dangerhamster

They are part of the Buffalo rover pack, the chassis and big KAS container come from that too.

Started construction of a Minmus base. All the peripheral modules were moved into position with Ickle rovers and then hooked up by the engineer lurking nearby in the mining buggy. The Ickle rovers were then upgraded to Utility Mule standard with parts delivered by a training flight. Meanwhile on Mun another training flight delivered an upgrade pack for the Grizzler exploration rover as well as some spare seats and solar panels etc. Bill was able to get the new "Blindalotti" lighting system fitted before the crew had sorted their towels out. Which gave them a bit of a start when they finally emerged. Bill is reported to be happy with the new parts although the jury is out on wether he should be allowed to fiddle with the RTG's also included.......

When a previously well behaved Rover takes exception to a visit from the vet........ or when you don't place that last wheel just right.

Good old Leetspeed........

Anything up to R17. Which whilst not being a fixed speed is clearly too fast.

Same here, although I have a house rule that only lets me "simulate" for bodies I have already crashed landed on.

Weeeeell I tried parachutes but they don't work.... But in seriousness any engine on a Mun lander is a retro rocket so you are better off budgeting the DV needed to land into the total needed to return to Kerbin rather than a dedicated landing stage. Thus saving weight that can be used for other things. On a sort of related note I do have a habit of putting a couple of Puff engines and a monoprop tank into my multiple crew return capsules as a sort of emergency brake.

Ribson in charge of the Mk2 mining buggy arrived off Duna aboard a Deliverance. Peeking out through the cargo bay doors he finally realised why there was such competition to get (to) the first base there....... Safely delivered to the surface he set off in search of the promised ore concentration. Finding only low readings he checked the Kerbalstar navigation system and found he had landed 150km downrange of the intended site.... And due to a slight oversight he had no antenna to report back. After briefly considering driving 100 or so km north to the Ickle Rover and lashing up a comms device he rejected that plan due to a nagging feeling he might be plagiarising. So he decided to stick both kinds of music (country and western) on the stereo and take a relaxing drive to the target area.

As soon as the parts are unlocked I put a monoprop powered braking system on my re-entry units. Just for those "does the horizon look lumpy to you Jeb moments".

A survey probe arrived at Jool...... cue sudden realisation that you can't scan a liquid surface. And just to put the icing on the cake the transfer stage was down to a teacup of fuel. After mission controls observation that this was an awfully expensive way of getting a temperature report it was decided to separate the lander ( I know I know) and insert it into orbit. The rest would be allowed to fulfil the "escape Jool's gravity" milestone before being reclassified as debris "oooops 24" and quietly forgotten. The lander will probably be sacrificed to a gloopy grave on the big green one. On a brighter note the Minmus runabout received it's pre-packaged upgrade to a combined science and crew transport. After checking that Bob was safely locked in the miner a test drive went well, with the proviso that turns should not be attempted above 10m/s following a couple of sphincter tightening moments....... although getting a tad orbital in a straight line proved both survivable and fun.

On the other hand it means I'm not in the shed fixing up my Lambretta and then spending over a pound a litre on petrol.................

I quite happily paid 30 pounds for the game and consider it one of the best value for money games ever. Partly due to the open nature of the core game and partly for the great community.

Don't be fooled...... it's just a ploy by the Dres awareness campaign. A bit like those Welsh tourist board adverts were it isn't raining.

Part commander is your friend in these situations. You can tuck the box away from harm and unless it's a sudden need to select a particular part everything is easily available through the filters.

Launched survey probes for Ike and Gilly. Possibly slightly overspec......

A couple of tricks to help with this kind of mission, waypoint manager helps with navigation to the area. The other is to have the box open for the report before reaching the zone, this helps with aircraft that may cross the area before you open the menu. I know the example below is a rover but the principle is the same.

Off the top of my head the legs and service bay are Lithobrake, the top science bay is universal storage with a SpaceY adaptor on top. I think the truss is from near future construction and yes the piston is IR.

A Monday off, the missus is at work a nice pinot nearby and my acid jazz playlist on..... There's only one thing for it. Contract cleanup day! Started with the easy stuff, the long overlooked take a picture of <insert currently fashionable body>. Launched a modified version of my old Orbcam. Which looks better. Except for the docking port hidden behind the stack separator meaning no crew rotation until they return to LKO and ditch the go module, hope they like the view. Next up some tinkering with the eccentricity and inclination of various satellites to fulfil the conditions of several contracts at once, one was only 0.1 degrees inclination off (wondered why the contract wasn't competed till I actually looked properly). Next up was explore Eve and in a dramatic break with tradition I had actually dispatched a proper lander probe instead of sacrificing a survey probe. M700 best chute honest. In a clear case of mission creep the original of a small cheap probe to deliver a thermometer had bloated into "stuff everything on except the nutri-matic" to the extent of jamming in a deployable antenna. Well, didn't want the thing burning off on descent. After a few minutes of mild panic when it looked like the oggin would claim her fate threw double sixes and Terra Purply came to the rescue. In your face irony. With a not liquid landing assured the heatshield was dispensed with, at this point it was becoming apparent that the array of drogue chutes might have been a tad overpessimistic. Still better safe than Bob. After gently floating down for ages during which the idea of cutting some of the chutes failed to occur until afterwards she settled to the ground in much the same way that Hippos don't. It was then just a case of running out the antenna and firing off a temperature report to complete the contract. Yay. The final one was a simple case of taking some temp readings with the Duna rover. Or in this case waiting for Kerbol rise to keep the limited battery capacity topped up. Handily the report locations led into areas of higher ore concentration and a relatively flat bit which was marked using the debris-o-matic system neatly shoehorning the rovers primary mission with the contract. Which was nice. Hey there's an idea, how about a marker flag system for rovers?

Luckily Douglas Adam's lawyers are a lot nicer than Disneys...... And keep at it JNA, when you get it right the first time it all becomes much easier. Well a bit. Sort of. Sometimes.

A survey probe on Eve. As an ad-hoc mission it came equipped with the ideal power plant for landing on eve, a nuke and er..... that's it. Things started heating up which neatly removed the extra weight. Decouplers who needs em. The legendary but strangely widely overlooked braking effects of the M700 came into play along with judicious wiggling of the HECS core. Finally coming to rest with the "boing-o-matic" waveguide protecting the delicate probe core from the impact.

Doctor Who is a national institution and thus exempt. If only they brought the ginger fox back.....

Common sense ruins more movies than knowledge..... have you seen Red Tails?

In what may be a last hurrah for old style rover capabilities Runabout 1 on Minmus took on a contract to make EVA observations. The trail of waypoints led steadily towards the slopes causing a tremor of trepidation. However she responded like a champ tackling the incline with gusto. Once a the waypoint judicious use of the Kerbarake resolved a slight case of separation anxiety. After a careful descent it was time to see what she could do on the jag back to the lander site. Even at speed slight direction changes were safely executed although continued turns pushed the envelope somewhat.... all in all KSC regards this as a success although the crew have been instructed to keep Bill away from it.

Had to give you a +1 for "Newbal" Vic. A little point regarding the tech tree, if you mouse over any component (even if it is not researched) you get a window listing its attributes. Very handy for checking in advance if a probe core (for example) has retro hold and suchlike or what its power supply requirements are.

When a contract says "landed" it usually means dry land with "splashed down" for water. If it had said "return to Kerbin" I think either would have done. I'm no expert on the logic of contracts but this feels right.