Terwin

Launched a hydrogen fueled Fuel tanker to Moho so that my Grand Tour will be able to land and refuel. (largest VASMIR engine from Near Future mod, ISP is like 16K on the lowest thrust setting giving like 30km/s with a payload of 1200 liquid fuel for the Grand Tour vessel, but very long burn times...) My Eve Scansat arrived, and I played around to get as much coverage as possible(Low resolution and biome scans complete, currently working on finishing the high-resolution scan before moving to Gilly) Fuel tanker arrived at the Moho SOI only to discover that it was an hour over-due to start it's burn, fortunately my latest save was only a couple days of Eve scan passes earlier, so I was able to set a better alarm(I guess KAC either does not like VASMIR burns or does not like burns where the burn needs to start an hour before even entering the SOI where the burn is centered) Managed to do about 3km of the 9km burn before the wife pointed out what time it was(she objects to me getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night, something about not wanting to be married to a zombie or some such. Might be why she regrets getting me KSP for my birthday...) Tonight I'll see if I can get the tanker into Moho orbit before our gaming group arrives... (I can see the Grand tour when I am in the map view, it is about 20 days out from Moho. If I can verify that ISRU makes the right fuel for my VASMIR engine, I may dock and circularize with that engine to save even more fuel)

The 'Accept all rescue missions' rule adds a bit of Russian roulette, one or two 'low Kerbol orbit' missions and you could get into major trouble due to needing to spend all your funds to satisfy them. Do you intend to add some sort of off-world launch-pads at some point? Otherwise any lost parts will become irreplaceable after year 3... I foresee lots of Kerbin surveys in your future unless you restrict planes as part of the 10 days per launch restriction. (if planes are also restricted, you probably need ISRU ASAP so you can reuse a single launch several times) Does a KSC science rover or a pod or used to either pop-out a kerbal or recover data from a reusable vehicle count as a launch? Good thing the science tree can be filled in the Kerbin SOI...

I'd like to see a dev note in the new format when they have not just announced a whole slew of things through other channels and they still have some interesting things left to say. I think the new format has potential, but we have seen a lot of old-style dev notes with lots of interesting things going on, and no new-style dev notes that were not preempted by other announcements, so it is hard to make a comparison just yet.(sort of like trying to compare and contrast a Chevy Volt and a Tesla Roadster when you have driven a volt for years but you have only see one roadster in person, and it did not even have wheels yet)

Launched a scanning probe to Dres in hopes that it gets there before my Grand Tour ship does. Adjusted Inclination of Grand Tour to mach with Moho, I only have a 9m/s burn left to have a low-altitude fly-by, but my capture burn needs almost 5km/s to get into low orbit and I don't think I have that much left(about 350 ore left on top of 4.1km/s in fuel). I think I'll be sending a tanker to Moho to make sure my Grand Tour does not end up stuck in orbit without enough fuel to land.

Sounds like you forgo to turn off the torque of your pod+reaction wheel(s) For my activities, I managed to get my Grand Tour into the EVE SOI, fly by low EVE orbit and land on all 3 biomes of Gilly(only 1 of those landings actually had more than 2 landing gear touch the surface, but that was only a problem when I pulled Jeb out to plant his flag... had to switch back a couple times to keep the ship from toppling) Ran into a bug where as soon as I started harvesting ore my tanks filled up, but I am not greatly concerned by that, as I would have just taken as much time as was needed anyway. (I previously encountered that bug when dealing with asteroids) Having visited all the Gilly biomes, I launched towards Eve(I intended to orbit Gilly, but was making a minmus-like ascent and over-shot Gilly orbit. After experimenting with many nodes, I got a Moho intercept that also touched the Eve atmosphere on the way out. Thinking about Eve, I made an Eve rover and Launched it from Kerbin. It is probably a lot more transit efficient than it needs to be and will no doubt have issues when I try to enter the atmosphere, but hopefully it will land safely with 6 radial drogue chutes and 6 radial chutes as the 3 heaviest pieces are the Asteroid Day probe core, a 1.25 service bay, and a single Radioisotope generator(4 rover wheels, 3 landing gear, an antenna and a set of reusable science gear finish out the package, I am hoping to get science from most of the land biomes if I can). It is due to hit the Eve SOI around the same time the Grand Tour hits Moho. Images: Gilly landing and Eve probe: After launching the probe, I did my low eve fly-by of the Grand tour, even getting an EVA report in the EVE upper atmosphere(stayed within a couple dozen meters of 90km, so I did not even bring in my Gigantors), and set my sights on Moho(that place has a *LOT* of biomes). I was a little disappointed that my scansat did not get to EVE for scanning purposes until after the Grand Tour left the SOI, but it should be there before it returns from Moho, so there should still be a chance to refuel it and send it on to Moho. Hmm, looking at the upcoming lull in activities, it may be time to send a Scansat to Dres, and perhaps Eeloo.

Just a couple quick things. Landed/refueled/flagged/launched my Grand Training mission on Minmus, so now the 1 and 2 stars should have all the Kerbol SOI XP, then headed out for Duna/Ike. Lousy transfer of > 200 days, but I am hopeful I will be able to make a mid-course correction and get it there sooner. Before doing that however, I managed my closest ever rocket landing, only a couple hundred meters from the edge of the runway(possibly less as I was actually concerned I might land on the sloped part). When I recovered, I got > 18,000 science(every biome on Duna and Ike except for the Duna Craters using all stock instruments plus Roverdude's 4 Sounding Rockets mini-experiments). Let me fill in every unfilled node on the community tech tree that needs less than 2250 science. I think I now have fewer than a dozen unpurchased nodes, including that 10K one on the end.

Did a few things. First my rescue ship was launched, rescued a stranded kerbal(to pay for the launch) and then was klawed by the Duna Mission ship. Bob got out and transferred as much science as possible to the rescue ship then I sent the engineer and most of the scientists to go home n this reentry-safe vessel, leaving Val(who piloted the rescue vessel which will return using a probe core), Bob and another scientist who's seat was stolen by a tourist. After everyone was transferred, I detached the 'reentry assistance pod' from the rescue vessel and klawed it with the Duna Mission vessel. The rescue vessel landed safely, then, inspite of some white knuckles and prayers for the Klaw to hold, the Duna Mission ship also landed safely, only needed a few seconds of main engine burn to land below 8m/s Rescue images: (Yes, the reentry assistance pod had 16 air brakes, 8 drogue chutes and 16 chutes. Don't know if the ship-mounted chutes being still set for Duna and so fully opening around 5km kept the podt from being ripped out of the klaw when the pod chutes opened or not) After some conversations with Bob and the other scientist on the way down, Val decided that Duna was not a big challenge and she did not want to be the only orange suit to be left out. So, while waiting for the second Duna mission to make it's way from Minmus to Kerbin, Val set off in the 'Grand Training', based on the Grand Tour Jeb and Bill are taking around the system, but with a Mk3 crew module to haul along 15 additional Kerbals in need of training up to 4 stars(plus room for picking up one Kerbal stranded on Ike). As there had been a few rescues, everyone with fewer than 3 stars were loaded into the passenger module, along with all the engineers and most of the scientists with 3 stars(with Val and a few other 3-star female pilots to help gender-balance the crew). First stop was Mun for the trainees to plant flags, and now, after a sling-shot around Kerbin, they are all on their way to Minmus to top off the fuel, (plant a few more trainee flags,) and set out for Duna.

I believe that you could actually satisfy the contract by landing a drill + small tank + power source on Eve to drill 1050 ore(may need to empty small ore tank a few times), then land a ship on Gilly with 1050 ore on board(I think drilling it from Gilly then lifting off and landing would be sufficient) In the past I have satisfied similar contracts by drilling on the Mun, use the ore for fuel, landing on Minmus, refilling the ore tank from minmus = transport ore from Mun to Minmus. So the very most you should need to do is: mine Eve for 1050 ore, dump tank, land on Gilly, Mine 1050 ore from Gilly(you may need to have a Kerbal bump into the ship to move it momentarily off the surface, not sure)

Is a Grand Tour just visiting all of the SOIs? If so, I have one under-way right now, leaving Duna and heading towards Eve for a refill on Gilly. Already landed on Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike. Jeb and Bill are on-board with a couple female science-types in a lab to keep them company. Will it still count as a grand tour if I orbit Kerbin to ferry everyone down to the surface to level up on the way back out to the outer planets? After the grand tour I am looking at making a couple copies of my caveman game, one for an entirely stock-parts career(stock+KER), and one with Rover Dude's colonization system.

Quite a lot over the weekend, first I brought a class B asteroid home to the KSC(original landing was ~13km off shore, so I decided to make a rover with electric powered propellers to bring it to shore. Unfortunately it was unstable above physics warp 2x or above 2m/s, even without the asteroid in tow. So it took a bit of time to get there, especially since I went over-board with the structural intakes and my frame rate was lower than with my asteroid retrieval vessel(6-12fps for rover, ~16fps for my normal vessels) (I think it took over an hour of game-time at 2x to just get to the landed vessel that was keeping the asteroid from sinking, fortunatley nothing broke with the second vessel klawed the same asteroid and I was able to recover the asteroid retrieval vessel. After getting it to the shore, I swapped out for a new model(the first one spent most of the return trip upside down) to get it to its parking location between the SPH and runway. Then I made a more minimalistic rover using electric wheels and a serious tilt(still had large landing gear to get the asteroid off the ground after being klawed), and took it on a tour of the KSC. Turns out you get 60 science per biome for asteroid samples, so I got nearly 1500 science from this little show-and-tell.(almost 9 for the second sample with an over-all total of probably 70 per biome), I also discovered that I had not taken surface samples or crew reports from most of those buildings(probably because my last science roving was before the final upgrades) Asteroid pictures: note asteroids do not seem to radiate heat away, so heat-management may be needed to get rid of a heat bar if it gets one. I also suspect that each asteroid is counted distinctly, so I could probably get > 1500 science per asteroid I bring to the KSC. After that my grand tour arrived at Duna, landed to refuel and plant XP flags, did an atmospheric hop over to the Craters biome(apparently only exists where the lowlands and polar biomes touch which is why I missed it previously), then went to Ike for further XP flags and a final Duna-system refueling stop. After fuel and ore were topped off, I tried to find a node to get me to Jool(perhaps with a Duna-assist), but eventually gave up and headed towards Eve for a stop on Gilly. While all this was going on, both of my returning Duna missions landed on Minmus to refuel and then headed towards Kerbin. As the first Duna mission to return to Kerbin(in 3 more days) was built under 1.0.2 and is not well suited to landing in 1.0.4, I am planning to launch a return-vessel with a pilot which will swap-out with the current crew(Enginneer+5 scientists) which will take as much science as they can on the return vessel, then the return pilot will try to get as much of the craft as possible to the ground intact. I am thinking that I will want a landing-assist pod in the rescue craft that can be Klawed by the Duna ship after the crew transfer and will have lots of air-brakes and parachutes for the reentry of the historic vessel.(first ever successful return from Duna in KSP if I can get it down with the cockpit intact)

By my estimation, Jeb should have recently exited the Duna SOI on a trajectory towards Eve/Gilly. He and Bill are in the cockpit of my low-g grand tour(land on every body with less than 3m/s/s gravity), with a couple of female scientists in a lab module for company. (Bob was near Duna when this mission was launched, but is now returning to Kerbin after a final refueling stop on Minmus, Valentia is the same, but on a different ship, hers has tourists)

A few things relating to solar power: On Minmus, the moon does not seem to block the sun properly, so when I am mining at my richest deposits(Greater flats I think), I never use battery power, just solar. Other places(Mun, Duna, and Ike thus far), I set down, deploy the drills and set a KAC alarm, then start the drills/ISRU and change focus to another vehicle. The catch-up calculations do not use power, they just produce ore and resources. (I am less sure about this, but I think the catch-up calculations also don't seem to reduce ore if you have a sufficient starting stock, may need running drills though. 4 drills and a lvl 3 engineer with 1 ISRU usually seems to be fine with a concentration of 6-8% if I start with more than a few hundred ore) As such I find that an efficient mining operation only needs enough batteries for a few minutes of operation(in case you check on it at night and don't want to accidentally end up stopping it until morning). Although I generally try to have enough solar generation that I produce more power than I consume while mining during the day(and that 10k charge battery that I think comes from Near Future, mostly because I don't care to worry about power most of the time)

yep, according to the Wiki: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin The tracking station has these sub-biomes: Tracking Station Dish East Tracking Station Dish North Tracking Station Dish South Tracking Station Hub As far as what I did today, not a lot, I was warping through to the arrival time-frame for my Duna missions(both inbound and outbound) but checking mission control every day or two for new missions. As I had installed the engine lighting and Asteroid day mods, I got an asteroid day mission, so I built a solar powered Xenon telescope probe. First time using fairings even. Needed a couple launches to get it working right then had a nice long ejection burn at 3x physical warp. Lots of delta-v to change orbits as needed though, even with a twr of 0.11... Satellite has already found 4 of the 10 needed asteroids and it has not even 10% of the way to Periapps(where it will burn for another 10 minutes to have a 10.30Mmx10.36Mm orbit, a little outside Eve). I also adjusted the orbits of my Ike scansat probe, and when it was approximately 100% scanned with all instruments on Ike, I moved it to Duna(previously only scanned in a swath around the equator). Currently finishing the high-resolution scan at approx 760km orbit, should be done well in advance of the new mission arriving, and probe still has almost 5Km/s d-v left. Hopefully I can find that Craters biome... (only Duna/Ike biome that is not yet explored/exploited with data on the way back to Kerbin)

Not a lot today, adjusted my Jool scansat probe to get a braking fly-by of Tylo. Watched my Ike Scansat scan for about a month(after nearly finishing the biome map jumped it up to a 755x760 orbit for better high-resolution scanning, now an orbit takes more than 6 hours) Sent ahead roughly 500 science from the labs on the Duna missions returning home. I dropped my Class A asteroid in an elliptic orbit, then set one of the over-powered launch vehicles orbiting Kerbin as the target. Realized I was roughly 8 degrees off the equator, so thrusted to re-capture the asteroid until after the orbital adjustment burn(want it to be easy to get to), then dropped he asteroid and went after the launch stage. As the vehicle design was from 1.0.2 I wanted the extra parachutes on the launch stage to help with a soft landing(and incidentally clean up a big piece of space trash). Thrusting was difficult as I grabbed it near the middle, and the engine far out-massed the empty fuel containers. Finally just went to the appoaps and brought the periapps inside the atmosphere(~50km) for easier braking. First pass went fine. Saved before the second pass as it looked like it would be the landing pass(if I could get it to work. Attempt 1: got slow enough for drogue chutes and finally parachutes, but when the chutes on the launcher opened, it tore my ship apart, even the parachutes on the cockpit came off, loss of all ands Attempt 2: continued with my efforts to burn whenever the engine was retrograde or within 90 degrees of vertical to make the descent more gentle, finally hit on the idea of moving most of my fuel to the nose of the launch vehicle, turning the natural inclination from a tumble to launcher-first(perpendicular to the air-stream), tried un-locking the gimbal of the klaw to see if that would help when the chutes opened and adjusted the chutes to fully open at different altitudes: nope Attempt 3: Adjusted fuel and gimbal early on (before 40km) but during physics warp, engine was ripped off some how. Decided to see if this would allow landing with the chutes I had on-board. Transferred the 'working' fuel I kept on the now-engineless ship to the launcher and released the klaw immediately after opening the first stage of the chutes and released the Klaw: all chutes on the launch stage immediately vanished, causing it to free-fall to the surface. Engine-less ship managed a reasonable touch-down with nothing more apparently falling off/exploding. Recovered and got ~ 300 asteroid science. Checked the data I had collected from the other asteroid: no reduction. Apparently asteroid samples are per-asteroid per-biome, good to know.(Unless I forgot to collect samples several times and just happened not to have any overlap in what I did collect) Special note: While I was re-enering with this ship klawed to the side of a larger launch stage, my wife made a comment about 'unless it is roasting like a pig on a spit over an open fire' when I asked if she wanted to see it, so I had to show her my ship on a spit wreathed in reentry flames.

My current manned designs are based on Mk III holding ISRU and ore tanks(plus whatever I need for the mission, like a science lab to hold results from interplanetary missions), with a nuclear based engine on the bottom(Atomic Age nuclear lightbulb to be specific) and i-beam based landing legs(with deployable feet on the end and drills just above them). I generally have a Klaw on the nose of the cockpit for refueling probes or pod-rescues and used this design successfully in the Kerbin SOI for quite a while before taking it interplanetary.(two ships on their way back from Duna/Ike with a third on it's way there before heading to other planets. (lots of 'base', 'rescue', and 'I'm already there so I might as well' missions combined with training flights have me with over 30 3-star Kerbals and over 30M funds) I am not a huge fan of docking, so I just include the ISRU on all my manned flights to make sure my less than ideal flight paths don't leave my Kerbals stranded. Of course the down-side of this is that my frame-rate is not great. Fortunately it is not so bad that it makes the game hard to play, it just gets very noticeable when I launch my occasional small probe and everything happens so much faster than I expect.

Finally decided to bring home one of the asteroids I have circling the Mun, the 0.4 ton class A with no ore left. I think I'll need to send up a rescue vehicle though, as the ship currently hauling it around was designed in 1.0.2 and those don't usually survive reentry well.(need more chutes) My two Duna mission ships got fully loaded at Ike and headed home. The first one(cruise ship with large ore and small fuel) managed to get a ~97 day rendezvous with Kerbin, and after a couple SOI changes I managed to adjust it for a Minmus orbital capture(With Ike->Duna->Kerbol->Kerbin-> Minmus transits, it did not want to let me see the trajectory through the Minmus SOI until after I left the Ike SOI) Then a good hour in-game later, the Mission ship(high fuel low ore) followed suit but found an 80 day transit by attempting to follow in the footsteps of the cruise ship. It should actually arrive shortly before my Grand Tour ship gets to Duna. After leaving Ike, I was also able to schedule a Minmus orbital capture. Oddly enough, neither of these ships counts as having a Minmus fly-by in-spite of having landed and refueled there, and the mission ship also seems to be missing an Ike fly-by. In any case, I'll make sure they classify as having a Minmus fly-by before returning to Kerbol with their science loads to make sure I get my two Tour missions fulfilled. I also launched an attempted Jool scansat probe, but I am not sure if it will be able to do more than have a reasonably stable orbit in the Jool system without a refuel by the Grand Tour ship(once it gets there). Kept loosing my Jool rendezvous while thrusting so I probably wasted a lot of fuel. If I can get some gravity assists I may be able to have enough fuel to start some scans, but not at all sure about that. (Similar to the eve probe launch, I had about 600m/s left in the ascent stage after getting to orbit, but a lot of that extra speed probably ended up getting wasted) I am speculating about using the asteroid miner to deorbit those two over-successful launch stages after the asteroid gets transferred to a lander.

Links to Badges(if there is one) are sent via private message so you can put them in your sig (at least that is how it happened with me)

Not a lot today, Launched a scanSat probe towards Eve/Gilly with a plan that the Grand Tour can refuel it and then carry it as an extra tank to Moho where it can start scanning while the main ship lands to refuel. (Probe has 7km/s in the core and another 5km/s in the drop-tanks using a stock nuke, whereas the Grand Tour ship has a total of roughly 10km/s between ore and liquid fuel using the Atomic Age Lightbulb engine(1500 isp), so the fuel in the probe should provide at least a few extra m/s to the main ship) The original launch was much faster than I expected, apparently it has been a while since I launched a rocket at a normal FPS. I had an extra 500m/s in the launch stage after achieving orbit, letting me do the first 1/3 of my departure burn without using any transit fuel. If everything goes as planned I should have a stable Gilly orbit without emptying the drop-tanks. Unfortunately Eve is on the opposite side of Kerbol, so it will take a few days more than a year to arrive(encounter is during second pass), but as the Grand Tour is currently > 90 days away from Duna, so it has a while before it will be getting to Eve. I should really examine my power requirements and design a version for the outer-planets using the nuke generators.

Spent some time hopping biomes on Ike and Duna. A couple of the Ike biomes only had a 'one leg and engines' landing, just enough to trigger the science action-group. I was also able to determine the safe altitudes on Duna: Above 20km, radiators and solar panels were fine above 600m/s(2/3 orbital velocity) (broke at 20km altitude) Near the surface, panels and radiators were fine up to about 50m/s (broke at 54m/s and a couple km altitude) Above 10km Radiators and panels seemed fine above 100m/s As a consequence of this, my low TWR, high heat ship did vertical burns up to about 10km, stowing radiators at 50m/s. Above 10km, Radiators extended and turned to be 45 degrees off vertical(Heat meter was usually about half full at this point). In the future, I need to remember that 1 fuel tank(2500 units) and 3 large ore tanks(4500 total) may be efficient, but does not have a lot of room for error(ISRU needed during entire ascent to have enough fuel to circularize, also caused problems when trying to capture at Duna) Refueled scansat has scanned most of Ike and has over 5km delta-v (1600 worth of Mk2 liquid fuel tanks, nuke engine, 2 gigantors, reaction wheel, probe core, antenna, scanSat scanners, Ore Scanner, gravioli and thermometer. Had another 3200 fuel in drop-tanks as 'transit stage' to get to Duna.) Will probably do the poles of Duna then take a look at sending it to another planet (perhaps Eve/Gilly) The original Duna mission arrived and grabbed data from another Duna biome. Had a lot fewer fuel problems(1 large ore tank, 10K worth of fuel tanks, but also in part because it did not get accelerated by a phantom force while preparing to leave the Kerbin system). Currently on it's way to Ike to have everyone plant flags and top off fuel/ore in preparation for a return to Kerbin. As I think I have gathered most of the science from almost every biome other than the Duna Caters, I'm getting ready to send everyone home. I also launched a grand-tour vessel with Jeb, Bill, and a couple of science girls(Bob is on the original Duna mission). Duna is near Kerbin so the transit is less than 100 days. Once they visit Duna and Ike, they are expected to visit every other planet and moon with gravity no more than 3m/s/s: Gilly, Moho, Dres, Vall, Bop, Pol, and Eeloo) Design is similar to the Cruise ship(that has 3 ore tanks and one fuel tank), but the hitchhiker pod(for tourists) was replaced by a second fuel tank(mostly empty during lift-off as it just had to get to Mun), so it should have plenty of delta-v for most of the transits.(I am most worried about the transits between Moho and Gilly as I hear that needs a lot of D-v) These missions go so much more quickly when I only take 'since I'm there' contracts while doing them... (including an Ike ore to Duna(complete) and Duna ore to Ike(in transit) over and above the explore.land/plant flag/return stuff)

I wonder if I could manage that on Ike, there were a couple of biomes where I did a 'one landing leg and engines' landing just long enough to trigger my science action group, and this sort of approach would let me get the EVA and surface samples that cannot go into the action group... Nope, Ike has > 20x the gravity of Gilly. Even twice the gravity of Minmus, with higher peaks. Bummer. (not that I actually need the science mind you)

After landing on Duna with 180m/s fuel left yesterday, I topped off the (small)fuel tank and loaded up enough ore for 1.2 more tanks giving me a TWR of roughly 1.5. Tried some Biome hopping, but my normal ballistic trajectory with a retro-burn and vertical landing was not working with such a low TWR, so loaded back up and finally decided to just go to Ike. Problem: Attempting to get to orbit with an engine that has heating problems and unable to deploy radiators above 60m/s. At first I was just doing a normal gravity turn, but upon realizing my engine problems I reversed the turn and then kept killing the engine when it was getting close to over-heating, deploying radiators any time I was going slow enough not to lose them. Getting to orbit to a *lot* of fuel that way... (not sure I would have made it had I not been refining for most of the ascent). I did remember to re-pack the ladder-inaccessible chutes I had used for my initial Duna landing. After setting up nodes for Ike I decided my scansat was not going to be refueled over Duna after all, so I also headed that over towards Ike. Seems like I'll need to do some testing to see how fast I can go with my radiators extended at which altitudes. (losing radiators when trying to go more than 60m/s within a couple thousand meters of the lowlands surface is my first data-point...)

Heavy, highly durant, low-isp rocket engines seem a lot less magical than being able to re-fill a solid rocket booster without needing to re-build it. A 5 ton module that can re-pressurize the filler gas while refilling fuel tanks from an appropriate energy-rich ore also does not seem terribly magical, especially with a reasonable energy input into the process. Considering their small system, it is not unreasonable to think that Kerbals took more of a Russian Durable aircraft approach instead of the US highly-tuned but delicate aircraft approach to space flight. (I have heard that in the USSR it was reasonable to just bull-doze a crash off the run-way and deem the runway ready for use as opposed to the multiple-times-a-day manual policing of aircraft carrier flight decks double-checking for any stray bits or pieces that could get sucked into an engine and ruin the plane US approach)

I decided not to pick up any contracts for new missions until I had some Duna arrivals. With the faster time progression(skipping up to 20 days one time), I managed to get my first asteroid capture mission completed, then discovered that if you have an asteroid Klawed, you cannot mine any other object.(had my drills going down into the Mun, and even when I pulled up the landing gear for deeper penetration(not required previously) the only 'start extraction' option I had was Asteroid extraction, and it kept saying no contact. Putting the legs back down and dropping the asteroid let me finally fill up the tanks. Grabbed back up the asteroid and now that ship is running around the Kerbin SOI to collect all the different Asteroid samples it can.(it is an old 1.0.2 design, so it can't reenter safely, let alone with an asteroid in tow. Might send up a heat-shield/parachute just to bring down the asteroid as a trophy though, perhaps a pod to store the science in too) My Duna ScanSat/Resource scanner probe captured at Duna with a little over 1km/s and has scanned the planet and is now in a somewhat inclined orbit letting me scan most of the non-polar regions in preparation for my manned missions(should probably go scan Ike too, but I figure I can wait for the refuel before getting tricky with orbits as I only really have practice with low-orbit intercepts) Got my second asteroid mission captured at Kerbin and headed to the Mun for mission completion/sample collection My second manned Duna mission arrived at the Duna SOI(this one benefited from a mystery thrust before leaving the Kerbin SOI cutting it's 210 day transit to 160 days, so it is arriving a few weeks before the earlier mission) After mu initial Duna SOI science collection, I discovered that my low Ike retro-burn apparently drifted to be inside Ike, corrected that a bit and performed first retro-burn. Problem, only ~ 5 minutes to refine the ~2500 fuel needed for the Low Duna retro-burn, further problem, I am in Ike's shadow meaning my engine is my only power source for refining more fuel. Note: had ~1700 ore, but only a 2500 fuel tank. Initial tank had ~1.9km/s d-v but needed more than 3km/s to stay in the Duna SOI. Attempt 1: started burn early and kept refining fuel, but to no avail Attempt 2: Burned sideways to get out of Ike's shadow. Helped, but still not enough time to refine fuel for burn. Made named save game in case this is the best option(a while after passing Duna and still trying not to leave the SOI) Attempt 3: Aerocapture, Everything outside of the Mk3 components exploded, including the engines and most of the solar panels, still did not prevent leaving SOI Attempt 4: Found a saved game right after initial science collection, did 1km/s retro-burn immediately and re-calculated braking burns. Was able to re-top fuel before burn 1km/s in Ike's SOI, and with the better fuel efficiency managed to have a good 200m/s d-v worth of fuel for the Duna burn over and above what was needed for an orbit inside Ike's orbit. Finished off the Ore during first orbit and went down to LDO (50x52, so just above the atmosphere) with ~1200 d-v left @ ~900m/s). After collecting all the data I could, I made sure Had the game saved and made a landing attempt. Closed Gigantors and radiators, opened air-brakes then burned down about 600m/s. Watched parachutes closely and opened several that the engineer could get to fairly easily to re-pack once they were down to Risky. Managed to land without any breakages with a good 180m/s d-v left and deployed drills to start re-filling(don't think I can take off if completely full, but I can sure mine to get a full fuel tank and some reserve ore). next step: get all the Kerbals out to get flag XP, get enough fuel+ore to get TWR down to ~1.2 and then decide if it is time for biome hopping(I have lots of empty nodes in the community tech-tree to unlock), Scansat refuel(so it can scan the poles and also scan Ike), or a trip to Ike. This was my first Career Duna landing, with my only previous Duna mission arrival in a 0.90 sandbox game(I *think* I landed, not sure) that barely had enough d-v to a Kerbin fly-by outside the orbit f Minmus.

Since 1.0.4 I have finally started using mod-F12 I frequently use it to turn on thermal details so I can more closely track my heat status(I also tend to use F11 during most long burns with Atomic Age engines) Not only did I use F9 numerous times, but I finally had to revert to a backed-up save to get far enough back to have my first Duna lander capture at Duna(small fuel tank and large ore tanks apparently mean you need to burn early and often for braking) Finally landed with 180m/s remaining(thanks to lots of air-brakes and some parachutes). When a phantom thrust cut my Duna intercept from 210 days to 160 days, I corrected the trajectory and kept the bonus speed(same mission as above, so it almost cost me the mission)

You need Google to remember Kara's pet Fizzgig? (inconspicuously slides a chair in front of the 'D' section of his DVD collection) Then again, I suppose I should not be terribly disappointed that it took 15 minutes for someone to identify the character using Google, it is more of a fantasy than sci-fi movie after all...