Zosma Procyon

My ground bases are all partially INSIDE the bodies they're set on, and end up flung into the air and crash back down. I'm going to restore 1.4.2 from my backup. Please announce when this problem is fixed.

The current version of 1.4.3 Mac does not work. Had to restore 1.4.2 from Time Machine. Is there a separate patch for Making History 1.2? NEVERMIND: I didn't install MH 1.2. Doy!

Oh that. I've had that too. Had to use RCS jets to finish docking. Maybe it will be fixed in 1.4.3.

I just read on the wiki that Laythe's atmosphere has a lower oxygen concentration the Kerbin's. I assume this effects the efficiency of jet engines. I have a jet powered boat en route to Laythe and another being prepared for launch. The one en route and the new one I'm working on do not have air intakes other than the engine nacelle parts, one for each engine. These provide 5 air, which is more than the engines i'm using require on Kerbin at sea level. But I doubt sea level on Laythe has the same conditions. Should I add air intakes to the boat I'm working on?

Just use Mechjeb. There is no shame in letting a computer handle the grunt work, that's how real space travel is done these days.

I occasionally attach decoupler rings the wrong way, so when they decouple they're still there. liquides me off.

I built another mobile boat base, which I am going to send to Laythe at the next window. It is powered by four Wheezies, and two Panthers for steering. The thrust of the six engines with he Panthers on afterburner propels the base at a cruising speed of 33 m/s, with a burn time of 4.5 hours, giving it a range of 535 miles. It carries two mobile processing labs, and lots of batteries and nuks. It will also have a bunch of solar panels of course. Land travel is possible through the inclusion of 6 pairs of the medium steerable landing gear. Forward visibility in the primary control cabin is a bit compromised. Thankfully there are no whales or pleasure boats in game. Here is my usual test idiot Joroly regretting his career choice. The editor said the hatches on the pontoon cabins were obstructed. It was wrong. The base was traveling at full speed, so it is a good thing I didn't hit the space bar. UPDATE: I just calculated that it doesn't need solar panels. Each of the batteries has 8 NUKs recessed into it, and I have 13 of the batteries. Thats 104 nuks, providing nearly twice the electricity needed for two processing labs and an ISRU converter, and the radiators. And since this mobile base does not have electrically driven wheels, its needs are far lower than my other mobile bases.

Like Olivia Munn's surname. I looked for a funny picture of her.

I forgot to add radiators to a massive fast relay delivery vehicle heading to Dres, and the engines got a little hot. Didn't explode though.

Is there a way to transfer data already stored in a Mobile Processing Lab to another or into a data storage container?

Neither vehicle had SAS turned on. I canceled the contract.

I'm trying to develop an expansion for a mobile base I have on Duna, but every time I dock a test article to a mobile base identical to the one on Duna the expansion starts to shimmy back and forth until it either spins the whole thing around in slow circles or bursts the primary base's tires. Past experience tells me this can come from either overuse of autostructing or not having the wheels set up with the same spring and damper strength, but I've eliminated both of those causes. The test article's wheels are set up exactly the same as the test base, and the test article only has 2 autostructed parts on it. Does anyone know a trick to find out what is causing the problem?

About a month ago (real time) I launched a massive six vehicle mission to Eve. The mission consisted of a large mobile base, a massive lander meant to lift the crew off the planet, three tankers, and a tug to push the lifter crew capsule back home to Kerbin. And tonight I can report that despite design flaws in 5 out of 6 craft (the tug is perfect), the mission has entered the final and easiest phase: Return. In my last update, I reported that the mobile base (Eve Crawler) had landed and the lifter had been fueled. Here is the Lifter docked with one of the three tankers. Each tanker made two trips to Gilly to mine and refuel themselves. It took about 50 in game days to refuel the lifter. I decided to refuel and use the massive interplanetary boosters to slow the Lifter for atmospheric insertion. This allowed a much more precise and survivable landing on Eve. Once the tankers had made their two required trips, I ditched them into Eve's atmosphere. As mentioned above, they were flawed. The engines suck down further than the landing gear. Stupid design oversight. They still worked, but were not worth saving. Nothing of them made it to the surface of Eve. Next it was time to deorbit the Lifter. This took ever scrap of fuel in the deorbit stage, and a lot of trial and error in my experimentation sandbox save. After about 30 sandbox experiments, I figured out how to put the lifter down in the same general area of the mobile base. My original plan was just to drive the Crawler down from its landing site to an equatorial plateau I chose as the Lifter landing area, and I did. But I didn't drive all the way to the equator after I found a large flat area a few degrees north of the equator that looked just perfect for a landing site. Here is the Lifter inflating its heat shields after jettisoning the last part of the deorbit stage. And here the heat shields are fully inflated and you can see all the deorbit boosters descending toward their fiery demise. I was pretty accurate. The landing site ended up within 7.6 km of where I parked the Crawler. Here the top heat shields have been jettisoned and the chutes deployed. It was a relief when the chutes opened. On the way down I jettisoned all off the remaining heat shields and dozens of radiators. Look at all that garbage. It would have been a problem if I didn't decide to cheat a little later. The view from underneath shortly before touchdown. Almost on the ground, and you can see a little problem. One of the radiators lacked the curtiousy to explode on impact, and was in the way. It did not break anything. Touchdown! All of parachutes (nearly 200) were jettisoned. This combined with the radiator between the boosters gave me a bit to worry about. Test launches showed the lifter could survive launching with parachutes exploding all around the engines, but I didn't want to take chances with the radiator. So I deleted all of the debris from the Lifter. Looks much cleaner. Next was the short drive from the Crawler's parking spot to the Lifter landing site. You can see the lifter on the horizon. The view from inside the control cabin. Much closer. The Crawler has a Klaw on its nose for the sole purpose of docking with the Lifter. I thought I missed, but I docked it on the first try. The crew boarded via a the transfer crew function to the a lander can attached to the side of the lifter. Here is Bob Kerman, one of the first two Kerbals I sent to Eve. Him and the other one, Bill, were marooned on Eve in a small two man rover for almost 3 years before they were picked up by the mobile base. Bill also boarded the lifter later. I'm proud of the bridge I built between the lander can and the "sardine can" crew capsule. Kerbals don't require life support, or space to move, so you can just stick rover chairs in a cargo container and pack them in. I think both Bob and Bill ended up upside down. 16 of the 24 crew on the Crawler transferred to the Lifter. Six scientists (in three processing labs), a pilot and an engineer stayed behind to continue their exploration of Eve. I'm going to drive down out of the mountains and study the biomes at sea level. And I'm considering sending the eight remaining explorers a better mobile base, possibly a boat. The current Eve Crawler has too many parts, mainly solar panels, and it makes the game run slow. I have a boat base in route to Laythe, ETA 2 years. Don't they just look cozy. They'll be packed in there like kippers for at least the next 260 days. The remaining explorers than drove away to a safe distance of two kilometers. And parked behind a hill. Most of the lifter is ditched on the way up, and I didn't want them getting hit with a booster. Only one thing left to do now. 36 meganewtons of thrust is more than enough to rip the Lifter off of the heavy surface of Eve, provided by six clusters of six vector engines. In fact I ended up using vectors for all of the four stages of the Lifter's ascent configuration. 36 for the first stage, 18 for the second, 8 for the third, and one for the final orbital insertion stage. About 60 pairs of landing gear and the lander can were then jettisoned. All of the landing gear exploded on impact. First stage burnout. Second stage ignition. It was here than I notice the Kerbal's parachutes, which did not exist when this mission was launched, were now staged. The third stage ignited above the bulk of the atmosphere, and did most of the work. It got a little hot. Final stage. Gotta love Mechjeb. The circularization maneuver left the final stage of the Lifter with bingo fuel... And a perfect-ish holding orbit around Eve. Next comes the tug. My original plan was to transfer the Kerbals to another craft for the return flight, but I decided to go after the world first achievement for returning a vehicle from Eve's surface to Kerbin's surface. And this made my job easier. When Kerbals go EVA from a sardine can they tend to explode out at ridiculous velocity. So instead I designed a tug to simply dock with the crew capsule and push it home. The tug's time has come. Mechjeb piloted it to a rendezvous with what was left of the Lifter. The remaining fuel in the Eve orbit parking stage was almost enough to finish the rendezvous. It had to be finished on under ion engine power. I'm rather proud of the tug's engine. It is a cluster of nine ion engines stuck to a large xenon fuel tank. At Kerbin orbit, it only takes two of the big solar panels to power the cluster. Beautiful isn't it. I love the blue. At this time I realized I didn't need to have the biomes turned on anymore. That shouldn't be considered a cheat. There the Lifter is. And I of course had Mechjeb do the docking. My hand eye coordination is not good enough to dock manually in space. This is actually why I adopted the use of Mechjeb. And yes those are the helmets of the Kerbals sticking through the container doors. I've had this happen in the past, and it does not impact the survivability of reentry. Still annoying though. I thought I had the seats tucked far enough in to prevent that. The Vector engine and fuel tank no longer being required, they were jettisoned. Mechjeb plotted a course to return to Kerbin in 70ish days, and a 190 day flight time. I have more than enough xenon for the trip. I just reclassified the lander can as debris and left it there. When the mission returns to kerbin, in probably another month real time, I will compile and submit a final mission report.

I am looking or an addon that will create some kind of on screen guide to remind me of the action groups I've programmed. My memory is not very good, and I frequently forget even the standard action groups I use for certain types of craft. Does anyone know of an addon that fits the bill?

I landed a mobile base that looks like a shrimp on Duna. Here it is decelerating into orbit. And maneuvering onto an orbit to pass over the Northwestern Basin, where I've never been. Decelerating out of orbit. Great picture. Those are Vector engines by the way, and when not constrained the move around a lot. Drogues deployed. Main chutes deployed. I programmed their settings wrong so I had to deploy them manually. Final deceleration. Touch Down! Jettisoning the tower supports and landing rockets. Ready to roll. The tower was much more of a problem taking off than landing. Kerbin has too much atmosphere. I'm going to drive it down that valley.

I had a pretty busy day. First I dispatched three of a new class of sentinel probes to survey the space around Eeloo, Dres, and Eve. This is the Eeloo sentinel launching. I love the new Soviet style booster toppers. Then I dispatched 5 identical rockets, each carrying two scanner and relay satellites to one of Jool's moons. The rockets have WAY more Delta-V than they need. Overkill is good. And then I docked two formerly ground bases in orbit around Pol. These were on Pol's surface, but one of the bugs in 1.3 cause them to slam into Pol's surface and bounce off into space every time I logged into them, and I go sick of relanding them every time I had to transmit science. So I just put them in orbit. It just occured to me that if they were docked the resulting station would get through the data back log quicker, if only because it would have more power available with two solar arrays. I'm actually going to abandon these bases when the data processing is finished.

Air breaks and more chutes.

I have been experimenting with floating amphibious mobile bases, which I may send to Laythe. I was preparing to send a mobile base to one of Laythe's larger islands, but realized there wasn't much point of that since it could only acquire so much data on a single island. And it couldn't get data from the water biomes. So I started little speed boats to carry instruments out to see, but then what if they run out of fuel? And they'd still have to go to a base with a science lab to deliver the data. So just decided to build a base that could float. It carries full science and mining gear, and 9 crew. It could be expanded, but I don't plan on ever doing that. It is powered by 6 Wheesley engines, and stores most of the fuel in the floats. It's turning radius on water is okay, doesn't have to be good. I chose the Wheeslies over the thrust vectored Panthers for the better thrust rating and fuel consumption, and for the thrust reversing capability which I have wired into the breaking function. It will stop on a dime. And it cruises at 33 m/s. Sailing from island to island, it can go anywhere on Laythe.

What are the orbital parameters for an Eve sentinel? I haven't had a contract for that come up yet and I'm sick of waiting. I want to launch one now an start scanning Eve orbit when it gets there. I have contract up to build an asteroid station in Eve orbit, and I'd prefer not having to tow one from Kerbin or Moho.

Has anyone ever sent a mobile floating base to Laythe? I've been experimenting with various jet propelled boats for the last week, and including ones that include science labs, ISRU converters, viewing cupolas, and the other requirements of a base. Has anyone else ever done this before?

I'm considering sending a jet boat like this to Laythe. It'll do about 96 mph, and will run for 4.5 hrs. More than enough to reach the Sagan sea and conduct experiments.

I just finished testing, and crashing, a jet boat I really like. I put the engines inline with the fuel tanks, and that solved the swamping problem. I also made it out to the islands of KSC for the first time. And ran my boat aground. It was unmanned, so I just reclassified it as debris and left it there. This boat has tail fins so it can turn, and it will cruise happily at 96 mph. Whats great is according to mechjeb on Kerbin this configuration has several MILLION Delta-V, so i could land it near an island and sail it out into Laythe's deep seas. This is where it ran aground. And here is the abandoned airfield on the island.

I experimented with jet boats. Built a simple raft of liquid fuel tanks and slapped a lander pod and some jet engines on it. Worked pretty well once I carefully drove it to the water. Of course I forgot to give it any ability to steer once the wheels were jettisoned. I might send something like this to Laythe at the next launch window. This is when I tried to drive it off the end of the runway. This is when I tried to drive it into the water too fast. And this is when I got it into the water without flipping it.

I started, well actually restarted for the 6th time (I'm picky), construction of my Base Crawler Type 7. When I settle on a final design, it will be sent out to Laythe. Anyway I had to test the layout of a ladder assembly, so I put my test dummy Joroly in a precarious position. He's the perfect test dummy. High courage and low intelligence.

I built the strangest ground vehicle I've ever designed. This is a mobile base I will be sending to Duna. I decided I wanted a higher vantage point, so I gave it a tower. But that much weight so high required it have a wide stance to prevent rolling. So this was the result. Believe it or not its center of gravity is perfect. Right where it should be. This will make launching it in 39 in game days time easier. I know how to support the tower against air pressure during launch.