JonathanPerregaux

Best idea ever. Every time I finish one of these, I think I'm done and then something else inspires.

Russian Cosmonaut Receives Rare Reverse Honor Kerbonaut Valentina Kerman became the unwitting benefactor of a special honor today. While mapping Kerbol’s limitless SOI, her craft accidentally zoomed an incredible 198 exameters away from Kerbin. Her journey went down in history as, “Kind of impressive when you think about it, I guess.” “That’s 198,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters, boys and girls, or about twelve times the speed of cheese divided by imaginary time squared,” gushed Flight Director Gene Kerman. “Plus seven.” Her craft pushed the boundaries of the known Universe and entered an uncountable nether realm called The Bleen. Scientists speculate that all left-socks enter this realm at some point. “Past the first petameter, the whole Universe just convulsed,” Valentina explained to reporters. “I could do nothing but gag uncontrollably for another 50 gigameters, then I puked. I was good after that.” In honor of this, retired Russian Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, 80, who in 1963 became the first woman to have flown in space, was renamed “Valentina Kerman” after her fictional counterpart. In Soviet Russia, it seems, computer characters name you. “Bozhe moi!” Tereshkova responded during a brief phone interview and hung up. Fittingly, Tereshkova’s Vostok 6 spaceflight was the first female (femanned?) mission to experience the dreaded Kraken. During routine operations, an error in the control program made her spaceship ascend from orbit instead of descend. If quick-thinking Tereshkova hadn’t switched off her MechJeb, she’d have been marooned forever. After 48 orbits, Tereshkova steered Vostok 6 with one hand while engaging a de-orbit burn with the other. After a gut-punching re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, she ejected from the plummeting spacecraft and descended using her own parachute, nearly landing in the middle of a lake. After hitting the ground, she recovered and got lunch with a local family while bathing them in radioactivity. In other words, a perfectly-executed maneuver.

Bob Kerman Comes to Bargain, Almost Makes it to Plock Passing Sarnus on a failed trajectory towards distant Plock, Bob Kerman was faced with a terrible choice: Maroon his crew with only a fruit cake to sustain them, or exit the capsule and use a fire extinguisher for a totally believable correction burn like Sandra Kullock did. It was against these impossible odds that Bob found a third solution. He turned on his suit lights, leapt daringly out of the capsule, and swooped into space on RCS thrusters. “Kormammu, I’ve come to bargain,” he intoned. Hopelessly adrift, the despondent crew pulled out Blues harmonicas. But a reverse blur of motion unfurled. Bob leapt daringly out of his capsule again, now against Jool’s looming atmosphere. “Kormammu, I’ve come to bargain!” They belly-flopped into Jool’s cloudtops. One cubic octagonal strut survived. Naturally. Improbably, Bob leapt out once more. “Kormammu, I’ve come to bargain!” Time reversed; the Mun abruptly dominated their viewports. A stray reaction wheel twirled mockingly over a mountain. A pebble tumbled. “Kormammu, I’ve come to bargain!” Solid rocket boosters separated prematurely along with the launch clamps on take-off, spiraling crazily. The remaining stages teetered with no engines firing, collapsing in flames because a tiny wing came off. One SRB hit the parking lot and scratched Gene Kerman’s expensive-looking KMW. “Kormammu…!” Finally, Kormammu the Kraken appeared physically and responded with a frustrated wail. “No! Stop! Make this stop! Set me free!” “No,” Bob said finally, prepared to have all flights reverted forever. “I’ve come to bargain.” “What do you want?” the Kraken asked imperiously. Bob Kerman considered his foe carefully. This vast devil had vexed nearly every launch he could remember. “I want…” he said. “Yes…?” “I demand…” Bob continued. “Yes? Yes?!” Kormammu blurted, his infinite patience rent asunder. “Speak the words!” Bob clasped his fist high overhead. “…a plushie!”

Immense Ship Successfully Proves Albert Keinstein’s Theory of Assembly For the first time, Albert Keinstein’s Theory of Assembly, first postulated in K1913, has been proven true. The theory predicts that a ship of sufficient complexity will distort time in a measurable and quite annoying manner. Albert devised his theory while working as a disgruntled patent clerk for Rockomax & Bros., who made rock-launching slingshots over a hundred years ago. He famously envisaged the theory after adding a few superfluous parts to his bicycle, which got him thinking. Everyone knows the Formula of Assembly: L=pc2, where L stands for lag, p is the part count of a given space craft, and c2 is the speed of cheese squared. “We knew this ship could prove Keinstein right,” pilot Asti Kerman proudly told reporters. “Not to brag, but what we have here are 1,683 parts at a cost of 2,317,822.00 funds with a mass of 4,878.729 tons fully-fueled. As you can see, it’s built almost entirely of flat plates, girders, and struts.” She paused. “Mostly struts.” When reached for comment, popular scientist Neil deGrasse Kyson had this to say: “Well, actually… science has shown us that the speed of cheese is ephemeral. Solving for the elusive cheese constant c requires new ways of counting. First postulated by famous scientist Isaac Kewton nearly three centuries ago, we use a method that changes the numbers ten to onety, twenty to twoty, and thirty to threety. The numbers eleven, twelve, and thirteen through nineteen are hence wholly eliminated. In their wake, we use onety-one, onety-two, and so on.” Kewton’s brilliant cheese-hitting-the-head breakthrough came when he visited a cheese parlor and said, “I’ll have twoty-two Trou du Cru, please.” In the physics-proof VAB, Asti saluted reporters and then boarded her ship. Once rolled to the launch area, the entire Universe came to a stuttering halt.

Jebediah Kerman Resting Comfortably After Risky Attributectomy Famed kerbonaut Jebediah Kerman’s pioneering surgery to remove his “badS = True” attribute “went as planned,” according to hospital officials. The procedure was the first of its kind and involved extensive bewilderment. Doctors explained that “badS = True” is a rare attribute that causes Jeb’s facial expressions to register gleeful excitement at times when most sane Kerbals would be terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. It was revealed that Jeb’s sister Valentina is the only other Kerbal known to possess this attribute. “Jeb is doing fine,” said Chief Surgeon Arkbark Kerman. “Petrified, but fine.” Jeb, 30, opted for surgery to treat his inflamed attribute and revealed an autoimmune disease diagnosis in late January, a day after a public health scare when he fainted during an EVA. That incident led to an unlikely series of events in which Jeb miraculously returned to Kerbin’s surface sans ship or parachute, bouncing harmlessly off the side of a mountain—somehow still attached to an EAS-1 External Command Seat. Witnesses were heard to gasp, “He glitched!” and took copious screen-shots. Post-op nurses presented Jeb with horrifying pictures of exploding rockets, vertiginous views of buildings, close-ups of bees, and a large ship design without any struts or aerodynamic parts swaying perilously on a launch pad. Jeb reacted appropriately in abject terror. Valentina, by his side, simply grinned with her eyes pointed blissfully in opposite directions. Though successful, officials admitted difficulty. Surgical attempts were repeatedly reverted by the medical team. Surgeons crowding the operating table accidentally bumped it and fell down repeatedly for several minutes. Frustrated calls to “add moar sutures!” were heard. At press time, reporters were still trying to discern where, exactly, the Kerbal hospital was, as no other part of Kerbin is inhabited or contains buildings other than those dedicated to space travel.

Georgia Man Launches Actual Kerbal Space Rocket, with Predictable Results Exercising 2nd Amendment Constitution rights, local Georgia man Rupert Grimsby, a retired aeronautics engineer from Northrop Grumman, launched an actual, full-sized replica of a space rocket he designed using Kerbal Space Program. It failed. Walton County Sherriff Connie Brubaker said, “It was the darndest thing I ever saw. One minute I’m sitting in my prowler, sucking down a coffee from the Food Lion, and the next thing you know the whole sky lit up. I thought it was a nuke. But when a burnt RCS thruster pack crashed into my hood, I knew it had to be old Rupert at it again.” At press time, cleanup crews were still figuring out how to pry a melted piece of an S3 KS-25x4 “Mammoth” Liquid Fuel Engine from Old Man Weatherbee’s mill stone. “I was confident about the design,” Mr. Grimsby explained over the phone from his hospital room, where the rasping sound of ventilators could be heard. “Once I arrived at a suitable design for my tiny payload using Kerbal Space Program, I started adding more boosters.” Rupert had all the necessary parts fabricated using leftovers from a local junk yard. When asked what went wrong, Rupert was openly honest. “I would say my reach exceeded my grasp, but really it was the struts.” “Yeah, he’s a little crazy,” opined Rupert’s ebullient daughter Charlotte, who is burned over 40% of her body. “Last year he built a sky-crane using an array of 24-77 ‘Twitch’ Liquid Fuel Engines and used it to drop a clown onto my son’s fourth birthday party. I heard the clown is back on solid foods now, so… worth it!” What’s next for Rupert Grimsby? “A mobile version,” he stated. “Next time I launch one of these suckers, it’s gonna be from my iPhone.”

I've also experienced the tail-wagging. It happens to every one of my ships when I set my launch altitude to 1000km. Click "Show navball ascent guidance" and watch what happens at the tail-wagging altitude. The pink target drifts lazily to the side, then suddenly snaps back to the center again. This causes the ship to briefly steer in those directions and wag its tail.

I noticed a problem using MechJeb2 with the Outer Planets mod (OPM). I can plot a porkchop course well enough and it works great. However, beyond a certain orbit (past Jool it seems), things go haywire with the Fine Tune Closest Approach module. The other day I was heading out to Plock and requested a fine-tune while still near Kerbin, which plopped a course-correction past the orbit of Jool. The course correction looked perfect. However, when this maneuver node executed, the module shut down the engines as expected, then suddenly lost it and fired them full-throttle, displaying thousands of delta-V being required for something mysterious. Once this occurred, it was not possible to use fine-tune anymore. It refused to place a maneuver node anywhere. Over time, I've noticed this appears to be a problem with the OPM planets (which I often try to visit). Heading to Duna, Dres, or Jool works fine (OPM transplants Eeloo).

I also see the landing legs extending too far, as though the legs are floating somewhere past the housing. I ignored it because I also had used TweakScale on them.

I built a "Space: 1999" like craft (with two cargo bays, each containing a rover) using only mono-propellant. It has engines in the rear for orbital insertion, then engines on the landing pods for landing. (I had an earlier version that used Magnetoplasmadynamic Engines but it didn't do well landing on airless bodies larger than the Mun.)

So happy to see these updates. Is Heat Control coming next? "...justify this time sink to my wife, which results directly in more models." You wife must be very open-minded. Do you get super-models or just regular models?

Any particular reason why "Heat Control" is always separate from, yet synergistic with, Near Future Electrical?

I would defer to an expert for his opinion on how this is accomplis—OH MY GOD!!

Give it to Zack Synder, that way it's both a freaking disaster and somehow makes money!

Thank you for the air intake advice. I've been highly rocket-focused in KSP, with a few odd aircraft here and there. Any other design advice is appreciated. This "aqua-aircraft" ("Airquaft." — Elmer Fudd) is grossly anhedral (wings folded downwards) and rolls over like crazy at the slightest nudging. It usually goes into an unrecoverable death spiral after stalling at high altitudes. Would you suppose that adding any dihedral (wings folded upwards) air foils could compensate for this? I didn't want to add too many lifting surfaces, otherwise it would never stay in the water to fulfill its original purpose.

Yeah, I'm never sure just how many, or what kind, of air intakes I need. I was trying to get it to flame-out altitude, which I did, but went overboard (a boat pun?) in the process. The elevons are my biggest headache. I kept second-guessing myself and readjusting their deploy direction. It's a great flying boat like you said, but rather bouncy in the air. It was never designed to be a plane, per-se, but it would be nice to be able to land it without the thing spinning out of control.

Okay, here's my hydrofoil: https://kerbalx.com/Hamhole/Spase-Bote-X1 The way the hydrofoil works is simple. First, get it in the water. Press Action Group 2 to deploy the fore, inboard elevons (and retract the landing gear). The elevons provide the lifting ability in the water, otherwise you'll sink at speed. All other elevons should not be locked in place so they'll provide control both on water and in the air. Only the bottom three elevons need to be locked. When you get the boat up to about 30 m/sec. it should have risen up out of the water and will be slicing just over the surface with barely anything touching (as pictured). You will need to back off on the speed because it will pick up quickly. Unless, of course, you want to fly it up out of the water. When that happens, press Action Group 3 to retract the locked elevons used for water mode so you'll have full flight control in the air. I stripped as many mod-based parts as possible from the model, including MechJeb, but I did use TweakScale to make the rudders and front landing gear larger. The issue with flying it from the SPH may have something to do with the elevons reversing their directions from what I built, but I have not confirmed this. They must be reversed in order to work. Sometimes, even from the VAB, I find the elevons locked in strange directions.

Okay, I'm baffled by something. I built a large, jet-propelled hydrofoil in the VAB. During my R&D, I would roll it off the launch pad and guide it into the water to test. It ended up being such an efficient hydrofoil that it actually took off from the water into the air at a certain (insane for water) speed, allowing me to fly it around. I then made the thing a high-altitude flier as well as a water-loving boat. Eventually I got my "boat" to the point where I had it flaming-out in the upper atmosphere, having originally taken off from the ocean. I eventually decided to launch the same craft from the SPH so I'd have a convenient runway. I opened the craft file from the VAB into the SPH and launched it. All of a sudden, it's flipping around like crazy on take-off. If I get it up in the air at all, it wobbles and twists, then ends up crashing. No matter what I do to modify the craft, I cannot not fly it. I tried using SAS, MechJeb, and Atmosphere Autopilot (all of which worked from the VAB), to no avail. Finally, I returned to the VAB, re-opened the same craft, rolled it off the rocket launch pad to the runway... and ended up taking it for yet another smooth, fast flight into the wild blue yonder. It was stable as can be. Do ships launched from the SPH obey different physics than the same ones launched from the VAB? Does opening a VAB craft in the SPH "corrupt" it somehow?

I finally ended up busting out a micronode for the first time in order to construct a bit of detail on my Star Destroyer. The Empire spares no expense.

This would probably not work, but... What if you had a black hole, and the closer to you got to it, the more Relativity kicked you in the butt. So you spend a few short orbits there, then get back and find out 4,000 Kerbin years passed for all the ships you had in orbit elsewhere. Ah, well. Even if the game allowed variable time dilation depending on proximity to a massive body, it would probably fry a top-end computer.

I'm running 36 mods and nothing seems to have come apart with 1.2.2.

I agree there are issues with flight control. Using the Atmosphere Autopilot mod proves the game is capable of providing better control, though, even with marginally unstable aircraft. That said, I built a speedboat that (accidentally) ended up flying beautifully... (it's a hydrofoil)

I built a Federation starship using several structural pylons in order attach my warp drive nacelles (with the jettison disabled). So yeah. Construction part. Also, auto strut is fantastic.

Kerbal Train Depot Kerbal Muscle Car Cruise Night Kerbal Zoo Keeper Kerbal's Fantastic Nano-Scale Surgical Voyage Kerbal Sake Brewery Kerbal Hooker Simulator

My 4K monitor had a setting in it that I had to flip in order for it to enable the 60 Hz. refresh rate. Obviously, the HDMI and video card have to support that as well. But what a difference it made.