Gaarst

Moar testing, and moar reentries:

You can start a normal career, then give you thousands of science using cheats or by editing your savefile and unlock everything.

I am in GMT too

There's no problem, I was just giving European times so that Eur people (myself included) actually knew when to show up.

Started testing a new small shuttle concept built for the new 1.0.5 Mk1 crew pod, for RSS.

For European people, 7pm EST is midnight GMT, 1am CET, 3am MSK.

Free comms between MC crew, and free comms between ship crew, with only CapCom having access to both is indeed what we are planning. I'm not sure I got the part about the "console guys" though: who do you exactly mean by "console guys" ? And we are open to any suggestions, including more complicated forms of chat, as long as it is justified and not adding complexity just for fun. I agree, this is why we consider PAO to be very important. A discussion going on about PAO is to decide if we should let people asking for the role and give them or if we ourselves should go ask someone to be PAO for the mission. Ideally, what we would like is to get one of the "big" KSP streamers (or at least a person who has experience with streaming) to be PAO. They would be able to keep people who are watching entertained, and also able to handle technical issues concerning the stream or recording. We first want to get as far as we can on the planning so that the people we would ask for the PAO position see that we are really serious about this, and hopefully accept. - - - Updated - - - You are right, having a PAO assistant would be a great thing. But then again, we will have to see the details of all this with the actual PAO. We can't really make any critical decision about this for now.

Probably, but we will go in more detail once we know exactly the type of mission we are doing. We are still discussing whether we will do a copy of Apollo 8 (manned) or an unmanned mission with the same flight plan, so that it is less complex for MC (an unmanned mission, even several days long, is easier to manage than any manned mission). If the Apollo 8 is unmanned, then we will probably do a manned Apollo 6 to test all comms with the crew in orbit while staying in LEO to cut the mission duration to a few hours.

Yes, mission control will have its own chat, while the crew will have theirs. Only CapCom (and maybe INCO) will be able to hear the two at the same time. CapCom will then have to transmit everything said by MC to the crew. The other way of transmitting info (Telemachus) will reduce comms from the crew to MC. CapCom will transmit to whoever he's talking to. But it will be his and Flight's role to make sure the comms are recieved by their targets, this includes telling the others to shut up Regarding what will be heard by the spectators, we haven't decided yet. We really need a PAO to set up all the things about the stream or the recording. - - - Updated - - - No definite plans yet, but we will aim for an Apollo 6 or 8 around Thanksgiving, and the real mission around Christmas. Keep in mind that these dates rely on a lot factors, and therefore might change a lot depending on the crew's availability...

Yes a double Steam/Skype chat was what we were planning for having two separate chats. Of course, this might change, considering we're still in the early phases of planning.

Because Minmus is made out of glass. This has been known for a long time and I'm actually surprised it hasn't been corrected yet.

This is a known bug, fixes for it are available here, or here.

Basically you will be managing the entire launch up to orbit That includes making sure everything is nominal for the whole ascent, also making sure the booster is fully operational, you'll also have to manage and take the decisions concerning any abort procedure during the ascent. You will also have to make sure that all debris or spent stages are taken care of. Also, you will have to manage all of the lunar descent and ascent (possibly until CSM redocking), again imagine all scenari and abort procedures. For this you'll have to work a lot with RSO during early launch, Retro (burns), FIDO (trajectories) and myself, the FAO (managing more or less all activities related to crew). If you want more information, you'll have to talk with ZooNamedGames who organises everything.

Booster/Control is not taken, welcome to the team !

We would have to see this with PAO. Once we got a PAO, we'll be able to handle the "public" aspect. Still the flight will have regular comms between the ship and the ground crew, but it is right that there will be long empty periods. Thing is, if we don't have someone to properly stream our mission, getting that stuff planned is a but useless. Also, if we end up streaming the mission on KSPTV, I guess that regular streamers will keep their streams schduled, even if the times are changed. Great idea though! And you're right that planning several days of stream is a tough thing. For now, we've settled on more like a Apollo 11 style mission. The main reason for it is that, for now a rover/jeep is not planned to be taken up there. Planning EVA activities is my role as FAO, and I am far from done planning the time spent landed, so I am open to suggestions. Just remember that we are limited by hardware, so doing a little science and bringing back some rocks is ok, but strapping a monolith to the ascent stage will not happen. - - - Updated - - - Also, for everyone that is involved in the mission, ZNG has give his Steam name a few posts up. It would be a good thing if you could add him, as for now, Steam chat is our main way of communicating for the planning of the mission.

No. (5char)

Are you talking to me ? Because Kagame applied for CMP, not me

Isn't the_patzer already our LMP ?

AFAIK, we don't have a PAO yet so you'll have to see with whoever will be PAO. Also I think ZNG wanted to have the mission hosted on KSPTV (not the whole duration of the mission obviously), and a recorded video would be nice (I don't know how KSPTV handles its VODs). @ZooNamedGamer BTW, have you asked for a KSPTV host already ? I know that is a bit early since we have no schedule nor dates, but at least we could know if it a KSPTV stream can happen or not. I can ask if you wish. Considering the mission relies on a lot of mods, it is possible that a few will be broken by 1.0.5. We then would have to do the mission on 1.0.4. I agree on that, also we should have RSO or Boosters managing the debris (S-IC and S-II down to Earth, S-IVB crash on the Moon...), then we would need to have control on these debris anyway. ZNG's original plan was to use FASA's Saturn V. If a kOS auto-pilot is used, then we will have to stick with whatever rocket it is programmed for. Of course, if we can get someone coding a custom program for the mission, that would be great.

You're right, we don't have to do both missions. I think we should at least do the second one: we'll get a good taste of how the final mission is going turn out, and it will only be a few hours long. It can be easily done over an afternoon/evening in a week-end. I totally agree with you, we obviously can't plan the mission by just sending everyone do something on their own and meet all together right before final countdown. Even if people work on planning their tasks on their own, giving a regular summary of what they have done to CapCom or FD is viable, IMO. Of course meeting every so often will be needed. Then again, as you said, having everyone at each meeting is not required. I think planning thoroughly is the key to success, but doing too much can make the thing more of a burden than anything else: after all, primary objective is to get a nice experience, and spend a good time.

Even though we're still missing some crew, I started thinking about the mission, and came up with this idea: add 2 mission to the schedule which will act as tests (and hopefully do at least one of them): 1) An unmanned test mission with the whole payload, so orbit Moon and return; and possibly test the lander (no need to land it completely though). Kinda like an unmanned Apollo 9/10 mission. The goal of this mission will be to test systems, comms and coordination of the ground crew in "real" conditions. Astronauts not required, but faking comms with astronauts in the Apollo ship would make the mission even more realistic. Complete Saturn V launcher required. Mission will last about the same duration as the real mission, but due to it being unmanned, we wouldn't need to be present as often as with the real mission. 2) A manned test mission in LEO of all the flight procedures. Complete Apollo ship is not required but we would at least need a command and service module, and a ship faking the lander, that will be able to undock from the command module, manoeuvre in space, and redock with the command module. The service module and lander need not to be completely fueled: this will reduce mass, and hopefully try to launch the mission with a Saturn IB. If a Saturn IB is not possible, then use a Saturn V, and we will hence be able to use complete lander and modules. Objectives are: to rehearse all flight operations, while staying in LEO (translunar injection, LEM manoeuvres and docking, maybe emergency procedures...), to again test systems, communications, and coordinations of the ground crew, this time with an actual crew in orbit. We could probably cut the mission down to a few hours, but as all operations will be very close, we will need all crew operational during the duration of the mission. These will allow us to figure out how the real mission will happen, and possibly correct/anticipate everything that could go wrong. I also think we should make the mission more "personal": even though we would be reproducing a Apollo mission, with the Apollo hardware, it would be nice to get a name of our own (for the program and individual missions), insignias for the mission... Also, as soon as we can, a briefing with all the members of the mission(s) is needed to make sure everyone know their role in detail and can prepare for it as good as possible.

I am FAO. And if: there is someone to take my place as FAO and no one has the role of LMP and I can stay 78h connected, then I might take the role of LMP. So for now, just forget about me being LMP, and we'll think about it later if and only if all these conditions are met. Happy ?

Sorry already taken ! I may change to LMP if I find time for the entire mission though. I still think that ZNG should update OP with candidates so that people can see which roles are taken or not.

If you want to make saves that will not be overwritten, press Alt+F5 to save, and Alt+F9 to load. When doing this, it will open a menu which will allow to name/save/load saves even if you F5 several times after.

This is so wrong; like really, really, really wrong, in all aspects you can possibly imagine. General Relativity states that gravity distorts space and time, so mass doesn't matter: particles without mass will be affected by gravitation (maybe not all types of particles, but photons are definitely affected by it, it is observed empirically). We do actually, thanks to Maxwell, Einstein, Planck and ultimately everyone who helped creating the standard model (which even though incomplete is pretty accurate) and quantum mechanics. Then again, we pretty much know how this works, thanks to Newton and Einstein (again). Except in black holes or at really high energies (like Big-Bang high); thing is we don't really know how anything works in singularities.