Hotel26

Pegasus 6, also known as "the Platypus" to its test pilots. It trues out at Mach 4.5 carrying 14,400 kallons of kero. It's quite happy to land under chutes while fully laden. All-up weight: 102t.

I am finally despatching the first Batwing to Duna: I tested it on virtual-Duna in the Lab simulator rather extensively when I built it about 15 months ago. It's VTOL on Duna. Four disposable RAPIER pods take it from the KSC runway to its LKO refueling rendez-vous. 2.56 km/s dV available for the transfer. Needless to say, it'll make Duna orbit (from the surface) and return. I'm looking forward to doodling around on Duna with it. I'm so stoked to get there with this (since I have an Ike fuel settlement already) that I am probably going to mate it with a 4x NERV Mule and use an accelerated, N.O.W. departure plan... Or with an Escort, more likely. Batwing makes rendez-vous with KOT2 Korona, a viral space station. A Sparrow tug comes out to bring it in... All Batwing tanks (including MP) are filled... Korona has become infamous recently for flooding the orbit lanes. It specializes in space-ship receptors painted in bright colors to attract unwary interplanetary travelers. It then shoots them full of ultra-toxic RP-1. Each receptor is an orange Intellitank. Once any Intellitank is depleted, it is able to jettison itself from the mother station and de-orbit safely to ground recovery to signal that another, potently deadly Intellitank should be sent up. The purpose of Korona appears to be to replicate itself across the known kerbolar system. Scary. A Star Knife (dimly seen, bottom left) has brought another Intellitank up to KOT2 Korona.

On my way to Laythe, in a test mission...

Gee, thank you for asking! Testing this vehicle was lots of fun. I think I deposited all 4 or 5 test shots safely on the surface of Eve. I have to say that the exploits of @BadOaks recently was the final spur to find a safe way down to the surface of Eve. I have been dying to go explore. Having "the bulge" behind the CoM really helps with the ascent out of Kerbin, but no doubt also with the descent through Eve's heavy atmosphere. There's a 5m heat shield in front and 3 Big-S tail feathers in the rear. One has to have one of the aft tanks pinned open and, preferably, all 3 of the for'ard during lift-off, to pump fuel back to the engines. Harpoon makes LKO comfortably. You then need to bring it to a close rendez-vous with a space-station with a tanker or tug with a claw to refuel it before departure to final destination. dV is about 3.5 km/s. After the de-orbit and retro burn until fuel exhaustion, the Mammoth is discarded, followed by a turn to prograde and deployment of the heat shield. At safe speed (under chutes), the following is jettisoned in sequence: nose, tail[*], fairing followed by decoupling of the cargo, which may then fly to an easy landing. Ah yes, the main thing is to plan the final decoupling of the cargo to occur in daylight! And now, for the contents: Electroglide. This electric plane, crew of 6, does 160 m/s on Kerbin and I've had it to 95 on Eve. Once trimmed (including prop pitch), it's very pleasant to fly without SAS. [*] My Engineering team is reviewing this cut-away sequence as separating the tail first may likely turn the vehicle retrograde, thus allowing a subsequent, clean separation from the nose and heat-shield.

This is Harpoon... We're no longer afraid of Eve.

Inexpressible joy...

tl;dr your transfer burn (you called it the "escape burn") has to achieve a "rendez-vous", or encounter, with Duna -- or more accurately, with Duna's Sphere-Of-Influence, its (conic-patch) gravitational field. If you set Duna as your Target and then use a maneuver node to plot the transfer burn, as your intended apoapsis nears Duna's orbit (if you're transfer window is "open"), you should see intersection markers appear on the respective orbits in the Map View. If you can adjust this maneuver to get those to approximately coincide, you will see Duna encounter and escape indicators appear, meaning you will intersect Duna's sphere-of-influence. If you can then actually get there, that is where and when you will perform a "capture" burn which, yes, will be retrograde relative to Duna. Just realize that the Mun's SoI punches a huge "conic patch" into Kerbin's own SOI. It's hard to miss. Destination Duna, you are leaving Kerbin's Soi and entering the VAST Kerbol SoI. In which the Duna SoI punches a mere pinhead. It is really, REALLY, a much more demanding transfer. Just for context... So you know what you're up against. And how much adrenalin will jolt you when you get there.

Sorry to be back here so fast, folks -- what can I tell you? -- I've gotten myself involved in some kind of crazy "space race"... I've updated Pandemonium: 1.4 km/s to 75km2 orbit and then, refueled in LKO, 5.2 km/s. It's crazy... what you're looking at here is a veritable "phalanx of engines": you've got yer 3x Whiplash... you've got yer 3x NERV... you've got yer 8x Twitch... all ready to boogie. LF:6,320 OX:880

Back in April, I published Epiphany and it set a record, for me, of 4.4 km/s dV, once refueled in LKO. Crew is 10 kerbals. Meanwhile, just in the last few days in these very pages, my friend-for-life (a Man of Principles because he emphatically eschews SSTO oxidizer), Monsieur le RoninFrog, published an account of his 4-kerb Pandemunium II. Inspired, I made a 20-kerb version, uninspiredly dubbed Pandemonium... It's the first Mk3 SSTO I've made in my whole career since Dolphin/Dolphin 2020 (not counting charter party ships, Swordfish and Sailfish). I am stoked because its LKO-refueled LF-only interplanetary-ready delta-Velocity is, drum-roll, 4.9 kilo-meters-per-second, a new-personal-record! Stoked. Very-very-stoked. The ecstatic glow of this weekend's achievement, in collaboration with Monsieur le @RoninFrog,should, I believe, get me through at least the first three days of the coming work-week.

This evening's pastime: Pegasus 5: TWR > 1 (fully laden) is always fun. Its cargo bay carries an Invader, 8-kerb patrol rover. The rover can be air-launched or deployed on the ground. Peg 5 has a tail claw to keep the rover's generator fueled. And, look at that (lower right): you can use the claw to transport the Invader elsewhere if/when required...

Chalet: [click & arrows] Modern apartment-living with 3 units featuring 2-storey living quarters.

Very glad you've published it. C'est magnifique! (I saw it first on KerbalX, actually, and upvoted it there.) About the nose-wheel, you will probably fly it in your home save with your mod's steerable gear and be perfectly happy. In the past, in pure stock, I've used a hack copied from others in which you can position a smaller, steerable nose-wheel before or after the big one. You can use it for taxiing (control it independently on a different key) and then stow it for the take-off and landing rolls. Except while taxiing, it can be made completely invisible. Same parked on the ramp: stow it with the "normal" large gear extended, for looks.

I'm assuming you have a reason to use KAL and that's fine. I'm a neophyte in this area (stock props), but in my last effort, I bound rpm to the throttle and prop pitch (you probably know) can be controlled by the Authority Limiter -- you can visually check the pitch changes on the ground when you move A.L. I bound that directly to I/K and that works well. I run KER with acc. in the HUD and I'm thinking next time I fly this plane, I'll simply keep advancing pitch as airspeed increases in order to maintain peak acceleration. In any case, without KER, it can be adjusted just to keep the airspeed ticking upward nicely. You probably already know all this, but there'll be someone reading who doesn't (like me very recently).

Complete deja vu for me reading this. I hurled hundreds of tons and a dozen crew at Moho early in this epoch to watch it flash through Moho's slippery SOI and managed only to salvage a handful of small ion-powered comsats into lonely Moho orbits. That hardware & souls Lost In Space have bugged me for a year -- enter Divine Intervention, a modest embedded sub-game, for which to play I built the good ship, Mercy... Just a suggestion. My Second Moho Fleet is even now refueling around Gilly to make a thoroughly more cautious approach to Moho, the Fleet-Footed Messenger.

Holy Asteroids, Jebediah, that is impressive engineering! Nice going.

Very excited! For context, if you don't recall/didn't see my previous on Paxmover, just click this image below: This has been something of a Holy Grail for me. At the last minute, I decided to make this Type:Rover fly. You know... "airborne". (As one does, when growing up Kerbal.) It flies like a winged dog, or 'flew', I should say. Just needed Moar WingTM... of course. So there are Two (2) magic numbers for Kerbal aerospace designers (Kerbin Aviation Department): 6.5+ km and ~942km. You'll recognize both, I'm sure! If your craft can climb above 6.5 km, it can cross any mountain range and it can land anywhere. And, if your craft was never intended to fly, but must do so to reach its deployment point, 900 km gets you from the KSC to either pole, a flat spot to land, refuel and take-off from again, from which you can then reach any destination on the planet! So I put bigger wings on Paxmover and that has done the trick: both numbers, in the bag. Sorry to be so excited about this but, yes, it's a super-big deal!! Bigger wings It wouldn't be jacked up like this for T.O., but a better view. Technically, it's a "mobile lounge". not an aircraft of any form whatsoever. but it does now fly like a champion It's a "rover", technically This is my flight line at KSC. From foreground to back, you see: Nike, Hornet, Hexapen, Paxmover, Sea Spray, Amphibian. These are my air/sea rescue craft with Paxmover in support. I am going to need to begin staggering them to permit easier access for Paxmover. OK, so finally, today's missions are to fly two Paxmovers out to station one at each Pole. Later that day at the North Pole:

In chess terms, I'd call it a "draw", not a "loss". In NASA terms, a "scrub", not a "catastrophic incident requiring Congressional investigation". Even in Kerbal terms, this was NOT a "fail", epic or otherwise. Terminology, sir! I must protest!! (I do like your avatar, though. You look like somebody I know.)

Good thinking! I finally bit the bullet on all a) mining, b) ion-powered and c) roving operations to use either fuel cells/arrays or, in the case of b., some times RTGs, rather than solar. I still may elect for solar for electric props, most recently in the case of my Electroglide, especially in front-line operations in which fuel replenishment will not be available.

Sometimes in KSP, you just have to make yourself think like a Kerbal would! I think I've finally beaten Robotics, Wheels and Physics to make this, Paxmover 3, which is actually fit for purpose. jet propulsion! reverse thrust! airplane wheels! the Kerbal way! It accommodates up to 8 Kerbals. Embarks and disembarks them easily: any aircraft. Transfers fuel too! But how do you get it to your regional airport? Fly it out, of course! Would be such a shame to waste that jet engine. And like everything in KSP -- slap wings on it and it will fly! Lands under chutes. On the final leg, jettison the wings. So far, I've haven't seen the shakes, rattles and rolls from this while docked to another craft. I'll give it a week in test and then, if all good, post it to KerbalX.

I've been having much more fun on Gilly than I thought I would. The Moho fleet accompanied the Eve fleet here. I have half of Moho refueled for the Eve->Moho transfer in 75 days. I have a geosync space station parked overhead this mining site. But Eve is calling! So a quick build this evening; almost on impulse. This is Electroglide: Man, it is quite purty to fly, all trimmed up; no SAS, no AtmoAuto. The trim and nothing but the trim. Cruises at 168 m/s.

Fair enough, and thanks for that, too! Have a good day.

I am very familiar with Set Orbit which will set you in orbit in space, but will not land you. I did Alt-F12: Cheats: Set Orbit but don't see Set Position anywhere.

It's not been mentioned in this thread but it seems a) like a great pity VesselMover is unable to situate a craft upon the surface of any planet other than Kerbin; and b) that it would not be hard to modify it to do so? VM declines to take control of a vessel that "is not landed". I'd be quite happy to Alt-F12 my vessel into low orbit around, say, Eve, and then activate VM to take it under control and lower it to the surface at the location I desire. Would you please consider this? Here's why it is important. The design of a craft that is intended to fly on Eve might perhaps ONLY fly on Eve (not Kerbin, Duna or Laythe) and therefore, its testing needs to occur on Eve.

Background: KSC's most powerful flight-control computer system, Terra, has a motherboard limiting it to a measly 8GB. Many craft in operation put pressure on memory. Situation: a transfer window to Moho early in this epoch resulted in the launch of a coupla thousand tonnes at that planet along with a dozen or so brave Kerbals. Failed to capture (except for a half dozen puny ion-powered comsats that managed to bale out and acquire the target). Those Kerbals are now "lost in space" with a completely disgraceful inclination. What are the options here at Mission Control? Rescue is not possible (or not profitable). We cannot bring ourselves to just "terminate" those brave souls. But we need that memory back! Mission: Divine Intervention... Rules: mark the distressed vessels with an 'SOS' prefix in the name. at some later time, if deemed unrescuable by conventional methods, invoke the divine powers of Alt-F12 to beam such vessels into geosynchronous Kerbin orbit. craft engines/RCS may NOT be used. Kerbals may NOT transfer to another vehicle. Kerbals may NOT EVA unless and until within the Kerbin atmosphere. a rescue craft, such as Mercy, shown above will rendez-vous and dock, using either its Large Ring or claw. rescue vehicle may use fuel from the distressed vehicle, augmenting its own MP supply, to proceed to de-orbit for re-entry. (Mercy has an LFOX tank for fuel-transfer but carries no LFOX itself on launch.) any/all remaining fuel may be vented to space (via a mod such as ShipManifest, or by .sfs tweaking, before and/or after the de-orbit burn) rescued survivors MUST be retired from operations. it is only fair that Divine Intervention only be played in Sandbox where there is no unfair temptation to benefit from recovered funds or personnel. Needless to say (being totally unruly), I only play Sandbox... Procedure: as above, but I've made Mercy stackable so I can launch a bunch at once. I think I'd get a fleet of them (still all docked togther) stationed in geosync. Then when a Mayday vehicle comes home, I'd detach a Mercy, tweak its orbit for a rendez-vous, then perform the rescue. Notably, this is the first time I've had to figure out how to use a heat shield. (It's a warm-up for Eve missions, coming soon.) This one's for you, @RoninFrog !

The above was a whole cartload of "thinking out loud" and I should condense it. But I want to record one more thought: I think the idea of "circularizing" at a lower altitude could be shudderingly expensive. The problem is that the altitude you can afford might not offer an immediate adjustment of the apoapsis to match the target. This is where a radial burn component might be the extra degree of freedom that clinches the deal.