pTrevTrevs

Really awesome album; did you use some kind of post-processing to get this orange glow?

A couple other props you could consider might be the tripod television camera, the S-band antenna dish used on H missions (don’t know if J missions also used it but I think not), the solar wind composition experiment (the one that looked like a sail to catch particles and which was returned to Earth), and the Apollo 11 seismic package.

I remember in one of your ALSEP streams you mentioned making props like the gnomon; is that still on the table? Also, are there any plans to make a special power unit for these parts? I know we already have an RTG in stock Breaking Ground, but it comes super late in the tech tree and unless you bring a really high-XP engineer you’re going to need as many of those as you have experiments, which limits how many stations you can bring with you.

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is blocked, huh? Sounds like an ideal timeline to me. Looking forward to see what comes next!

Was this... intentional?

Ah okay! I know about that mod, but didn't think it would be compatible with KSRSS. Would you be able to provide instructions for how to properly implement it? I have a sort of rough Edwards AFB set up for my own save, but it's nothing compared to this.

I’m gonna need a link to whatever mod that is which gets Edwards AFB into KSRSS.

Whoa, I was only joking; I didn't expect you to actually make this thing.

Do the Apollo 14 explosives experiment, I dare you.

What I usually do is as follows: 1) Unlock the hinge for the white cover plate holding the entire assembly inside the LM quadrant and lower it to about 30 degrees below horizontal. 2) Unlock and unfold the Canadarm hinge for the rear third of the rover itself, then extend the rear wheels. 3) Have a Kerbal board the rover for control once it's detached, and raise the front half of the rover to as high a position as can be managed without clipping into the LM itself. 4) Trigger the decoupler underneath the rover's chassis to disconnect it from the cover panel. I have staging disabled on it by default to prevent myself from accidentally triggering it, so unless you reenable it you will need to manually right-click the decoupler. 5) While carefully unfolding the front section and extending its wheels, slowly reverse the rover off the cover pallet until it sits firmly on the ground. If the rover's rear wheels aren't getting enough traction, disengage the motor on the cover panel's hinge and allow it to fall freely to the ground. 6) Deploy the antennas and sensors on the vehicle. Besides the large dish antenna borrowed from Strawman, there's a smaller antenna on the driver's console as well as a surface scanner on the back. The rover gets electrical power from two small RTGs clipped into the back section, but they aren't really enough to power every science experiment at once. Not with Kerbalism, anyway. Speaking of Kerbalism, the oxygen tank on the rover should supply enough air for two Kerbals to spend upwards of a twelve hours outside the spacecraft, while the RTGs will keep their suits powered. The LRV can easily exceed ten or fifteen meters per second, but for safety's sake I try to keep it below five. I've neglected to add any kind of control to the rover beyond the Kerbal's seats, so it needs crew to operate its experiments and transmit data, but for the purposes I use it for that's never been a problem.

Already posted some of these in @ballisticfox0's Gas Giants Enhanced thread, but I forgot to put them here as well. Pioneer 10 at Jupiter:

Here's a craft file for my LRV in its Apollo 17 configuration, for those who have been asking. https://drive.google.com/file/d/14fbEdFvNQoLr0nhd4d3Ipb-W3F2tUYKW/view?usp=sharing In addition to the BDB dev branch, the file uses parts from Kerbalism, Near-Future Construction, ReStock, Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit, Making History, and Breaking Ground.

Incredibly based.

Hey check it out; I finally got the shot!

You wouldn't be the first to ask. Next time I boot up KSP I'll see if I can prepare a craft file that just has the LM and the LRV, to minimize the chance of missing parts. I've got a lot of different mods and both DLCs in the build, though.

Man those images are looking exceptionally sharp. I’ve got to ask, are you using any visual mods or a TUFX config that I might not be aware of, or do you just have your game’s resolution cranked up really high?

Gonna take this opportunity to lobby for additional J-series LM modifications, like the extended MESA or maybe even a texture variant or two: http://www.ninfinger.org/karld/My Space Museum/mesa.htm http://www.ninfinger.org/models/LM-11/LunarModuleOrion.html

Apollo 17 Part 3: Apollo at the Limit: I'm starting to wonder just how many screenshots I can get away with posting here; other than a few parts on the rover, more and more of them don't even feature BDB... Anyway, the final moonwalk of Apollo 17 will be centered around the central peak of Tsiolkovsky crater, where it is expected that the oldest geologic material will be found. This colossal mountain was formed shortly after the initial Tsiolkovsky impact, when rock which was forced down from its original position rebounded and pushed up a great mass of material from beneath the surface. Although this phenomenon can happen on Earth, it is much more common on the Moon, where the lower gravity enables much smaller craters to form central peaks. Although appearing steep and jagged from orbit, this mountain is much like the other slopes encountered on the moon, being low and rounded. Thanks to this, the LRV should have no trouble reaching the summit of the mountain and providing the mission with what will likely become some of the most iconic photographs of the entire Apollo program...

Yeah Hyginus and Marius have both been on my radar, but the problem with both of those is that I’m pretty sure they’re both in the Oceanus Procellarum biome which I’ve already sampled. Marius Hills also has the added complication of not being big enough to be distinguished with KSRSS’s scale and terrain detail, and without any recognizable features such as the Hole, there’s no reason to land there over any other site. On the other hand somewhere like Copernicus will still retain some identifying features that I can plan the mission around. Alphonsus… had completely slipped my mind before now. I think Mare Nubium has its own biome in KSRSS, so that might actually be a viable site. Hmm, thanks for the tip.

Even I have my limits. Seriously though, I’m running out of worthwhile landing sites. I’ve sampled almost every biome on the Moon, and I don’t want to land anywhere that wasn’t considered historically. So for Apollo 18 I’m probably going to Schroter’s Valley, even though I’ve already sampled the biome it’s in. I wanted to go to Copernicus for Apollo 19 but since it’s also in Mare Imbrium it would be even more redundant. Right now I’m looking at Gassendi and Mare Humorum, but I’m not sure where I’ll send ‘19 yet.

Apollo 17 Part 2: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Here's hoping all of my uploads went through correctly... This is an approximate traverse map for the Apollo 17 mission, based roughly on a hypothetical one I found somewhere on the internet. Challenger has landed north of Tsiolkovsky's central peak and is in range of a number of interesting geological formations. Firstly, the mare which covers most of the crater's floor has intrigued lunar geologists because most of the far side lacks such terrain. Questions abound about whether this mare was formed in the same way as the prominent near side lowlands, as well as whether its chemical makeup will be different from the otherwise similar areas sampled on the near side. The crater rim is slightly too far away to reach with the LRV, and even if that weren't the case its walls are likely too steep to scale anyway, but orbital photography shows evidence of numerous rockslides which have caused material from the crater's walls and rim to slide down onto the floor. The goal of the second EVA will be to reach the debris field of these rockslides and search for ancient highland material there. Apollo 17 will be the only mission to visit the far side, so it is imperative that the crew retrieve both mare and highland material to compare to existing samples from near side landings. Finally, the massive central peak of the crater, formed when rock pushed outward by the initial impact rebounded back towards its original location, is thought to be composed of extremely ancient deep crust material forced upward during the impact. If possible, the crew will attempt to summit the mountain, affording them an unbeatable view of the entire crater as well as some of the oldest material yet recovered from the Moon. Honestly I'm just ready to get to Skylab at this point, but I refuse to be outdone by NASA, we are doing Apollos 18 and 19 and that's final.

God-willing, they’ll add all the Titan IIIE payloads, Viking, Voyager, and that weird little satellite that went up (and down) on the first one…

Hmm, not quite the Saturn I, not quite the Saturn IB. What would this hybrid be called, the Saturn IA?

Those use LH2 for propellant, no? Is the insulation just good enough to prevent boiloff long enough to refuel the entire ET?