (I made sure to include one here as it meant not attaching a ton of ladders, as I had on my previous Eve landers) transferred to her home at the top of the Eve Redux and settled in for the long wait for the trip home.

Maxisa adjusting her re-entry trajectory to bring the Eve Redux in over land after returning from the surface of Eve. Then re-entry itself I'm really liking the improvement to the visuals that SVE/Scatter combined is making to the game, so props to the people behind those addons.

Part 2 - Outbound With the tugs docked to the lander and the launch window arrived, it’s time to burn for Eve. After about five minutes of the outbound burn it was time to drop four empty liquid fuel tanks from the pair of tugs. Eight more of these 400 unit tanks to go, plus 720 units in the center tanks on the tugs. Ok… we’re on our way to Eve. Just need to tighten up the approach and align to the plane. Leaving Kerbin in the rear view mirror Maxisa settles in for the long wait until the plane alignment and course correction burn. Well here’s that burn. With the burn completed the approach to Eve is much improved. The mission plan was to separate the tugs from the lander just after the plane alignment burn, to allow them to dock together and have all fuel and monopropellant (never know if you’re going to need that last bit of thrust) from one to the other. The fueled tug becoming the return vehicle to bring Maxisa back to Kerbin, while the other would sail on past Eve. After the fuel transfer and undocking, the return tug made a small burn to change its trajectory to Eve, delaying its arrival there until four hours after the lander, to give plenty of time to get that into orbit, before switching attention to the tug. After millions of kilometres and several hours of gameplay, this is finally it! Eve awaits. At about 5km/s the Eve Redux slammed into the atmosphere of the purple giant. The PE was set to 72km, so it was nice to have that big inflatable heat shield up front. This altitude allowed for aero capture without consuming fuel, placing the Eve Redux in an elliptical orbit, while attention focused on doing the same for the return vehicle. Four hours after the Eve Redux’ red hot aerobraking it was the turn of the return vehicle to get into Eve orbit. Unfortunately this vehicle was not designed for a fiery pass through Eve’s atmosphere, so it’s trajectory had it skim it at 89km. This did require however that some fuel be consumed to bring it into a highly elliptical orbit. With both vehicles in orbit it was time to manoeuvre the Eve Redux into a more suitable orbit for a controlled entry. However it was at this point that a serious problem was discovered, that would prevent a descent to the surface. Will the kerb's fix it or just quit early for lunch and not bother... find out in Part 3 “Landing” (I guess the title's a hint)

So here goes with the mission report. As it's quite length and pics heavy I've broken it into five parts, with parts 1 and 2 posted today, the others to follow later. Part 1 - Assembly The starting point for the Eve Redux was that of all returns trips to Eve, lifting off from Kerbin. The vehicle weighed in at 687 tonnes on the pad. A really smooth ride up through the atmosphere on a pair of Mammoths and onto the Rhino (a rare example of me using this engine). With the Rhino stage exhausted a pair of Skippers complete the work of putting the lander into a 279km orbit of Kerbin. With the Eve Redux safely in orbit it’s the time to send up something to push the lander to Eve. Again a smooth by the numbers launch of a pair of nuke powered tug vehicles inside the fairing. ”Thar she blows”. The Eve Redux with the intrepid Maxisa Kerman onboard, is eager to get those tugs attached and to get on the move to Eve. Here comes tug number one. Docking this was more challenging than normal as there was very little clearance between the lander and the fuel tanks of the tugs. Ok… time for tug number 2. Unfortunately we’ve passed into Kerbin’s shadow, fortunately the tugs are equipped with lights. With the docking of the two tugs complete, the vehicle is ready for the trip to Eve.

I don't know if it's the most horrible but good old Rolley Kermans death (or at least MIA status) was the weirdest I've had. He was sent to explore the abandoned airfield off the coast from the KSC and after a couple of minutes of driving his lander/rover around he was instantly catapulted to a position a few thousand kilometres from Kerbin, heading away from it at very high speed. To make matters worse, there was clearly no chance of a return to Kerbin as it was only the Mk2 lander can that he was in that the airfield anomaly flicked into the black abyss. I assume the rest of his vehicle ending up somewhere in the intestines of the Kraken. A cold lonely death to be sure... well, until he popped up on the roster again.

I'm going to have to go with the Rhino as being the worst engine, based on the number of times I've glanced at it and thought about putting it on my launcher as the 1st stage, for reality to kick in a moment later and remind me to put the Mammoth on instead, due to the the efficiency of running it at sea level being so much better, even when using the Mammoth is overkill. If I remember correctly the sea level efficiency of it was nerfed a few version ago. Ok, the Rhino can be used as a 2nd stage engine, but except for really large launchers, it's likely to be overkill itself by the time the Mammoth has run dry. It's just one of the engines that I never seem to need to use.

Probably I should have considered aerodynamics more, but my last landing on Eve was in 0.90 when aero wasn't as big a deal as it is now, so it's shape follows roughly that of my older Eve landers, like this one.

Well it was ascending all of the time, just not as quickly as planned a couple of time. I brought Maxina Kerman back to Kerbin this evening and here are a few pics from the mission. Full mission report (with lots more pics) to follow later. Docking the Eve Redux lander with one of the tugs in Kerbin orbit Burning the outboard motors (more to be explained in the mission report) to descend to Eve surface Maxina on the surface Launch from Eve Coming in to land on Kerbin

This time what I actually did today, rather than many things done over the last couple of years. A shaky ascent, but as the old maxim goes... any return from eve you get to tell the tale of is a good one.

Here's the tale of my 1st Eve return mission since v0.90. Links below to parts all parts. Part 1 - Assembly Part 2 - Outbound Part 3 - Landing Part 4 - Ascent Part 5 - Return

I put this image together for the 1001st page in the What Did You Do in KSP Today forum, using just a few of the screenshots I've grabbed over the last (almost) two years playing the game. 1001 things to do in KSP (well... not quite)

Something for page 1001. 1001 thing to do in KSP (well... no quite)

Gotta get something in on page 1000 and what better that a long delayed return to Eve, Here Maxisa Kerman can be seen readying a flag for planting at the site of her vehicles' landing site (where it's busy making fuel for her return to orbit) My first Eve return mission since the Eve Party Boat in v0.90.

I'm new to this thread so I may not be aware of the details of what's being discussed, but if faced with an iconic (or close to it) character, I'd be tempted to subvert it in some way, so for example giving Wernher a strong accent, but one which is not expected (e.g. scouse, French, southern USA) and then play on that for additional detail/humour. This would also allow for fleshing out the character with an unexpected backstory.

For most of my "work" (wow, that's a fancy word for my few muddled stories about kerbals kerballing in the kosmos) I tend to go ad-hoc as Jim does, writing something that seems "correct" for the events portrayed, but making use of accepted/familiar elements of the KSP universe (Jeb is brave/crazy, rocket dev on a shoe string budget etc.) There are some exceptions to this, in that the more I write the more I develop my own canon to stick to (or at least steer in the direction of/use as a useful prop). For the 2001 A Space Absurdity, most of the details of my writing (ok, hands up... the basis of this was written for me over 4 decades ago by some rather well known people) I had no idea of what what the characters would be like, the way events would be portrayed (e.g. HAL portrayed as a pre-schooler) until I had to make the decision on what these would be. For example the ending was just coincidental, with the imminent release of v1.1. of KSP I realised that I had an opportunity to tie in to this in a way that made sense in terms of the plot I'd developed so far, as well as the source material. All of this with one overriding directive... always go for the funny. Written after a bottle or so of wine, so all bets are off

Maxisa Kerman on the surface of Eve. After setting of the ISRU equipment to produce the fuel for her to get home, she went about the serious business of flag planting.