Zosma Procyon

Would it be too much to ask for structural bulkheads in the MK2 and MK3 cross sections, and the ability to disable staging of engines, to be added to this update?

Self explanatory. All of the other large moons, and most of the smaller ones, have more biomes. Ike needs more biomes!

I recovered two shipwrecks in Dres orbit.

Today I started a space station I'm calling "Spindle Station" which will simply be a long spine of rocket components I'm going to keep adding to until the game's physics cause it to fail. The core of the station is about 43 m long. As you can see, it is in Minmus orbit.

We need simple structural bulkheads for the MK2 and MK3 space plane cross sections. Just simple plates in the same color as the fuel tanks and cargo bays in those sizes, no more than 1/10th of a meter thick. Because these space plane cross sections are curved, you cannot cobble together bulkheads from the existing structural plates.

Today I'm abandoning three long depleted science bases on Eeloo, one of which has been there for 47 in game years. Once the scientists are transferred to the return craft in orbit, I'm going to deorbit and crash them into Eeloo and leave the debris. I landed a mobile base to take over exploration yesterday.

Is there is practical limit to the length of a space station? I have this idea I want to start building for a very long space station called "Spindle", which would just be a long series of tubular components stuck together with airlocks, and more added whenever a contract for it popped up. Is there a limit to how long it could get before the Kraken strikes?

I just did a lower level Kerbin orbit rescue, but the mission went so well I feel the need to show off. I totally nailed the capture. And the Kerbal is a useful scientist.

After an 8 year, 111 day flight, a small space station that launched on (at the time) the most powerful rocket I had ever built rendezvoused with an asteroid with the longest period I've found so far. This is the first site. Separating from the drive section, with almost no fuel left over. Closing. Mine section attached. It's just D-Class rock. A scientist taking a sample. Here is the orbit. I don't plan to ever recover the 5 Kerbal crew.

One shot massive rocket. I don't have any pictures available on this computer, but I start all of my bases with a large central structure w/ everything a base requires (a lab, converter, drills, cupola, and docking ports) atop truly massive rockets.

Are those control surfaces attached to control surfaces? That never occurred to me! If I hadn't already launched my seaplane base to a holding orbit over Kerbin, I might incorporate that.

Not with my luck I can't! I'll do something wrong and my computer will explode.

This is a small request that should not be difficult to fill. It would be desirable if a adapter fuel tank between the 2.5 m (size 2) and 3.3(?)m (size 3) sized fuel tanks were to be added. There is already a structural component that fills that purpose, the Kerbodyne ADTP-2-3, but alas it is more dead weight than useful. I have long used the MK3 adapters to fill this role, but their curved profiles ruin the aesthetics and aerodynamics of the rockets. So can we please have this missing adapter, pretty please?

I wouldn't mind some kind of electric blade driven propulsion. I have long longed to send a boat to Eve. I can make something that will float no problem, but other than a few tricks described by KSP youtubers, there are no fuel efficient ways to move a boat at any speed. Rockets will burn all their few in a few kilometers, and jet engines don't function on Eve.

Should be a simple coding change.

I launched my Laythe sea plane base into a holding orbit over Kerbin. The window opens in 18 days. I don't even have a contract for it. I had to add fins, Big-S Delta wings with control surfaces in this case, just to get it to launch straight up because of all the lift those wings generate. And like all of my flagship missions, this is an obscenely expensive rocket. The plane costs about 1.1 million kredits, most of that cost from several dozen NUK's to provide the on board labs drills and converter a constant supply of power, with another 3 million kredits going to the launch and transit vehicle, mostly the 12 clusters of 9 Mastodon engines in the first and second stage. And the transit stage should have enough Delta-V for the early departure I programmed after first posting this (this edit is the from the afternoon after), 12 days out instead of 18, and to decelerate at Laythe with at least 1000 m/s left over to slow it into a relative crawl before atmospheric entry (it isn't a reentry because this plane never left Laythe's atmosphere). Ironically this is actually the lightest base structure I've ever launched, and especially the lightest mobile base ever because it doesn't need heavy outrider fuel tanks and boosters to land it. It is also my fastest ever mobile base, obvious being an airplane, with a maximum tested velocity in Laythe's rarefied atmosphere of about 230 m/s, but I'll cruise at around 200 m/s. At that speed it has a range over about 1000 km. The trick with this sea plane was getting the nose up far enough on the water for the air to pick it up. The answer to this was annoyingly obvious. Rather than adding a longer chin float, I realized that all I had to do was use the RCS jets it already needed to maneuver in space before entry. The stupid this is I discovered this entirely by accident. I was trying to turn off SAS to stop the computer from interfering with the test run, but my ASD addled finger pushed the wrong key. On went the RCS, and up went the nose and and the plane jetted off the Laythe ocean. It surprised me so much that I forgot to take my finger off the "S" key until it was going straight up. Almost killed the Jeb and Bill in my testing sandbox, again. Annoyingly even after the departure which I will do tonight, the travel time will still be over 2 in game years. That will probably translate to over a month and a half real time. But it isn't so bad, I have a rescue mission coming in from Eeloo that I launched using MechJeb's Advanced Interplanetary transfer's ASAP departure function, and it won't arrive back at Kerbin for over 7 in game years. I think i'll eventually cheat to get them home. The rocket has more than enough Delta-V to get home, but I'm just annoyed at the travel time.

I move asteroids and ferry tourists for kredits personally, and I have cheated (I know I'm awful) to gain needed kredits in the past, in times of fiscal calamity. Use the debug menu to spawn contracts, accept them, and complete them without ever actually reading them. I haven't done that in an in-game decade or three. Recently by pairing down my standard rescue craft design to a single use rocket with a Klaw and a few parachutes attached to it, I've found the one-star Kerbin orbit rescue missions to be surprisingly lucrative. The trick, it turns out, is to not leave the shipwrecks/derelicts the new Kerbals are stuck in in orbit. Rather than sending up a craft with a habitation or cockpit module, you send up a rocket with a klaw to grab and deorbit the shipwreck with the Kerbal still inside. Once you've grabbed the wreck, make sure to switch the control point to your rocket's controller or the klaw, burn just long enough to dip into the atmosphere, then autowarp to atmospheric interface (when the game automatically stops autowarping). Then as your rocket is starting reentry, perform a retrograde burn until you've consumed all of your remaining fuel; this will slow you to a much safer velocity before you dip into the thicker levels of the atmosphere, and reduce the strain on your parachutes when its time to deploy them. Most importantly to someone in the early stages of their career like you, my standard rescue craft is mostly constructed of lower tier parts. I don't remember what tier the klaw itself is in. My current standard rescue craft for Kerbin orbit costs about 34,000 kredits, with more than 25,000 of that cost in the upper stage with the klaw on it, and therefore said 25,000+ is fully recoverable. In addition I make an extra thousand or so kredits from turning in the salvaged shipwreck i brought down from orbit (FREE MONEY!). And that is not counting the contract's advance (~10,000 kredits) and the reward money for the rescue (30,000-55,000 kredits). So on average (one hell of an average I admit) I stand to lose about 9000 kredits in nonrecoverable parts and fuel, but I get around a 10,000 kredit advance, plus a 43,000 (average) reward, and a salvage payout around 1,000 kredits. So on a one-star low orbit rescue, I stand to make a profit of around 45,000 kredits. A recent rescue mission yielded a 10,000 kredit salvage bonus because the shipwreck was a space shuttle cockpit. I've also tried to decrease the money lost by trying to recover the SRB's (solid rocket boosters) by adding parachutes staged with the separators, but the chutes usually get destroyed by the aerodynamic forces or heat. When the next of these rescue contracts comes up (I've been playing in the same in-game day for about a week and a half now while working on a sea plane base for Laythe). I'm going to try not switching the parachutes deploy conditions setting to "When Risky" and leave them set to "When Safe", my instincts as a real astronautics engineer made me think that might be the problem. But if this doesn't work out it will certainly be cheaper just to write off the SRBs than to attach costly parachutes to them. And you get a new Kerbal to torture...I mean help gain experience...out of the deal. But a word of warning, the vast majority Kerbals left stranded in Kerbin orbit by the in-game companies are pilots and engineers, with only about 1/6 being the more useful scientists. I do 3 or 4 of these rescues a week, whenever one of these contracts pops up, so I often have a lot of zero or one star pilots and engineers in my roster. I currently have about 13, and just 3 low level scientists from recent rescues, most of whom will be sent out on during a coming series of missions to the Jool system. Another strategy for making money is to always have at least three contracts in the vicinity of a planet or moon before launching a a rocket to it. My personal record was I think 10 contracts fulfilled by a single craft (four of which I accepted after launch, two of which after the craft had been on station for years). It was a space station contract in orbit of Vall. I had a three star contract to place a space station in orbit and attach it a D-class asteroid, two three star contracts to move a D-class asteroid into orbit of Jool and Vall respectively (I fullfilled the Jool contract just by flying the asteroid into Jool's orbit on the way to Vall; I thought that was a good catch on my part), a rescue mission in orbit of Vall (the station included a tiny NERV propelled "parasite" craft to return the rescued Kerbal to Kerbin), a mission to place a "satellite" in orbit of Vall (so I just added the required science instruments to the station and eventually parked it in the required orbit), and a three star "get science" contract in orbit of Vall. This was a very large (for the pre-1.4 parts catalog) (and it was built before I discovered the trick of clustering smaller/cheaper engines using the offset tool) space station, and therefore required require a lot of of S3-14400 tanks and Mammoth engines to get it into orbit, so the final craft cost came to around 3 million kredits and another 1.5 million for the brand new at the time reusable asteroid mover; it would have cost a lot more had I discovered the joys of clustering NUKs at that time. Now that was a significant portion of my war chest, about a quarter I think. But the 6 contracts I had at Vall before the launch had a total payout in the neighborhood of 12 million kredits. I should admit that this density of contracts was created through use of the debug menu. I don't consider actively trying to get the contracts you want cheating; call it "executive decision making". Anyway while the station was in transit to Jool, two more "get science" contracts popped up; one in solar orbit and one in Jool orbit. These added another half million kredits to my war chest. And finally during two subsequent Jool launch windows I sent expansions built to contract requirements out to the station, for another 300,000 kredits combined (one of them was a lowly one star contract) . So this station eventually made me a profit of around 11 million kredits. It might have made me more, but then the asteroid shape definition bug emerged, and the station ended up encased in its asteroid about 20 in-game years after its initial launch. After the bug was fixed around 1.4.1, I deorbited the station and let it crash into Vall's surface. unfortunately couldn't get the four 5 star scientists who were in the station's labs out. All the airlocks were covered by the rock and I couldn't get the camera to focus on the labs (also engulfed by the asteroid), so transferring crew was not possible. My last tip is a cost saving measure I discovered a few years ago: Kerbals don't have to be inside of a cockpit or crew compartment during transit. They can stay in their space suits indefinitely, and only need to be protected from the heat and wind of reentry. So, rather than using a more realistic spacecraft to move them, particularly to return them to Kerbin after being rescued or completing their missions, simply seat them in External Command Seats mounted inside of cargo containers or service bays, and add a heat shield and parachutes to it. Lets say you have 16 Kerbals you need to return to Kerbin, and for the sake of this argument they're all coming from the same craft (Two real-time years ago I had a return craft visit every moon of Jool to pickup Kerbals). Now to move them the normal way, you'd need either a MK-3 passenger cabin or some combination of other crew compartments. Lets say you opted to use the MK3, at a cost of 30,000 kredits. You would need to use a lot of fuel to move it, use the largest sized heat shields (900 kredits), or the inflatable heat shield (2400 kredits), a lot of other MK3 and larger diameter rocket parts, and a lot of parachutes. Your rocket is going to be jolly expensive. But if you use my "sardine can" approach, you can get 16 external command seats (16*200 kredits = 3,200 kredits) into a 2.5 meter service bay (500 kredits), use a RC-L01 probe core for guidance (3,400 kredits: The probe core is an absolute necessity; otherwise you'd have a Kerbal sitting at some weird angle inside the bay trying to control the ship, making maneuvering impossible), a 2.5 meter battery (4,500 kredits) and either a bunch of solar panels or a NUK for power (I prefer the NUK, they're expensive but you get the money back from recovering it) (23,300 kredits FULLY RECOVERABLE), a 2.5 meter heat shield (600 kredits), four of the radially mounted parachutes placed around the circumference of the crew portion (4*400 kredits = 1,600 kredits), and some fuel tanks an engines that probably won't be recovered but you will need far fewer than if you built the rocket around the MK3 passenger cabin. By treating Kerbals like fish fillets in olive oil, your entire return craft can cost less than the cost of the MK3 passenger cabin; especially if you use solar panels instead of a NUK. The trick is building the "crew container": You start with the 2.5 meter service bay, then set the editor to place 8 radially positioned command seats on both the top and bottom inside surfaces of the service bay. Rotate the seats so the Kerbal's backs will be against the surface their seat is attached to and crown of heads facing out, and use the offset tool to place the seats completely inside the container. For best results, you'll want the advanced tweakables rigid connection and autostruct to the root part (the service bay) engaged. There are four downsides to this strategy: (1) You have to spacewalk the Kerbals in one at a time, (2) it increases your rocket's part count which can slow performance (especially since the Kerbals count as a part when not inside something), (3) If you have one of the Kerbals leave their seat they'll be shot out like a bat out of hell and you'll have the devils own time getting them back there, and (4) you have to be really careful of the G-load during reentry, because if it goes too high the kerbals can be ejected from the contain. In summation: Moving asteroids and ferrying tourists are good reliable income sources that either don't require much upfront investment or can reuse the same craft. Low level rescue missions can turn comparably small by frequent profits, and a constant stream of new green guinea pigs to play with *insert evil laugh*. You can save money by treating Kerbals like sardines in a can. And recoup the cost of expensive missions by fulfilling multiple contracts with one craft.

I actually have a few relay sats in orbit of Laythe, and all the other Joolian moons, already. Anyway I've built a version of the base with a larger wing and two more engines, and tested it with the 60% thrust I can expect in Laythe's lighter atmosphere. It seems promising, more so than the previous heartbreaking failure. A few more changes and it should be ready for a Laythe test. And i've reshaped the plane to put the relay antenna in fully in the shadow of the wider parts of the fuselage. Keeping a relay antenna on the thing is really more about principle than need. Anyway I like this version so much that if it fails to lift off Laythe's ocean, I'll probably add aerosppikes to its belly and show gravity who's the boss.

Last night I went from a feeling of triumph that I had, after a week of experimenting, arrived at a seaplane base design that could safely touchdown and lift off from the oceans of Laythe; to the feeling of utter failure after a last minute (and from my thought processes at the time purely a formality) atmospheric insertion test on Laythe in my testing sandbox. It survived a 2400 m/s unpowered insertion just fine, but when I landed in the ocean I could not get it back in the air. My extensive testing on Kerbin did not account for the lower atmospheric pressure at sea level on Laythe. The plane was only able to reach about 60% of the liftoff speed due to reduced jet engine thrust, and in the reduced atmosphere it did not have enough lift. I've already planned a more extensive testing regime, but it occurs to me I might be able to make my original design that I a quite proud of work if I simply add rocket engines to the belly and use them to lift it out of the water. They'd be action grouped to turn off with the press of a button. Ideally they wouldn't be staged, but we don't have that option in game yet. Has anyone else ever used rockets to grant a jet aircraft vtol capability? Any pointers? Also, do the relay antenna parts generate a noticeable amount of drag? My bases always have to include at least 3 antennas: One high gain antenna per science lab (at least 2), and one relay antenna. But because the base i have to redesign is also a plane, I need to know if drag from the relay antenna has to be accounted for.

I arrived at a design for a sea plane base and I am currently affixing it to a rocket for a deployment to Laythe. Here is a film of a test flight. UPDATE: I posted too soon. This design works great in Kerbin's atmosphere, but will not in fact lift off from the waters of Laythe. It either needs more thrust or more lift.

I succeeded in my quest to get two science labs and an ISRU into the air from the water. The trick was adding canards to the floats. It just lifted itself out of the water. And then I crashed it. But in the next test I successfully landed a plane on land for the first time.

Hydroplaning worked. I added canards to the floats, and up it went.

EXTREMELY! Question answered.

Do hydroplanes work in KSP? I'll look into that.

I'm trying to build a flying base w/ two labs, two full sized drills, and a full sized ISRU converter, that can takeoff and land from the seas of Laythe. I've built a half dozen big planes that can fly well enough, but they can't take off from the water. Does anyone have a craft file that can help me in this quest?