MaxL_1023

I just end up playing stroboscopically (Hard-Disk Swapping). Even at 5 FPS, GPP is still better than stock!

I just barely managed to get Valentina on a free-return Iota flyby - ran into that 140 ton, 36m launchpad limit. Without cryoengines I doubt I could have made it. Those radiation belts though...surprised she didn't glow in the dark.

Welp - I'm going full Kerbal. GPP, 10.6257x, and Kerbalism life support. I'll call up NASA, see if they have any old Saturn V's lying around - I need strap-on boosters by the megaton.

Yes - it takes roughly 9 km/s for a very low orbit (Gaels 18 hour day gives you a bit of help from the high rotation speed), then another 4-4.5 to get to Tellumo (depending on relative inclinations and where exactly the planets are in their orbits when the transfer window comes up), then at least ~6.5 to get into Tellumo orbit and be able to encounter and orbit Lili. I packed some extra in the Tellumo insertion stage because I had no idea what angle I would end up encountering Tellumo at and was not actually sure how much energy it would take to capture - orbital speed is about 16 km/s. Thankfully, I researched the first ion engine after that, so I could send a probe with enough delta-V to explore Otho's moons without needing a booster large enough to push Gael out of the way. It also helps that I decided not to use those huge DMagic science parts which themselves weigh more than a command pod.

Well - I am never putting anything in a low polar orbit of Lili again. SOMEONE (Kepler maybe? Brache? Halley? One of those telescope guys...) decided to give it a 20km+ high equatorial bulge in combination with super-rotation and (if it was possible) the whole dang thing likely disintegrating when hit by DMagics seismic impact hammer. Best views in the solar system though. Sadly, my KSP toaster (7 year old desktop with a graphics card retrofit) runs it at a low enough resolution to make Tellumo look like something rendered on an Atari 2600.

So this is what it takes to get an orbiter/lander probe to Lili. Since I only had 2.5 meter parts, I went for the tried and true radial multiplication pattern, with a liberal application of struts and Kraken repellent. The first stage is 12 twin-boars. By the way, this is with KRnD upgraded cryogenic rockets with 500+ vacuum ISP - without them the rockets get so large that with 2.5m parts it is just not realistic to make them.

Imagine trying that with TAC life support! You'd need hundreds of tons of consumables.

The Republica Gaelia (in cooperation with Maxtech Aerospace) has declared the planet "Niven" free of Space Krakens after the successful landing of multiple empty snack containers with parachutes advanced robotic probes. While conditions are somewhat warm, there is no Oxygen to speak of and water is a distant memory, otherwise Niven seems to be a fine place to live. This is why we're here. (In all seriousness, I think Tellumo just stresses the physics engine too much with the thick atmosphere and heavy gravity)

Ok guys - Tellumo really, really, seriously no-lie is inhabited by a race of land-based space Krakens. After building a probe which could survive (legitimately, with part G-limits) atmospheric entry at ~16 km/s from low Tellumo orbit, I discovered that any physics warping, many examples of parachute deployment, vessel loading/unloading or some decoupling will result in the remains of my precious probe being accelerated (with about a 50/50 distribution) either into deep space or the core of the planet at a respectable fraction of light speed. While Jebediah Kerman might consider such a vessel a literal path to his God, I am not nearly so impressed. After about 10 tries, I managed to land a probe at snail-speed parachute drift. It promptly stabilized while floating about 6 feet above the visible ground, but since I got my science data and cheat-menued the multiple-biome contract (as I lost 2 out of my 4 probes to the Kraken Defense Force) so I am happy for now. All these worlds are yours, EXCEPT TELLUMO. DO NOT EVEN LOOK AT IT - NO SERIOUSLY JEB WHAT ARE YOu doing is this signal getting redshifted...

I think the SOI of each individual star would only extend to maybe halfway to where the actual equipotential surface is - the majority of space would be in the SOI of the Barycenter when the stars are this close in mass.

Realistically, I do not think that the GPP system would not be stable with Grannus as massive as it is. I could be wrong, but having something with half the parent star's mass on a quite elliptical orbit really messes up solar system dynamics. Leto, Hox and likely at least the outermost Gas Giant would be perturbed enough to either eject them from the system or dump them into one of the stars. As far as I know, geological-time orbit stability requires a body be at something near or less than a third to a half of the hill sphere radius. When applied to binary star systems, I found a paragraph which cites a few papers: Stable Orbits in Binary Star Systems In July 2010, some astronomers estimated that 44 percent of F6 to K3 of the main sequence stars in the solar neighborhood that are possibly suitable (i.e., with a stellar mass between 1.5 and 0.5 times that of Sol) for hosting Earth-type planets may be members of binary or multiple star systems, possibly declining to one third to one fourth of very dim type M stars that are difficult to observe (Raghavan et al, 2010; Charles J. Lada, 2006; and Duquennoy and Mayor, 1991). In binary star systems, however, a planet must not be located too far away from either one star or too close to two "home" stars or its orbit will be unstable. If that distance exceeds about one fifth of the closest approach of the other star, then the gravitational pull of that second star can disrupt the orbit of the planet (Graziani and Black, 1981; Pendleton and Black, 1983; and Dvorak et al, 1989). Indeed, stable orbits may extend as far as one third of the closest separation between any two stars in a binary system, but according to NASA's Kepler Mission team, numerical integration models have shown that there is a range of orbital radii between about 1/3 and 3.5 times the stellar separation for which stable orbits around two stars are not possible (Holman and Wiegert, 1999; Wiegert and Holman, 1997; and Donnison and Mikulskis, 1992). In star systems with more than two stars, the limits on stable orbital distance are so stringent that the presence of Earth-type planets in habitable orbits where surface water would be liquid are much less likely. Grannus has a SMA of 2,000,000,000,000 meters, with a PE of 1,200,000,000 AFAIK. Leto is at 542,593,000,000 meters, with an AP of about 600 Gm. This is about a 2-1 close approach ratio - too far out for stability. I suspect that the only way Leto and Hox could be stable is if they were in some sort of resonance. For fun, I wanted a binary system with close-in planets around each star (including a Tidally-Locked Tellumo close in to Grannus for the whole M-Dwarf super-earth vibe) with gas giants orbiting well outside the binary pair, giving the "twin suns" view along with many, many slingshot opportunities and the potential for other more complex stellar systems. I guess a system parent called "CiroGrannus" could be made at the Barycenter, with Ciro and Grannus in orbits around it, then parent all planets appropriately. I lack the skill to make this however.

FASA has a cylindrical Agena probe core - maybe that would be more appropriate?

It's sad that Thompberry is stuck with a Stayputnik though - imagine what he could do with an OKTO2 brain jar!

I was just wondering: What if: - Tellumo, Leto and Hox orbited Grannus (close in with Tellumo in the Habitable zone getting about 2/3rds of Gael's insolation) - Gratian was moved to Tellumo's orbit - Grannus was moved somewhat inwards to 4 or 5 times Gratian's SMA - Otho, Nero and Gauss were moved outwards, orbiting around the Ciro and Grannus Barycenter (really just Ciro since this might not be possible, but they would be far enough outwards to be stable) at about 4 times Grannus' new distance - Otho, Nero and Gauss were in a 1-2-4 Laplace resonance I might try making a second install and messing with the planet configs - if you see some sort of small-scale quasar you know I messed something up.

It is also quite possible that whatever the Elder Kraken did to Thompberry contributed to curing the mental illness he had in the first place - maybe a vibrant, witty and intelligent young Kerman was hiding under a veneer of depression, mania and obsession the whole time. Either that, or some monoprop got into the brain jar.

Tellumo is the homeworld of the space Krakens. It would take one just to get off the ground (at lower elevations anyways).

I was expecting Jeb to try and aerobrake, or perhaps slingshot off the Mun to get a capture. Rescue is far too easy on those orange-suits!

Just copy the .cfg file into your gamedata folder - it worked for me.

How is it that whenever I try to do two rescue contracts at once, at least one of the Kerbals HAS to be in a retrograde orbit??!! At least they were orbiting Ceti - next thing you know they will somehow be in a retrograde orbit around Ciro somewhere between Icarus and Thalia.

I managed to recover mine - I did not get the G-forces but the look on Bob's face said it all (it lined up right). 10.6257x pioneers unite!

I used to stream, but my computer can't handle the awesomeness of rescaled GPP and the demands of Twitch at the same time. It looks like I am playing a slideshow. Turns out I can't even watch Twitch without screwing everything up - FML.

One other thing - it seems like flags on Gael randomly explode in 10.6257x. First it was Jeb, then it was Bob - can a Kerbal mark his landing site without requiring impromptu pyrotechnics??!! (Probably just an unavoidable issue with rescaling, but wondering if anybody else has run into it - Iota, Ceti, Niven, Thalia and Icarus are fine - have not gotten anywhere else yet in 10x+).

I keep designing Iota and Ceti landers as if they were going to the Moon in RSS - I always end up over-designing my rockets because of their lighter gravity. The moon in RSS needs about 2500m/s of delta-V to land safely - Ceti in 10.6257x needs ~1750 and Iota under 1500! Of course, Gratian is Mars on steroids and Tellumo basically impossible (challenge issued!) so I guess that makes up for it.

In this case, "Dwarf" means a low mass, main-sequence star. There are many, many more of them than any other stellar-mass object, both as a function of their long lifetimes (nothing under about 0.8 solar masses has had time to reach the post-main sequence stage yet - the universe is only about 35% older than the Sun's projected main sequence lifetime) and the abundance of low mass protostellar clouds forming from the natural fractal-type behavior of disturbed star forming regions (think stirring a huge gas cloud with a supernova shockwave). Brown dwarfs may be even more common (all the way down to planetary mass), but most are too dim to see unless they are orbiting something else (and can be detected indirectly) or very, very close by. "Stellar Corpses" are degenerate objects such as white dwarfs and Neutron stars - there are quite a few of these (more of the former) but they are still relatively rare due to the relative rarity of their founding population. Only a certain range of stellar objects have been able to form white dwarfs or Neutron stars - the very largest collapse into black holes or undergo pair-instability supernovae which blow the stars apart completely.

Now I need to find that in 10.6257x. Problem is, a Catullus rocket would probably collapse under its own gravity with the rocket technology I have in my career.