Inverurie Jones

Today I came back after an absence of several months and found all my mods were out of date and my old saves were dead. There may have been a bit of screaming.

Prefix denoting experimental or production craft and any specialist role- X, K (general use), O (orbiter), A (aircraft) for instance. Number denoting size bracket- 1- 19 = small; 20-39 = medium; 40+ = large. The K-1 is a small, two stage satellite launch vehicle while the K-50 is a big (by my standards) ship designed for prolonged continuous use in space. Individual vessel names vary by class but the K-50s, for example, all carry the names of famous figures from Kerbal mythology which, it turns out, is very similar to Greek mythology but everyone is shorter. The K-40 product tankers are named after merchant ships I remember from my days with the coastguard. Currently active ships include: KSS Ajax, KSS Achilles, KSS Daroja and KSS Trailblazer. This last was my first really successful 'Munship' but she's now being moved to the Mun permanently to serve as a shuttle between Munbase Alpha and the new Mun Station One. Bases get letters, stations get numbers.

An unfortunate glitch resulted in the simultaneous de-orbiting of Spacelab 1 and the KSS Discovery. I sent all the crew to the REKT escape pods and ejected them in the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately one pulled a Goose and collided with part of the station as it ejected, destroying its parachute. Five little yellow pods floated slowly down to the surface while the sixth spun off into the distance, following roughly the same trajectory as the pin-wheeling wreck of the station.

Today the HOTH received a new refuelling boom, visible on its starboard side (left of the picture). Shortly after the first two storage tanks- one RCS and one liquid fuel/oxidiser- were sent up, as was an AX-1 shuttle on a crew change flight. The shuttle launching: And docked: The two storage tanks are clearly visible in the foreground attached to the boom. They were launched individually as unmanned craft and manoeuvred into place by means of egregious use of MechJeb. The actual 'craft' part was then jettisoned, leaving only the tanks.

I sent up another module to my new High Orbit Transfer Hub. The new part is the long docking section. Then I completed a contract, got a bunch of money and sent up another one. This started out as just a big relay satellite in synchronous orbit over the KSC with a hab unit attached to give me a place to do crew changes with my big, non-landing ships but it's kind of taken on a life of its own.

Launched my first true 'spaceship', the K-50 Class K-501 KSS Ajax. It went up surprisingly easily with only 6 boosters and a jettisonable Skipper engine.

My first big(ish) station of my 1.3 career game: Spacelab. It's actually two older stations docked together on a newly-launched central core. It has four berths and lifeboats for six. It is likely to be expanded again soon. Also on the cards are an expansion of the small research and refuelling outpost at Minmus (aka 'the Gas 'n' Go') and the construction of a station around the Mun and a much larger, multi-purpose station in synchronous orbit above the KSC.

MA (Hons) in English Literature at the University of Aberdeen, licensed pilot, late of the Royal Corps of Signals, Royal Navy and Her Majesty's Coastguard (consecutively, not concurrently), so while my degree wasn't in a science my career path has been largely technical and revolving around the arcane magic of radio and satellite stuff. Which is weird, given that I really wanted to be an archaeologist.

Tell me about it! Me: I need to land this fuel tank next to my Munbase, I'll use mechjeb to save a bit of time. Mechjeb: Okay dokay! Let's put it down in this random place, via the side of a mountain! On top of that I had to land my largest space station via Hyperedit after a glitched docking board led to it becoming one with the crew change shuttle, the KSS Discovery, which was left dangling off the side of the larger machine for all time, like a horny angler fish. On the plus side, it did remind me of a verse in TISM's 'Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me'.

I never thought about combining JT and KSP. Given Bill's stats I think 'Thick As A Brick' is pretty much his leitmotif.

I have dreams about a huge black cloud on the horizon and people running around panicking, then a tall man whose face I can't see tells me we have to get ready. So that's not worrying or anything.

I like this one for when I start my ships' main engines and send them on their way. ...and this (which I discovered a while back via a KSP youtube series) for when everything inevitably goes horribly wrong and leaves yet another floating hulk or pile of wreckage behind.

A Kerbal, a creature evolved from the mystery goo, a hologramatical Kerbal and a mechjeb, adrift for 3 million years...

I have launched my 'Duna Express' probe. I'm looking forward to its arrival at Duna in about a year. Oh, well, I suppose there's still plenty to do in the K/M/M system.

Jeb giving the newly-extended Spacelab 1 a walk float around.