Terwin

Got my Grand Tour vessel back home(went to Duna, Ike, Gilly, Eve's upper atmosphere, and Moho), just had to make a quick hop to Mun to finish a grand tour contract. Should have been paying more attention as I forgot to refill the tanks form the on-board ore before I went suborbital. Finally got a safe landing by dumping 2 of my 3 ore tanks and refining most of what was left while dropping from the sky. All topped up I headed home for a nice safe landing about 15km from KSC. Worried that I would waste a lort of the science if I did an immediate retrieval, I sent jet powered rover out to swap out the crew and return some of the science. Left the 'first copy of everything' data in the cockpit and took home some of the duplicate data(stored in the lab). Got over 14K science from the return vessel, for about 10K over and above what I needed for the last node on the community science tree(the 10K node), then I put 100% science-> rep(I have over 60M funds so not much need there, and my rep meter is not at 100%). Also gave all four of the grand tour crew(Including Jeb and Bill) their last 2 stars. Recovering the grand tour craft got another 15K science(but no obvious change in the reputation meter). After that my Jool scansat entered the Joolian SOI and after I captured, I realized I was close to retrograde(150 degrees), so I burned a lot of fuel getting closer to prograde, capping it off with a fly-by of Tylo which seems to have gotten me pretty much lined up when I had been > 45 degrees off. I am currently hoping to get into a roughly polar orbit of Vall with about 400m/s dv left to start scanning. I'll probably want my outer grand tour to visit there first so I can refuel my scansat and go look at the other Joolian moons before landing on them. I am hoping to bring a Desteroid with me to Jool as a drop-tank to leave in space in case I find myself without enough dv to get safely to Bop or Pol after launching from Lathe or Tylo.

I've been playing since March(0.90), and last night I recovered a ship landed safely on Kerbin that had visited Gilly, Eve's upper atmosphere and Moho(after a quick stop on Duna/Ike). (first craft to return from somewhere other than Duna or asteroid fetching(not counting Kerbin SOI and training visits to Kerbol SOI)) I also took a scan-sat probe around the Joolian system a bit, finishing up with a slingshot around Tylo that has set me up to try and capture around Vall for some scanning while I wait for my manned ship(currently heading to Dres to drop a flag and make off with an asteroid-drop-tank)

If you have unlocked the Lab module, you can store as many iterations of the same experiment in the same place as you like. (ISRU is great for letting you visit every single biome without worrying about having enough delta-v to get home) On my first visit to Duna I collected all the data from every biome(Duna and Ike) except for one that only exists at the edge of the pole and the lowlands(canyons perhaps?). multiple goo, multiple surface, multiple seismic, etc. (I got the canyons one after my scansat finally arrived and gave me the missing biome locations) If you want a good use for all that extra science from outside the Kerbin SOI, I recommend the community science tree, my inner grand tour finally arrived back on Kerbin(with ~30K sceince as I got gilly, moho, and even the eve upper atmosphere), and that finally allowed me to get my last CST node(the 10K one), as well as starting my science-> rep mod and putting ~15K science into rep(with 8K science in the bank for future changes in the business center)

Step 1) save when you are close to the object but not close enough for it ti start falling Step 2) move into physics range and check if it fell into the body it should be resting on Step 3) if yes, load and return to step 2 Step 4) recover as normal. I had a rescue and recover mission but the first time i got close the pod fell on the kerbal. I loaded a few times until I could get the pod not to kill the kerbal, and that time the pod actually stayed on the surface, letting me do a full recovery. So apparently it is hit or miss as far as falling through the surface. If possible, it may help to switch focus to the object in question as soon as it comes in physics range.

Landed my outer grand tour on Ike, planted flags, fully filled all tanks and headed out to Dres, not using any sort of window, so it will take about 250 days before intercept. My Duna sacnsat was finally in a position to thrust for Eeloo, should hit the SOI in a little over 6 years. Had to loop a bit outside the periaps due to Eeloo still being a bit away, but I should still have more than 500m/s after I capture, and that should be plenty to fully scan the entire surface. Looks like I may not have much to do for the next 100 days besides tend to the labs on my various interplanetary craft.(Training craft returning to Kerbin from Duna, Grand Trour(inner) returning to Kerbin from Gilly(First ever Moho visit complete), Outer Grand Tour heading from Ike to Dres). Wonder if I will finish that last 10K science node in the community tech tree before my Grand Tour vessel returns to Kerbin... that would be a lot of Rep if I have 100% of science going to rep...(All Gilly biomes, one or two Duna biomes, 9 of 12 Moho biomes, skimming of Eve's upper atmosphere) I wonder if my Dres and Jool scansats will arrive before my outer grand tour... should probably check my KAC entries...

Indeed, after I realized this LH2 thing in my IRSU was compatible with the near future VASMIR engines, I built an outer-planets grand tour vessel using the largest VASMIR as the main engine.(I also have 8 thuds in the hopes that I can return from Lathe and Tylo, but that is not tested as of yet) It would be nice if ISRU could produce Xenon or Argon, but I suppose that would be fairly unrealistic. (perhaps they could be produced by an ISRU exposed to an atmosphere?)

Successfully collected my High Duna and low Ike orbital rescues that are funding my Outer grand tour ship, turned out to be a couple scientists, so now I get to resume my original plan to bring a couple extra scientists to level them to 5 stars. Landed everyone on Duna, did not bother with parachutes as I had full fuel for my thuds(hopefully enough to get to Lathe orbit). Refilled all my tanks and planted flags for my new scientists and my pilot(only 3 stars). Launch from Duna was fairly inefficient, using roughly 60% of my thud fuel, but that should only make it easier to land on Ike using only the low-thrust VASMIR engine(but with plenty of liquid fuel for emergency operations) May need to use a bit of liquid fuel to launch from Ike after I refuel, but I doubt I'll need much for my planned Dres landing(and hopefully I will get a nice, high ore desteroid as a drop-tank to take with me to my next destination, perhaps Tylo orbit...)

Nice, but does that not also allow free fuel? (build a ship with empty tanks, attach one or more refueling launch clamps, wait for tanks to be full, launch) Another option might be adding a fuel reservoir to the launch clamps, that way you still pay for any fuel used. (may not always take from clamps first if your staging is wonky though)

It seems like a disintegrating craft around your rods would make them fairly randomized in where they hit, if you are going to have a number of atmospheric penetrators like this, why not just do the Rod of God approach where most of your targeting stays up in orbit and you launch highly accurate rods one at a time at specific targets?

Meh, I just give an update on what I have done since my last update, usually 2-3 a week depending on how much play time I get. Managed to get my Grand Tour vessel back to the low-delta-v domain of Gilly from Moho. After many burns, I finally decided I had to do my ejection burn using my nuclear engines, and using up a lot of that fuel might improve my acceleration using the VASMIR. After doing 80% of the ejection burn on nukes, I flipped the ship and finished up with the low-thrust VASMIR engine(now at 0.24 m/s/s instead of the 0.22 it was before I used all that liquid fuel) Inclination burn, Eve Capture burn, all the way up to Gilly capture burn were done with the high-isp engines of the rescue vessel(VASMIR), then I refilled all the tanks from on-board ore and left the rescue probe in orbit of Gilly should there be a future need. A bit of refueling, refueling the Eve Scansat in orbit over Gilly(eve and Gilly both fully scanned now), and then I sent my Grand Tour vessel back towards Kerbin for it's triumphant return(with a fly-by of the mun for contract purposes) Then I sent my Eve scansat off towards Moho so that should I return I can find the lowland and canon biomes I did not see in my first visit. (Mk2 body with a single nuke engine, Mk2 drop-tanks with additional fuel on the sides. Drop-tanks(~5km/s) were enough to get to and scan Eve then head towards Gilly, so just kept them in place during the Gilly scan so the Grand Tour could refill the probe to the full ~12km/s and I could then send it off to Moho) Outer grand tour arrived at Duna and is now on an intercept course for the high-orbit rescue before heading over to Ike for the other rescue and a refuel stop.

You need large solid pieces with plenty of mass if you want them to survive reentry in the real world, otherwise they would just burn up in the atmosphere. I think the 'falling debris' involves multi-ton chunks of rock which heat up enough during re-entry to melt/ablate large chunks of its surface, heating the rock substantially. As this would effectively be large chunks of semi-melted rock landing over large areas, I can see why it would cause lots of fires... I can't see a man-made craft having enough mass for this to be a useful mode of attack, especially when precisely guided 'rod of god' style attacks would be so much more effective for less cost.

I think the exponential fall-off that was mentioned recently should address this.(I forget if it was in the squad-cast transcription of the dev notes) The current problem is that when you enter a dense atmosphere, you transition from space to quite a lot of resistance(and heating) instantly. When they add exponential fall-off to the atmosphere the transition should allow higher heating values over-all without killing everything that touches a dense atmosphere. This should make aero-braking much more feasible, at least for small changes. This should also make the atmospheric transitions much 'softer' so that there are fewer magic number altitudes.

The Near future mod family has a VASMIR engine, it takes 2K charge/s to power, but you can go from ~34kn to ~200kn using LH2 if I remember correctly (the ~34 kn setting has an ISP of 16K) I use one powered by on on-board nuclear reactor to power my outer-plants Grand Tour ship(I shut it down between burns, takes about 25 min to get to full power and will run for 5 years at full power before needing a refuel) I am also using one to help my inner plants Grand Tour vessel get back from Moho(acceleration is a paltry 0.22m/s/s so it will take a while...)

Launched my 'outer Grand Tour' vessel from Minmus and got a Duna intercept with a trajectory that kisses the orbit of Eve, making good use of the extreme ISP of the electric engine I am using, should arrive in about 230 days.(definatley *NOT* a good launch window) I also finished fueling my original Grand Tour vessel on Moho, Launched it and docked with my high-efficiency Fuel-rescue vessel and started doing burns with the high-efficency engine to leave orbit. A few problems though: Acceleration: 0.22m/s Ideal thrusting location: behind Moho Power source for electric engines: Solar Max physics acceleration without drifting off course: 1x Total planned thrust for node: ~3km/s So I first raised the orbit so that I can have longer burns before being occluded by Moho, then I started making un-accelerated burns during the parts of the orbit where I am even with or behind Moho's center of mass when compared to Kerbol but not occluded by Moho. Good thing I have some seasons to catch-up with on Netflix...

Back in 0.90 I had a crash-landing that killed some of the crew and my last available save was from several real-time hours of play earlier. It was painful, but better than sacrificing Kerbals. After 1.0.4 came out I had a number of in-progress missions that were not prepared for the new physics, some of them took multiple landing attempts to keep the crew all alive, usually sacrificing the engines and most of the ship below the crew sections. Admittedly there was one time I may have sacrificed a cou0ple Kerbals unintentionally, as I was going to assign for a mission and noticed that a couple of orange suits mysteriously dropped down to 0 XP. (They were included in the next training mission of course to get them back up to 3 stars, and now they are all at 4 stars with some only needing a return to get 5 stars). Back in 0.90 there was also an occasion where I had a Kerbal land in a new biome and take some surface samples. The pod could only hold one copy, so I took a second sample to be recovered with the Kerbal, then recoved the ship(with the Kerbal standing on the ground outside) and then the Kerbal who had been standing safely on the surface of Kerbin went MIA before I could recover them. (I do not consider this a sacrifice however, I consider it an extended vacation as they were safe at home and were only lost due to a bug)

For 'self-funding' I decide on an interesting mission and let the contracts add a few funding steps. Example: I recently launched an outer-planets grand tour vehicle(with ISRU, cost ~ a million funds) Contracts: Mine ore on Mun, Mine ore on Minmus, Rescue(Duna orbit), Rescue(Ike orbit) This means that even without any science or recovery this mission is profitable. (of course the original plan was to land on Minmus for fuel then go straight to Dres, but rescues were on Duna, so heading there too) Of course even with the Community science tree, I do not expect I'll use any of the science from that mission for anything but reputation, but it still has a couple 4-star scientists and the lab was filled with launchpad, kerbin, munar, and minmus data(I added the community tech tree to have more nodes to research, but I am only about 18K science from finishing that as well, and my inner-planets grand tour has already launched from Moho for a kerbin-return trip, so all that Gilly, eve-orbit, and moho science will probably finish it off, and as I already have 60M funds I have little no need to use it for that)

I consider it a highly efficient container for multiple surface samples/materials experiments/goo tests. I used it much the same in 0.90, I just get a couple dozen bonus science points over and above the storage aspect(a few dozen over lots of missions, usually less than 10 points per mission). By the time I actually use it for more than storage, I have already unlocked all of the stock parts. Then again, I have never just filled up a station and time-warped to get science either, any research I do is during transit, and it is a good excuse to send a second scientist along. (in my only 1.0 game where I am transiting to other planets, I filled out the stock tech tree with Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus before doing more than quick visits to the Kerbol SOI for XP, usually with multiple trips in progress at a time, so time-warping was minimal, lab science was just a small percentage of the science returned, and half the time I forgot to start researching/never bothered to full up the lab with data)

I currently have a ship with 24 kerbals returning from a Duna/Ike training mission(3 are rescues and 2 are in a Mk2 passenger module retrieved from around Duna), I also have an ISRU vessel ready to launch from Moho as it has now visited 8 of the biomes there(it has also visited Duna/Ike and Gilly since it's launch). I also have a freshly refueled ship ready to launch from Minmus that is intended to visit every moon and planet(with a surface) that is outside the orbit of Kerbin(Duna and Ike are mostly for a couple rescues that make the craft profitable). I'll need to run simulations to make sure it can get back to Lathe orbit, but everywhere else should be pretty manageable. (Before I added the discarded solid boosters, it could get into space on Kerbin but not achieve orbit before re-entering the atmosphere)

Made several hops on Moho, so now I have collected the science from 8 of the 12 biomes. Unfortunately I suspect the other 3 lowlands and the canyons are currently on the dark side, so I set up to leave the next time I have some time to play.(all tanks topped off, emergency refueling vessel in orbit all topped-off with super efficient electric engines. Just need to time my lift off for a rendezvous with the refueler, Klaw the two ships together and head back to Kerbin(needed the refueller to be able to land on Moho, so plan to play it safe and leverage it for the initial burn back to Kerbin with those 16Ks isp VASMIR engines). Lots of uneven ground on Moho. Also landed and refueled my second generation Grand Tour vessel on Minmus, so I just need to head out to Duna and Ike for a couple rescues then I can start exploring the outer Kerbol system (Second Generation Grand Tour is using those same 16Ks ISP VASMIR engines backed up by a ring of radial LF engines for higher gravity planets/moons, also has a drill mounted next to the nose klaw so that I can go asteroid hunting if I need more ISP than I can store on-board)

He said they would be ejecting them by the time they were at that altitude on Eve. As in they are to be dropped during the Eve ascent.

That made it seem very likely that the death scene was an alternate universe flash-back, but I could not find a visual cue that there was such a transition so I was not certain either way.

*Constructive* criticism is good and can help a product get better. This involves pointing out specifics and making recommendations on how to improve that facet. This is not in any way constructive: "This game is slow and the developers are mediocre" This identifies a specific issue and makes a recommendation that may fix the issue under consideration should it prove to be a viable approach: "Reconstructing the resource tree for every resource request(which happens multiple times per frame) requires a lot of CPU cycles, a better option would be to use a buffer type system where the size of the buffer is based on the available storage(such as batteries and fuel tanks), then as you cycle through the parts you can update the buffer for each resource producer or consumer in turn. When you have finished with a cycle, you can update the storage with the change in the buffer. This should be much faster, and while it may cause problems when your producers and consumers are on a larger scale than your storage, such problems are hardly unrealistic. The primary down-side is that you need to either calculate the tree each cycle(once as opposed to the current multiple times) or you will need to track vehicle changes so you can update the tree when things attach/detach/explode" Do you see the difference? One is whining and complaining, serving no purpose than to potentially make the whiner feel better, the other is offering helpful suggestions, and while those suggestions may not work, it is clear that the the intent is to be helpful. One is also much easier than the other. If you are not offering specific steps to address the issue, you are not being helpful, just negative. (Note: 'Fix it' and 'Make an optimization pass' are not specific steps, they are cop-outs that mostly ignore the difficulties involved)

Just a bit of maintenance today. Finished refueling and grabbed a bit of ore in the Moho highlands(3.1% ore), then headed north towards a dark area hoping for a biome with richer ore and to get more in-line with the inclined orbit of the refueling drone and found the Moho Midlands with a much more attractive 7% ore, so I landed(did research) and topped off everything, then headed up and klawed the refueling probe to top off all of it's tanks. I also aero-braked my ore rescue drone around kerbin and brought it in to a nice soft landing, only to have it fall over in the water and break some of the more expensive components, ah well, nothing important was lost.(need to remember to turn on stability assist when landing in water. It often provides an opportunity to recover before the vessel falls over) Hopefully if I visit all the Moho biomes I should be able to get all the remaining 4K science nodes just from transmitted data and be fairly close on that last node that costs 10K. Not sure what I will do with all the non-transmittable science from Gilly and Moho when I get back to Kerbin though.

Managed to get a number of things done over the weekend. Managed to capture my Grand Tour ship at Moho, then brought my Moho Refueling drone over to give it enough fuel to circularize in LMO and land. Decided to try an experiment and used the drone engines to circularize, but the low thrust and slow frame rate(nearly 200 parts, so apparently my gaming computer is in need of an upgrade...) means it took a number of passes. After reviewing the performance of my refueling drone(using the large VASMIR engine from near future with a whopping 16K ISP using LH2 fuel and 2K charge/s), I decided to try a new grand tour vessel, perhaps even one that could land on Lathe and Tylo. After many iterations of attempting a SSTO with both ISRU and an 8 ton nuclear reactor(need to get those 2K charge/s some where, and solar will not cut it at Jool, it barely was manageable for the drone at Kerbin using panels that nearly doubled the length of the ship), I took a look and discovered that Lathe and Tylo have only 80% of Kerbin's gravity(7.85m/s/s vs 9.81m/s/s), so I went back to a design that got into space but was not able to get orbital before falling back into the atmosphere and just slapped some solid boosters on it for leaving Kerbin. Due to contracts that I picked up to pay for the mission(just a habit as I have 60M funds and this was less than a 1M funds ship), I first wen to the Mun to collect some ore. During my descent I discovered that I could choose to either have enough thrust to land, or have enough delta-v to land, but not both, so I aborted back to Mun orbit and sent a refueling pod with 300 ore I could refine into whatever I needed. With LH2 refilled and a bit of LF in case I needed it (about 3 seconds worth for my 8 Thuds), I managed a safe landing and started refueling, sending the ore drone back towards Kerbin(with much improved D-v now that it's payload was empty). I was impatient and still had to make a stop at Minmus, so I used nearly half my thud fuel to get into Mun orbit and and the ship is currently on route to Minmus. During that transit, I managed to get my Grand Tour vessel pushed into Low Moho Orbit(had to load a couple times as something cause one ship to tear the other apart, possibly SAS oscillations or some such), so I detached and tried for a landing(staying attached was not working very well during my first landing attempt). I was coming down over an area with a 20 degree tilt, so I changed my descent(including some hovering) and finally managed to land at a site with about 3 degrees of tilt(and all of 3% ore). As you can see I had quite the safety-margin as I had 25m/s left after landing(good thing I sent that fuel courier) (plus about 95 monoprop left which I had already refilled before thinking to take a picture) I still need to get Jeb and Bill out to plant flags for XP(which is pretty superfluous at this point as they have more than 80XP from this trip alone and 5 starts only takes 64) After refueling I am planning to re-fuel the fuel drone while visiting all the Moho biomes I can find.(no scansat here just yet, so unlikely to get all of them)

Not a lot today, made a couple Duna landing attempts with my Grand Training vessel(turns out that I can't manage a 7 degree slope on Duna with a Mk2 passenger module in my klaw, even with RCS) Then I spent a lot of time getting each of the 24 kerbals(21 trainees, 3 rescuees) out and planting flags with them for XP. After getting everyone re-situated I made a long, slow ascent off Duna(1.19 TWR, engines that over-heat fairly quickly without radiators and the likely loss of radiators if deployed above ~45m/s below 10km means I had to cut engines at ~65m/s and re-engage around 40m/s a few times on the way up) Should probably have dumped most of the ore I was hauling around for a better ascent... Got all the trainees/rescuees safely to orbit though, so now just a quick hop over to Ike to refuel and then back to the Kerbin SOI(where Rescuees will get to visit the moons on their way home)