Hotel26

("Or on a carrier...") "Egad! By the holy chilblains of Jove's kerbiloid arthritis!!" That's it! It's an e.g. P3 Orion carrier-landing RACL (Rocket-Assisted Carrier Landing)!? I used 4x Sepatrons on my 2021 Martin 'Top Deck' with a solid fuel supply on a carrier to recharge those retros for Navy 'catch and release' training programs. The Navy canceled the program when Admiral Chad Gaskerman @chadgaskerman torpedoed it -- reason: Seps have puny thrust (18 kN) and a long burn (5s). Whereas, a baby like this, eh, 'Launch Escape System'[1] delivers 750 kN for 0.5 seconds and that burn could be down-rated, tailored individually to suit most kinds of carrier craft. Fly approximately down the deck, 2m above it, and punch the STOP! button to drop the Lamborghini into the 'park' like a valet at a 4-star restaurant. Yowser, I like it. Methinks I should shower more often.

This is Platypus... It's wired up now with main ballast flood/vent at two rates: 500 liters/sec and 50 liters/sec. Next step is to add keys for Toggle Fore/Aft Trim that will pump 'seawater' (MP) between the front and back trim tanks. This will be a little trickier than first evident, because a pump will fill all three tanks at some rate, while two of the tanks vent at rates such that the main ballast tank does not change contents and one of the trim tanks will empty at the same rate that the other trim tank is filling. Fiddly but conceptually feasible with a little arithmetic. Sea trials so far have already been fun. This is a research project for technology for use in much larger submersibles.

Does this look like a missile to you? It looks like a missile to me. So, I am thinking, "why haven't I used a brace of these mounted under wing?" OK, so I know they fire with asymmetric thrust. In kerbalthink: "even better!!". (Kerbals underline everything when they get excited. Have you noticed that?) Four of these: So I do a search in the forum. (Here). Surely somebody? No...? Hmm. Maybe I'll solve this conundrum during my next shower, whenever that might be. Huh. Or maybe, "I'll just do it!".

I'm up for it as long as you are happy with a KERS[tm] stock solution which entails on-demand production of sea water (a.k.a. MP) as ballast and standard drain valves for venting tanks. For this craft, trim tanks might be required as well as main ballast.

Thank you, @Duke MelTdoWn and @Krazy1: I've learned something from your interchange.

Fugly is also in the eye of the beholder, and to my eye, that isn't anywhere near my own standard for fugly; but I will not quibble with obvious talent. Orange tanks are fugly, always; I will grant you that. And I see, your orange tanks look like "Intellitanks" to me. (You're pulled up at the red light and this 'thing' screeches up next to you and revs its engines awaiting the green and you look across and it's a double-fuel-tank. What the...?) That's well done, I say.

Trident ATV (will be an exploration companion for the new Deep and Deep-R underwater bases): Not yet confirmed but I am hoping the weight & balance will work out such that Trident ATV can be equally useful on land and ocean bed. It will do 39.7 m/s on land (as you'd expect from those rear F1 tires) and uses a kind of KERS[tm] MP drainage system for extra bursts of speed under water (or indeed propulsion on the surface). It has full buoyancy control (incremental flood & blow), fuel cell charging (not shown) and a Claude[tm] pit stop system. Looks like it can sustain 6.5 m/s across the ocean bed once KERS has broken the Kerbal ocean viscosity barrier. Here comes the critical test! Getting inside...

Text file editor: persistent.sfs. Make a backup first. Change *all* of multiple occurrences. On Linux, e.g.: sed -i 's/Jebediah Kerman/Jimmy Kerman/g' persistent.sfs

News of Deep-R has left my SPH design team quite crestfallen, I have to say. I have never seen so many of my engineers quite so distressingly crestfallen. Very, very crestfallen. As Chief of Engineering & Design, I had to give them a pep talk. Here's how it went.

Some unrelated ocean-going malarkey today[1] lead me to get my old Sea Spray out, change out the Panthers for Wheesleys and then attempt a long-distance sea trial. KSC to Cape Town (42W) in 67 minutes (of my life gone). (Well, most KSP operations can be interleaved with other activities in another screen, anyway, I suppose.) It's actually quite good fun, navigating at sea, especially with a craft that has to be brought almost to a standstill in order to turn it. Quite reminiscent of "bad putting"...

So, this is Deep. Fin.

So this worked quite well: 227 m/s @ 3.5km with a range over 1,000 km. Easy to fly and to land, so it can make a multi-leg journey to its final destination. I think two Wheesleys would work better -- and since it is likely never going to fly very high -- dialing the wing incidence back from 5 degrees should make it cruise faster & further. Now, for the magic sauce:

Something like this could work well. (Code-name: Deep (imaginative, yeah!)) There is a certain number (2) of magic components in it to defeat the KSP buoyancy issues -- but well inline with the realistic mass of sea water and metal, and the consideration of plenty of electrical power to pump tanks. No mods but it has keys to flood and blow tanks. Q.E.D. The next task will be to see what I need to do to get it into a Mk3 cargo bay; but failing that, a fairing will do the trick. I will report back here when I have anything more to report.

A friend of mine asked me: "have you tried using any of the LLM tools like GPT or Bard for programming?". Nope. No interest. But rather than be a curmudgeon, I was willing to give it a try... Coincidentally, I've been wrestling with an unscrupulous/scurrilous insurance company (indeed, RACketeers they are!) for the last 15 months after being side-swiped (mirror collision) by a joker who resented sharing the road with me when he claimed I was 'overtaking'. Five parked cars. It's been very Kafkaesque, as I had expected the insurers to set him straight. But a reminder to me that insurance companies are MINO: money-in/nothing-out. Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and the SA Driving Handbook all said the same, but I'm happy to add GPT's opinion now to my formal complaint heading to arbitration. People respect AI. We should do what it tells us. And I do like how polite it is... We are heading in to a better world.

Debugging the same thing today -- has been a traditional thing that a Vessel goes in but will then never come out. In my case today, it was simply a matter of being somewhere well back from the 'static'. Like, not just "not on it", but like how you'd stand back from a blazing hangar next to a fuel dump: way back!

I tried to do something like this some very long time ago, but I just wasn't good enough to make it work: The Lark, pictured, simply retracted its gear over one of the four connection claws. The pilot was then able to Transfer directly inside the Kontrol tower. The tower has capacity itself for 1,600 LF. I may dare to shift those claws out for even more Kraken temptation clearance. OK, and a jet terminal, something like this (5,000 LF): Low part count might be a v.good thing!?

AA 'learns' what works as it first flies your craft. (You will see a file appear in GameData/AtmosphericAuotpilot/designs for your craft, recording what it has gleaned.) Firing missiles changes the mass/geometry including e.g. leverage of control surfaces -- your craft becomes essentially different to fly. I do think it is a good idea to turn it off during/immediately after firing missiles, recovering to a 'safe' flight attitude and then turning it back on to let AA readjust. I have no experience with this particular situation, so you will be pioneering the effort. (e.g. "you are on your own, kerbal!")

If that is still in Doho Koen Odori (along with AIST), I used to live and work in that same street. Goldrush was my goto bar and the little park (Doho Koen) is beautiful. Tucked away near Andersens cafe near Nishi Odori were great little Italian, French and Korean restaurants.

No one in polite society mentions religion, politics, sex -- or the weather. [But I repeat myself.]

I stripped down a Rhino/Boar combination lifter to create a light/medium-weight lifter called Rhino, that is equipped for deep space and can be used as a transfer booster. It was not intended to be recoverable since it can be re-used in space and is not likely to ever want to come down. I built X-Rhino today anyway to see how to recover a Rhino engine with 2x S3-14400 tanks. But I didn't really want to dedicate the landing gear and a bunch of chutes to a craft that will most likely remain in space. [Although ... only 1.3t] OK, so crazy idea! Tandem: And here's a bonus shot from the X-Rhino low-altitude testing -- I call it "Stars and Stripe": And while I am here, with a hat-tip to @Martian Emigrant: Kerpollo approaches its first docking with Kerlab.

I believe they used computer models to come up with the numbers.

So the Holocene began 11,700 years ago? And record-keeping for temperatures began in 1880? I am more concerned about the Reverse Flynn Effect, I have to say.

"Breaking Bad", I call it. Usually surmountable but not without hair loss. I have a Tylo lander stuck in a warehouse with tarpaulins draped, gathering dust. One last problem: it works fine; but go away and come back and the pistons are just ... missing.

Welcome aboard and thank you for posting at KerbalX!