Jakalth

I beg too differ. It might seem to not be the most interesting place to visit, but it is a great place to stop and refuel. It's location, between Jool and Duna, is a prime relay point. And best of all, it has a plethora of smooth landing sites for your weary Kerbals to stretch their legs. It's such a welcoming planet to visit and is glad to offer its surface too the weary traveler. I visited it on my way back from my Jool mission here: Jakalth finally flies a successful Jool mission. So the Love is there, people just need to see it for the great place it really is. Such a friendly planet.

I am posting this on behalf of a friend of mine, Gaming with Ryan (Ryan123220). He's a gamer, a fellow KSP fan, and an all around nice guy. He's starting a series where he'll be colonizing the Mun, but in a BIG way that should make it all more interesting. This isn't his first KSP series but he's trying things a little differently this time, with his videos, and would appreciate the comments and support as he continues his series. For now, he's keeping the videos short and sweet, allowing the progress of his mission to be easier to follow. His colonization mission is in a modded install of KSP, so you know ahead of time, but he is running all his launches/mission clean from start to finish. So this means he's showing what happens from launch to landing, and beyond. Lets give him a little support. His mission starts here, with his first launch video: [h=1] [/h]And don't worry, his spelling and grammar is better then mine. :edit: Why do I suddenly feel like a poorly done infomercial? huh...

Tylo, Lathe, Vall. Any of those three moons can give your ship nice gravity break to slow you down just enough to be captured, if you pass by them in just the right way. This all depends on your speed and how you enter the system. I basically just guessed at my entry and then burned for the rest, but I had the delta-V to throw around. And a craft that handled like a bus, with a broken steering wheel and three flat tires.(too many parts, too big, too impatient). Using one of the moons, if you can find the right fly by, can get you captured into the system for only the cost of altering your initial encounter with the Jool system. After that, you'll still need to fiddle your way into a tighter orbit and/or get yourself captured with the Moon of your choice. Your initial orbit will most likely be a large one unless you can find the right spot to get multiple gravity breaks from more then one moon. Otherwise, aerobreaking on Lathe is a good option. Jool can slow you down faster but is a much less forgiving aerobreak partner. Or even doing a combo of aerobreaking on Lathe and then a gravity capture off a second moon.

Did you let Chuck Norris roundhouse kick one of your rockets again?!?

Build a supersonic plane, if you have the engines unlocked, and fly it nearly suborbital height(around 20,000m) at supersonic speed. Then try to maintain this height and stay supersonic long enough to go at least half way around kerbal without having any parts burn off. Not a huge challenge, but it is good practice for flying space planes. Finding and then riding on the edge of that fine line between the plane getting hot, and the parts burning up. The closer and more consistently you can ride that line, the more efficiently you can launch space planes.

Or you could "fake" an engine. "Any custom parts are acceptable, within reason, if you can explain how it works and it's made only from the parts in the following list."

Just an ugly little mining rover. Ok, not so ugly, and not so little, but it gets the job done. This one is destined for Duna. It can deorbit it's self and land on the surface, drive around(all be it, carefully...), refuel it's self once explorations are done, and relaunch it's self to orbit. It has a TWR of 1.30 in Duna atmosphere so launching for orbit can be tight on fuel. But for descending, it has an additional 8 parachutes and 8 airbrakes to help slow it down. On the surface, it flexes a bit and turns like a bus, but it works. Top speed: 24m/s. Top safe speed on uneven surfaces: 12m/s roughly... I really need to make these things more compact...

The premise: Your crew of two Kerbals was descending to the surface of a planet(which planet doesn't matter really) in their mining rig + sky crane style descent stage. Nearing the surface, their descent stage engines cut out. Their craft began to accelerate quickly and they had only seconds to react. In a desperate move, they inverted the craft and used the descent stage as a large crush bag to soften the impact. The trick worked, but their craft was torn apart from the force of the impact with only a scattering of parts that remained salvageable. The plan: Using just the parts that survived the crash, the crew needs to build a craft that can move them to a safe distance from the leaking radioactive debris of the descent stages nuclear engines. Along with this, they need to find a way to contact the orbiting relay satellite to call for help. 1: Build some type of vehicle to move the crew to safety. It needs to be able to at least move, the rest is a matter of storytelling. 2: Build some type of communications device(tower, antenna, etc..) to contact the satellite. It only needs to look like it would work. 3: Be creative and have fun with the build. You do not need to use all the parts from the crash, but only the parts that survived can be used to make something. Any custom parts are acceptable, within reason, if you can explain how it works and it's made only from the parts in the following list. Part List: 1 mk2 Liquid Fuel Fuselage 2 mk2 Liquid Fuel Fuselage short 1 mk2 Cockpit 2 mk1 Liquid Fuel Fuselage 2 2.5m to mk2 adaptor 1 mk2 to 1.25m adaptor 10 TR-2L Ruggedized vehicular wheels(most were damaged but salvageable) 12 Modular Girder Segments(the shorter ones) 2 SP-L 1x6 Photovoltaic Panels 2 Radiator Panel (large) 2 Radiator Panel (small) 1 Shielded Docking Port 5 PB-NUK RTG's(2 badly damaged) 2 mk2-R Radial Parachutes 1 Telus-LV Ladder I'd love to see what you can come up with. Remember, the crew is working with damaged parts and in a rough environment with limited tools. So extra points for making your craft look like it was bodged together. note: points don't matter, this is just for fun.

That little guy does look good. Well done.

I'd say this: "The Crane has lifted." You know, if you attached the small rigid wheeled landing gear to the back of it's "knees", you could have it land on those and then pivit up onto it's feet again once it's slowed down enough. Should be doable.

Well, I guess I could submit my Jool run as part of this contest. I had sent a Tug and trailer type ship configuration too Jool, with the intention of visiting every moon and returning too kerbin. The mission had its little problems but in the end I was able to visit all the moons of Jool, Eeloo, Dres, and Duna before returning home. The whole mission was run in sandbox mode though. Mission log and screenshots of the mission: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/135614-Jakalth-finally-works-on-a-functional-Jool-mission The final verdict of the mission is as follows: Total mission success: 93% Completion of Jool 5 contest: Failed... Reason for Failure: Unable to return 2 kerbins due to failure of the Laythe plane design. Total cost: 2,564,508 Kredits at launch Total number of Kerbins brought along: 19 Number of parts left behind: 1 fuel module(expendable at Kerbin), 1 minitug module(expendable in Jool and Laythe orbits), 1 Tylo lander(disposed of properly), 2 laythe planes with crew(unacceptable, but crew is recoverable) Total number of refuels: 9, using Lamp Post drive section(tug) to refuel its self and the modules Total science collected: 0(was playing in sandbox) but all craft had at least 5 different science collecting gadgets and the crews went eva on each landing. for something to due while I waited for mining to finish. Total time spent in space: 18 years, 238 days(around 4 weeks IRL, covering a massive 85 hours) :Edit: Forgot to add... Only mod used was Kerbal Engineer Redux. Part wise, it's 100% stock. Level of contest this qualifies for: IRSU level I had to fight very low initial frame rates, several poorly judged maneuver burns, and a game/save that had become corrupted to the point of being unplayable(the corruption was my fault, not cleaning up the game since 0.24). But I made it back, and the Lamp post it's self survived the whole trip.

Yeah, instead of constant acceleration, I was getting uncontrollable, cyclic oscillation, with or without SAS engaged. Using anything other then stardard SAS hold(like retrograde, target, etc...) would result in SAS not responding and the craft acting like SAS had been turned off. RCS would do the same thing and become unresponsive with anything other then standard SAS hold. I had a rank 4 Pilot at the helm so that wouldn't account for it, I also had at least 1 other part I could switch control too that also had access to the other hold types(the large remote guidance part on the passenger module). The game was just suffering from severe bloat and a corrupted save. I hadn't done a clean reinstall since Version 0.24 of the game so that was partly too blame. I backup ed everything that was important, craft file wise, and did a full uninstall/reinstall of the game. Everything works far smoother now. Controls are clean, nodes go where they are supposed to, and the game just seems to run faster now. Seems it really needed this to be done.

I wasn't sure if it qualified for the Jool 5 compitition due to the way I did this mission. I'm missing some of the crucial launch and coupling screenshots.

That is one wacky machine Bubbadevlin. Has a bit of a steampunk feel too it. Love the use of stock landing gear bearings to make it all work.

So, I took your suggestion to heart and made a lighter version of the Sky Hopper. Sky Hopper Mk.2 LT, is considerably lighter in weight and has a much higher stable top speed too boot. 150+m/s. This little craft can get into even smaller locations then it's predecessor. Being it's also an experimental VTOL only craft, it's flight controls are a bit unusual to get used too. There are no aerodynamic forces to control the craft other then roll control. It's much safer to land this craft on the buildings around KSP now that it weighs less then the break threshold of the buildings. Jeb, That's not what I meant by "landing" on that building... Sky Hopper Mk.2 LT(download) I could probably add some inverted landing gear to right the craft if it ends up on its roof like this. That way it can be righter and continue flying. As it stands, the lower SAS control isn't strong enough to turn it over if it goes turtle.

making it lighter might not be a bad idea actually. It was a bit sketchy landing it on top of mission control as it is. Had too touch down nice and gentle to prevent the building's roof from buckling. As for the beams, well, they are easy to use. that is the only reason I went with that for the pylons. That, and adding aerodynamic surfaces actually hiders it's flight performance, other then the single tail surface. You don't want anything wing like on a purely VTOL only craft like this. Wings produce lift, lift wants to go forwards, so tipping the nose down to get forward thrust means the wings push the craft towards the ground...

Well, I logged in to fly the Lamp Post too Eve Only to find that the game is so badly corrupted now that it's barely playable. I need to finish this mission and reinstall the game with a clean install to clear this up. So instead of all the fun of going to eve and maybe Moho, it's back to Kerbin instead. Starting from Ike orbit, I plotted an ike escape orbit, catching Duna in the process. With just a little extra delta-V, the Ike escape became a Duna escape thanks to a Duna gravity slingshot. This burn only needed 155m/s delta-V to get escape trajectory. Part of the way through this slingshot, the game corruption took hold again and broke the burn. I basicly had to start the burn over again from this point, with the delta-V already spent, and burn it again. This lost me the clean gravity slingshot that would of gotten me a Duna escape, and ment I had to spend another 100m/s to break out of Duna's SOI. Still not very much, but it basicly set the pace for the return run to Kerbin.... Once I was out of Duna's SOI, I plotted another burn to bring me into a Kerbin encounter. This was going to be a single burn to reach the encounter. But once again, part of the way through the burn, the game freaked out again and broke the orbit, placing me back in high orbit of Duna. So I had to burn back out of orbit and try the whole kerbin encounter burn once again. This time I was able to finish the burn. But while before I was able to get a nice 200Km encounter with kerbin, this time I was only able to get a 450km encounter... And it cost me an additional 800m/s due to the orbit breaking. But I rolled with it anyways, and let the craft get closer to kerbin. As this happened, the orbit broke again, and shifted an additional 400km out from Kerbin, making the encounter now at 850km... So when I got into the encounter pass, I needed to bring the pass by in towards kerbin by close too 800km. This burn at least worked, the first one to actually work correctly today... So I plotted the burn to circularize too a 90km orbit. This was going to be my second longest burn to date, close too 11 minutes. And considering how badly things have been going, I didn't have much hope for this one to be any better then the last few... I was right it ends up... The maneuver node kept changing position during the burn, causing the circularizing orbit to turn into an atmospheric plunge that I had to manually correct to prevent the Lamp Post from burning up in kerbins atmosphere. It took the corrective burn, and then two additional burns to bring the orbit into a relatively circular orbit. The total cost of going from Ike too Kerbin ended up costing me just shy of 4,000m/s delta-V. far more then it should of due to at least 1,200m/s being lost due to my game being badly corrupted... Kerbin, you've never looked so beautiful... So that is mission complete. It was not 100% successful. The Laythe mission was a bust due to the failure of the Laytheplanes reaching orbit. But other then that, it all went well considering. I had the added bonus of an attempted Jool atmospheric entry using the remains of the single use, but highly successful, Tylo lander. I also had the bonus of visiting Eeloo, Dres, and Duna/Ike on my way home. It was only the corruption of the game it's self that finally put an end too the kerbin grand tour. Next mission: Clean out my KSP install, delete it, and reinstall fresh to correct the game corruption that has made it nearly unplayable... See you all on the flip side.

For today's playing, I present the Sea Hopper MK.1 (download includes both variants) This simple(ish) VTOL craft is a fully amphibious craft with pure VTOL only lift/thrust engines. It's flight is simple: 1: turn on SAS 2: set engines to full 3: activate the engines 4: once liftoff is achieved, tip forward to start forward flight. Landing is preformed simply by lowering the output of the engines a bit, and letting it slowly lower too the ground. Adjusting the thrust is how you control "lift". The Sea Hoppers top stable flight speed is around 64m/s. Turning is done by tipping the craft in the direction you want it to move. forwards, backwards, sideways, up, and down are all possible directions this craft can go. The left/right controls rotate the whole craft around it's center of mass. Up/Down, change it's direction forwards or backwards, and change the speed it travels in these directions. Roll is used to angle the craft so it can slide left and right without changing the direction it is facing. The Sea Hopper can land and take off from water as easily as it does from land. It is highly recommended to reduce it's speed down to at most, 10 m/s while landing on water. ground landings can be survivable at speeds in excess of 20m/s if the craft is orintated horizontally. It can still be moving during landing but should be moving either forwards or backwards. Sideways motion during landing can be a bit dangerous with it's narrow landing gear and low ground clearance. The tail on the craft is only for added roll stability so it has all other controls turned off. Also, the rear engine has it's thrust turned down so that the combined thrust of the three engines is perfectly aligned under the center of mass. note: the water picture was taken of the craft before I added the tail. In fact, that landing was why I added the tail, it helps measurably with keeping the craft stable during flight. The Sky Hopper MK.1 is the non-amphibious varient of the Sea Hopper. Without the "floats", the craft is a bit lighter and a lot more maneuverable. This varient is a lot easier to land in those unusual spots where you normally wouldn't dare land an aircraft. The Sky Hopper has a more respectable stable top speed of around 93m/s. Both these craft have unusual aerodynamics that tend to pull the craft back to the vertical if too much aerodynamic force is applied too their frames aka: high speed dives. Their stability is pretty good for what they are, experimental craft. Both these two craft are experimental craft and are made for nothing more then to play around with vertical flight. I hope you also enjoy playing around with them. Be sure to try different engines, like the RamJet, on them to see how the craft responds to different amounts of thrust. And be sure to adjust the thrust limiter on the rear engine, when you change it out, so that the center of thrust is once again, directly under the center of mass. If your really wanting to try something interesting. Try adding RSC to this craft, and some mono propellant tanks. It will increase the maneuverability of the craft greatly, possibly making it uncontrollable, but in the fun way.

At Ike again. Making my descent to the surface. Everything is going well. This is such a nice moon to land on! Fairly flat, with just enough slopes on it to make landing interesting. On my way down... And nearly there, just a tiny bit of distance before the legs touch down... The first landing on Ike went well. But the slight slope, combined with the 1.13m/s gravity field, and the fact that I still had a little horizontal momentum, meant the Lamp Post ended up sticking the landing, then tipping to nearly 60 deg off of vertical due to the landing legs on one side digging in. Was a bit sketchy, but the RCS was more then enough to pull it back to level with the ground(6 deg off vertical). Made for an interesting landing. Mica decided to jump out of the Lamp Post, once mining operations commenced, to perform a little science and have a look around. She planted a flag for Kerbal kind and stared off into the sky, where Duna hung there, like a beautiful marble of red. A quick check of the mining drills showed that they were still operating nicely despite their constant wear and tear. At least some things kerbals make seem to have the staying power of the Kerbals themselves. Once the mining was complete, the Lamp Post made it's way to orbit again to catch up with the two orbiting modules. Once there, fuel was transferred, and the Lamp Post headed back down to Ike too top off it's own tanks again. In orbit, I have found it to be far easier to use the modules to intercept the Lamp Post, then to do it the other way. The Modules can maneuver much quicker then the Lamp Post its self with their substantial RCS, and they are a lot more precise. The Lamp Post is still used to burn the intercept orbit, but the modules do the rest once the craft are close. With the second refueling run, I brought back a full tank of ore as well as fuel and monopropellant. This way I could get the Lamp Post and modules as full as possible before leaving orbit and heading out for Eve. With all the tanks full, save for just 1 on the Lamp Post, I was sitting at a good 6,800m/s delta-V. If I could of fueled that tank as well, who knows, I might of pushed it to 6,900 or even 7K..(not likely, the amount missing from that tank is just a drop compared to the total fuel capacity of the ship) Next stop, Eve. I'm not sure I'll be doing Moho after all, it's getting harder and harder to fly the ship. The glitch that was making my maneuver nodes act up has been getting worse, and now I can't even get the Lamp Post to use the autopilot features associated with intercepts... It's also starting to show some bad visual glitches, like this orbital segment showing up with the Lamp Post. If it gets any worse, the Lamp Post, and my entire install, might become unplayable... The glitch(corruption?) is starting to effect the modules and the other craft I have in this save as well. The line segments shown here are not even part of the crafts current flight plan, but still follow the craft no matter how I move it. Here's hoping the game holds out at least until I can finish this mission...

Refueling at Dres went well. Now it's off too Duna. And it's odd, but these are becoming very much routine maneuvers. Each transfer is becoming more and more like the last. the values change, but little else anymore. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing. Anyways, burned to get the perapsis down to Dunas orbit, then cleaned up the orbit so that it matches the plane of Dunas orbit. This way it is easier to get an encounter. Speaking of which, unlike the last few, this encounter was a bit harder to find... Took a bit of work to get it to line up and close the distance with Duna. With the duna encounter found, I still had to clean up the encounter so a capture could be made. This was done with a few small burns to bring the encounter in closer and get it a bit straiter with the equator of Duna. This was quite strait forward. Once it was close enough, I waited for the Lamp post to get into the actual encounter before setting up the burn to circularize. While setting this up, I found an unusual thing happening. I was getting an Ike encounter without reaching full duna orbit, and the ike encounter was a strange one. It was causing my orbit to spiril around and under its self. Quite interesting, and useful. The fuel on the Lamp Post was going to be quite low again do to the cost of the Duna encounter and capture burns. So low infact, that a Duna landing was no longer possible. But Ike on the other hand, that is still doable. While making this burn, the Kerbins showed that they truly do LOVE Duna. Aaw... With the fun of this silly, twisted encounter setup, I could finally plot the Ike capture burn. It turned out to be an easy one with low delta-V needed to complete it. Thankfully... So now the Lamp Post is parked in Ike orbit, prepairing for landing on this fair sized moon. Next stop, landing on Ike for fuel. Then it's back and forth between Ike and the modules to refill them, before heading out for a visit with the purple world of Eve. Might even throw in a Moho flyby/landing before returning to kerbit, mission completed and then some. Outtake: Duna Aerobraking... Having made a quick save when I reach the duna encounter, I was given the chance to try something I thought might be risky, aerobraking in Duna's atmosphere. This method, if it worked, would allow me to have the fuel to land on Duna to refuel, perform science, and have a little fun. If nothing else, it was an excuse to see if the Lamp Post can even aerobrake. First was to bring the Lamp Post into the atmosphere enough to slow down. The aerobrake calculator was saying I needed to drop too 29Km, but I felt off about doing that so I settled for plotting for 30Km. While burning for this altitude, I ended up cutting it short and stopping at around 32Km instead, chancing it for a little less stress on the Lamp Post. I figured the modules would be vulnerable to the sheer of entering the atmosphere so I opted to enter nose first. Lets play a bit of Lawn Darts, huh Duna? As the craft started to pierce the atmosphere, things started to go wrong quickly... First a few of the parts started to show overheat warnings, then things started to burn off... And then I got into the actual meat of the atmosphere around 40km up. That's not good... Poor Mica.... NOPE! Test concluded: 1: The Lamp Post is far from optimized for aerobraking... 2: The Lamp Post was traveling WAY too fast for aerobraking... Thankfully, this was just a "simulation" and was never performed with the "real" Lamp Post.

So far, I think it's around 20 years in space... A long time gone from home. Yeah... I had origionally tested the spaceplanes in kerbin atmosphere. They can just barely go orbital, but it requires pushing them to high speeds at high altitude before switching to the Nuke to coast to orbit. But Laythe's atmosphere doesn't allow this method of orbital achievement. Live and learn. Next time I'll just use drop landers with atmospheric descent assist(airbrakes and parachutes). The design I have fo those would allow a bit of vtol exploration before going orbital. somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes of free flight. As for using the mission report sub forum, I didn't even know it exsisted. Would it be better to transfer this thread to that forum or make a link of some type?

To specify a few things, the transfer from Jool too Eeloo took about 1,800m/s delta-V, while the Eeloo too Dres transfer took me about 3,000m/s delta-V. Both transfers were well within the abilities of the lamp Post train since it had around 6,700m/s delta-V when it left Jool, and 6,400m/s delta-V when it left Eeloo. That is after the refueling missions at both stops. Well, good bye Eeloo, thanks for the fuel and the snow cones, definitely the snow cones. Leaving Eeloo orbit, first job is to simply get the ship into orbit of the Sun again. From there it was just a matter of burning some fuel to lower my orbit enough to intercect with the orbit of Dres, then get to the angle node and change the orbital plane to match that of dres. With that setup, finding a Dres encounter wasn't all that hard. I got lucky once again to have Dres in a fairly convenient position for the encounter. it only took a bit of fiddling with the orbit to bring that close encounter into a clean orbital pass. Once I had that in place, it was only a matter of burning to slow down and bring the orbit into a circular low orbit of around 65,000m. Hello Dres! We're here to visit the fuel station. I hear Dres fuel is best. Also, like my visits to Pol(the second time) and Eeloo, I am unable to get the orbit to stabilize so am unable to scan the surface. Ever since the glitch and the corrupted saves, I've been unable to get the Lamp Post to make a stable orbit. No matter what I do, the orbit shakes, and the proapsis/apoapsis keep changing rapidly back and forth causing the attempts to scan too fail. The two modules stabilize just fine once I undock them but they have no scanner onboard. Once again, I seperate the two modules from the Lamp post and start my burn for the surface. Touchdown! Time to do some science, take an EVA, plant the flag, and start mining. After this, it's off too Duna, then Eve if I can get the encounter, before I head home.

The treat: Failed... The treat was going to be pictures showing what happens when you drop a probe into Jool, from Pol orbit. Even though I got a few pictures of the deorbit, the probe in flight, some of the orbital maneuvers, and the entry into Jool, there was nothing too see... The craft entered Jool atmosphere, started slowing down, then when it hit 200,000m it turned into a fireball and exploded before I could even take pictures... Sorry everyone. But that is what happened with the tylo lander that was being hauled around behind the Lamp Post. Now back to the mission. Having redone the entire Bop and Pol encounters and refueling operations, due to a physics glitch and corrupted saves, I am ready to launch the Lamp Post back into orbit and redock with the two remaining modules. The Laytheplane module is staying behind at Laythe, to act as a coms relay for the two stranded kerbalnauts(butterballs as auto correct calls them). The minitugs are remaining in the Jool system, as intended, one locked in close Jool orbit after delivering the lander to it's death, and the other in Laythe orbit to help with rescue operations when I can send that mission out to get them. The Tylo lander was a single use lander and has been disposed of, sadly not as dramatically as I wanted... That only leaves the fuel module and the passenger module to be hauled by the Lamp Post. The redocking went smoothly and an exit trajectory was made to leave Pol orbit. Good bye Pol, and farewell Jool, you were a good challenge... What is this oddity you might ask? Is that Eeloo? Why yes! Yes it is! It was in such a convenient position I couldn't turn down the chance to visit this far flung emissary of the kerbin system. It took me three burns to get close too Eeloo, one to leave Pol SOI, the second to change my orbital plane, and the third to find an encounter. The fourth burn was needed to fine tune the encounter so that I could get a decent capture. I liken this last burn to performing a fine dance. The orbital change was performed in the upper right, while I was watching from Eeloo in center, with the encounter coming in from the lower left. Crazy looking from this angle huh? But it was a good encounter that I finally circularized with a long 10 minute burn. Hello Eeloo, nice too see you. Now that I'm captured into Eeloo orbit, it's time to detach the two modules and prepare to land. This one is going to be a very simple landing indeed. Eeloo has lighter gravity then Vall, but higher then Bop and Pol, and the surface is glass smooth. Nothing to really worry about on this landing. So, I found a spot in the sun this time and started the descent. Too easy... Landind was no challange at all.... Time to mine up some resources, refuel, and get some science done while I'm here. Yes, that solar panel has "magicly" reappeared... That's what happens when the save files get corrupted and you have to repeat 4 hours of mission... *shurg* Oh well.. Refueled and ready to go, nothing left but burn back into orbit, redock with the modules and prepare to burn for our next encounter. Who knows, I might just aim for Dres, then Duna, and maybe even pay a visit too poor purple Eve before I return home. Basicly a grand tour! minus Moho...

Well, I loaded the game today, with the intention of finishing Pol and making my way out of the Jool system. When it loaded, everything looked fine, so I transferred to the Lamp Post, already landed on Pol. And Just in time to see the whole ship clip into the ground and explode into a bit mess of confetti.... ...... The whole thing exploded into nothing... Kraken messing with my stuff again... So I try reloading the quick save from just before making the descent to Pol. It loads, a few seconds later, Explosions!!! The Lamp Post is blown to into nothingness by an unseen force... Again... Bloody Kraken... I tried a slightly earlier save, from just before the orbital maneuver to encounter Pol. Same thing... Fine for a few seconds, then Explosions... I had to go all the way back to a save I made before even landing on Bop before I could actually fly the ship again without it exploding for no reason. A day and a half worth of work, down the bloody tube... So I've only been able to get back to the point of reaching Pol orbit again... After having to land on Bop all over again... And once I got to Pol, I couldn't even scan the moon due to the orbit refusing to settle... So tomorrow, I'll have to make a completely blind landing and hope I could actually find some ores to mine up. Grrr... Make multiple saves people, in case something like this happens too you.

Well, dropped off the modules in orbit of Bop and made my way down to the surface with the Lamp Post. The light gravity made the landing quite easy, not to mention finding what may just have been the only relatively flat spot with abundant ore, on Bop. The landing went so well, that my pilot just had to jump out and check out the gravity for herself. She was having so much fun that she decided to show off by trying to jump over the solar array while doing a pirouette. She was watching her jump, but apparently not where she was landing... This led to an accident... Her showboating caused her to hit the solar array, knocking it clean off it's mounting... As it shattered to the ground, it quickly sobered everyone up again. Time to access the damages. Just the one array destroyed... Well, that just means the Lamp Post lost about 10% of it's mining efficiency. Now mining and processing takes just a little bit longer... but the craft still feels stable at least. Now that I've got the first actual damage on the Lamp Post(not counting the failed tries at landing on Vall...), it's time to focus on getting what I can from this landing. That being fuel, science, and a full tank of Ores. With the gravity being as low as it is, I can afford to lift off with full tanks of fuel and a full tank of ores to increase the total fuel I can transfer to the orbiting tanks. Speaking of which, liftoff went a little too easy and I was able to make a quick orbital correction to catch up with the modules and redock again. The Lamp Post train is not as impressive as it used to be. Only 2 full modules and 2 half modules left to haul around instead of the original 6 I started with. But the tanks on the modules are now full, leaving the Lamp Post it's self, half drained. Just enough to reach POL. And to start this off, time to leave Bop SOI and start making orbital maneuvers for Pol. First burn got me free of Bop's influince, the second burn realigned the lamp Post with Pol's orbit, but the third burn actually got me the Pol encounter. From here it was a Burn to get myself there. Full throttle Mica! And a pic of the burn this time, still balanced on that brown marble called Bop. On my way to Pol, I took some time to finish the Duna plans. Seems, if I get the right encounter, before reaching kerbin, I can actually pull off a Duna Mission. The lamp Post will need to be just shy of Half full of fuel to land of Duna, and once I've refueled, will still have just enough to take off again, even with the reduced thrust of being inside Duna's atmosphere. Unless Kerbal Engineer's TWR calculator is off again... Even so, if I can lift off, I can still visit Ike for another refuel before continuing to kerbin to finish the mission. Pol encounter is reached, and a hard burn is under way to get captured in it's tiny gravity well. Hello you smelly little rock, Pol I had to nearly stop the Lamp Post in order to get captured due to the 85Km orbit I had for the encounter. It was a longer burn then Bop, that's for sure. But once I got the orbit under control, I brought it down to 60Km, circularized, undocked the modules again, and started my descent down too the surface. For some reason I have a BAD habit of making dark side landing. Something about looking for the highest concentration of Ore and the flattest spot I can find like that, always ends up being on the dark side... Just with the planetary survayer was more accurate, or that I at least had a narrow band scanner probe with me to help narrow things down... But I didn't get those designed until after the mission was over... Anyways, down we go. it's dark, lost of bumps, and I'm not so sure about the landing spot, looks a bit fishy... But, I'll take what I can get and this was a rich looking deposit... Touchdown. Ooh boy... Not as flat as I would like, and SAS has enough strength here to tip the craft up off it's landing legs at hold it at weird angles to the ground... O_o Messy... But I got it settled without further damage. Time to start mining again. We need full tanks to start our burn for home. And if the timing is right, a Duna encounter! Last moon to visit in the Jool system. Not much to do here, just some science, some mining, and a fond farewell to the Jool system before I make my escape trajectory. Possible Duna encounter along the way home. But I do have one last little treat mission to perform before I leave. It has something to do with the Tylo lander, in case your wondering why I'm still dragging that basically useless dead weight around. It'll be FUN!