ValleyTwo

My new Orbital Tug turns out to fly like a drunk. It would over-react then over-correct and then over-correct the over-correction. Looked like that final stand scene from the Last Star Fighter. I went to an older design and the same problem happened when it got into orbit. I was worried about MechJeb2 being too sluggish and now it is too quick to spin and turn. I have to go back to the drawing board and relearn how to design a tug. How annoying. Also my favorite jet fuel tank seems to be missing too. Oh well...

Done. The most wobbly booster I have ever made. It was like watching a drunk aunt dance during a Christmas party. The tug is the part hanging from the body with the two nuclear engines. But it worked. The Orbital Tug is in space - and the last stage has a ton of fuel so I now have a tiny fueling station for the future. At least until the fuel is gone.* And now I will stop spamming you guys. *D'uh! The booster has no probe - once I undock it becomes junk. What a waste of fuel!

Well, I was on a roll, with so many ideas, I had to put the third core into space. I will place it on the far side of the station, away from the hab, because it is full of atomic reactors. I know that does nothing to the crew but I like to role play. Feel sorry for the poor sap who had to check the lab. I suck at EVA also. Now, all the cores are nice and close too. I do have a problem. I have designed a 22 plus ton Orbital Tug and all my boosters break under it. It isn't the weight. It is just a horribly ugly design. I think the rockets are killing themselves in horror. No, no, to be honest I think it is just somewhat unbalanced. So I sat down and had a think. Putting it on a rocket, or in the middle of two stages, didn't work. But in my older saves, when I was trying to place rovers and other items onto Mun, I designed what I called at the time as a Space Truck. Old pictures: It held the cargo UNDER the craft and it also made it easy to drop the cargo onto the surface. Now, if I made a special Space Truck for the Tug I think that will work no matter how badly the Tug handles atmosphere. I hope.

This morning put a science core up into space. Now, it lacks some science stuff because, you know, space. Not everything works in space. But it is also missing a Jr. Lab. Now, I am thinking all I need is a third core, maybe using struts and framework and stuff, to toss together some odds and ends, like non-senior docking ports and the Jr. Lab and stuff like that. Then I can get a orbital tug up there and assembly the cores together. As you can see the core still has the last stage attached with some fuel - so the tug can at least top off it's tank with the second and third cores. Also I timed the launch to bring the first two cores close together. Well, kind of close.

After making sure MechJeb2 seemed to work I added USI Life Support to my Test save and, after some design issues, finally got the core of my new station up into orbit.

Oh, okay. So 500 is in fact 21 days (using 24 hour days). Hmm..good to know. Edit : Good god, I am way off, more like 8 days (using 24 hour days).

I just did a test of this Life Support mod. Love it by the way - snacks seems to fit the setting better than any other life support. I basically put Jeb in orbit - I also use MechJeb2 and set the calendar to human years and hours. I give Jeb 500 units of Noms and he seemed to eat four units within two hours. Am I doing something wrong? Or is Jeb just a pig? From what I understand 500 units should last a Kerbal year so maybe having a different time scale is messing it up.

Well, the first time I told it to land at the KSC pad. I think that was the problem. I think it had some course changes planned even while entering the atmosphere. So I am thinking land guidance refused to let me aim the shields forward as it still had corrections to make. So this second time, I just finished trying a second time, I told it land anywhere. So it pointed the heat shield the right way. But the four engines I had on the sides to help slow the craft started to overheat. Now I remember from EnterElysium that tumbling helps spread the heat out. So I started to spin the capsule, keeping the shield facing the right way. It worked and the engines lived long enough to be useful for landing the capsule. With afterthought, unless re-entry is straight down, I don't think I need the engines for landing but it was still a pretty close call. I need to do more tests before I start serious operations in 1.1.2 - I want to add Life Support and I want to knock out all the designs and solve some of the basic problems before putting crew on my craft. And get a feel for how MechJeb2 performs in this version.

Aero forces and MechJeb2 seem not to get along (in fact MechJeb2 fought me trying to point the shield the right way) but I will try the Retro trick.

Well, I found out MechJeb2 can easily put my designs into orbit in 1.1.2 but that it has no idea to face the heat shield towards the heat when landing. Looks like the last stages of any landing in a atmosphere will be done by me.

I rarely go interplanetary. Yes, I use mods and whenever we get a new version of KSP I need to wait for the updated mods and sometimes they break things. And yes sometimes the new versions destroy my space stations. And all that - but the biggest reason is the only reason to put a base on Ike to mine ore is to produce fuel there to supply ships that do....what? Put a colony on Duna? Don't need a base on Ike - don't need that much fuel unless I plan to make Duna into a massive tourist base and...why? It looks nice - always been a fan of the real Mars - but in game there really isn't a reason - outside of role play - to spend fuel and time and organization all those ships and test all that equipment to collect a few minutes worth of science. Robotic craft could do the same thing (but for the collecting of rocks) without needing so much space for pilots and crew. I would love to put a long term colony on Duna, which I will do, once the game has MechJeb-level computers and some kind of Kerbal alarm clock and maybe life support. Otherwise....I have become a casual player. And casual players stay need home.

To be honest I am kind of surprised this question needs to be asked.

I have been having problems with the new version. You see, whenever I get a new version I test my basic designs with it. So when 1.1.1 came out I tested a testing rocket with Jeb. No mods, just basic go up and come down, chutes deploy, some explosions, he lives. Well, he died four times in 1.1.1 - so I said, well, maybe something changed or maybe there is a bug, I'll wait, I have other games. When 1.1.2 came out I tried again today. He slammed into the ground, died. I put extra large chutes on the command capsule - looked stupid. Didn't work. Still going too fast, half the time deployed the chutes too late, he dies, explosions, so forth. Normally I would just go play some Minecraft or Banished or Distant Worlds. But today I said %&*! that I am figuring out what is going on. So I broke it down. My chutes are not getting enough time to deploy and slow the craft. Maybe an over the sea landing? You know, give them more time to cut into the air. So I made a simple command capsule with three chutes, no crew, and started to test. It slammed into the ocean, too fast. It slammed into the lowlands, too fast. It slammed into the mountains, too fast. So I added a fuel tank and four engines to the capsule, between the heat shield and the command pod even though my brain told me heat and rocket fuel did not mix. Starting the rocket engines right when I go past the re-entry 'everything is cooling off phase' slowed me down enough to deploy the chutes - right in time to watch the craft slam into the ground at a slightly slower speed. I sat down and had a good think. Now, I assume a returning space craft is going to hit at a angle, not just go up and down, and therefore the forces involved would work slightly different. But I like space stations and landing pods from stations returning crew for a little R&R back home normally just kind of come down. Not straight down, but pretty much down-down. Also, escape pods want to get down in a hurry. So they well likely just head straight down, no fancy wings or playing about to loss energy. Yeah, I am not a number cruncher. I understood everything in The Martian book but I doubt I could explain it to others with all the proper math stuff. So I tried one last time, starting the rockets the second I entered the dark blue band of the atmosphere - you know, when the heat from re-entry and the heat of the engines should make it extra dangerous and fun. Fun in a Dwarf Fortress method. Well, it worked. But even with the chute properly deployed I was going at 6 meters per second. I was not sure if that was something the craft could survive so I dumped the heat shield (which I had tried once before but it had failed to help at all - going too fast). It cut down the speed to something like 4 meters per second. And my tiny craft survived. To me, this was an important step because if I can do it anybody (including MechJeb which I like to use) can do it. Because I suck at being a pilot. But it also made me feel kind of happy to have figured out a problem. Maybe everybody else had already figured it out - but I had figured it out on my own. And that felt good. It also means my little guys can come home when I want to cycle the old crews out and the new crews in.

-Letters -Delivery Fifteen- To: B. V. Kerman Director of KSC From: Bill Kerman Senior Engineer Subject: 1-Crew Tug and NEW Station The 1-Crew Tug, (AKA the Orbital Tug ) named the Pride, worked like a dream in the first stages of operation. No problems getting her into orbit. The A.I. Units, named "Ted" and "Bill" were able to handle it well, though they did complain about it being sluggish when attached to Fuel Trailer Five. The heat sinks worked like a charm. And may I say the "Skipper" engine on the last stage is a very useful engine when working in orbit. May I suggest any future orbital buses or people movers use this engine? The LV-N "Nerv" Atomic Rocket Motors are good for inter-orbital travel between planets or to the moons, but the RE-15 seemed great for getting the job done in short, powerful, spurts of power. Just the thing needed to moving between fast moving stations. Course, we only have one station right now. But, let me continue with my report. By T+ 1 Day, 1 hour, 12 minutes, and 8 seconds, I had docked with Fuel Trailer Four, head first, and drained it of all its fuel. The ISS C.J. Cherryh, the Second, was only about 15 minutes away. Once again, I can't praise the "Skipper" enough. Then we had a problem. I had to drain and release my own booster, because it was causing wobble. This is the flaw of using regular docking ports, or any ports, extended from the hull of a ship or station. Once I undocked from the station if took me another five hours to find and attach to Fuel Trailer Five. I did something stupid - I attached to the wrong end. Which is why the A.I. Units were complaining. Still, we got back to the station in less then 11 minutes, which wasn't that bad. Unless my clocks are all screwed up. But then we had wobble again and I had to drain the station's A.I. controlled booster and let it go. Still, now we have all that extra fuel in station. After using the trans-matter cushion to get onboard I checked out the view. It sucks. And the food tastes like mint. Anyway, I would suggest all future missions remember to dock spacecraft on the "South End" of the station and Fuel Trailers use the "North End". Also they want to be aware to which end they attach to when towing Fuel Trailers. May I suggest they work on Jeb's station design? Wobble is what killed all those brave people - including me. At least according to my own files. Okay? Good. signed, Safety is Number One, Bill Kerman

-Letters -Delivery Fourteen- To: B. V. Kerman Director of KSC From: N. V. Kerman Section 9 Subject: SSTO and Space Planes Hey! How's it hanging, bro? Just a run down about our experiments with the third version of the SSTO. We tried for a smaller design than the second version but no go. It still runs out of fuel before reaching orbit. So we decided to try to dust off some old designs from our files. You know, jet planes and space planes. Sadly, our computers show only limited success with our designs. While we did learn some interesting facts, like there seems to be some sweet spots in the higher levels of the atmosphere where certain jet engines become SUPER effective, most of our designs were very hard to control for our little machine dudes. I would not trust them to live pilots just yet. To be honest, while I hate giving up on anything, I fear that SSTO and space planes are a dead end. They may be useful on other low gravity or no gravity planets but I feel we may have to start thinking about using basic brute force rockets to gets our crew into space, like it or not. Stay chill, man! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: All KSC staff From: B. V. Kerman Director of KSC Subject: NEW Space station and new Fuel Trailer designs Greeting folks, Just a run down of what is happening up there in the great dark. First, Jeb's space station, named C.J. Cherryh II in honor of our first station, is in orbit. Perfect operation. Even have the last stage and the A.I. unit still attached for now. There seems to be some ideas about using the booster for future missions - maybe pushing the station into a higher orbit or even maybe placing it in orbit around the Mun. Who knows? There is a debate about making all final stages attached with docking ports and, therefore, being about to move them about as portable boosters for cargo in space. We have found out, via computer tests, that our Space Tugs can still get into orbit and we plan to test this out soon, by placing a 1-Crew Tug into space soon. Also, our newly designed Fuel Trailer is now in orbit. Unlike the old ones it now has TWO Senior Docking ports. This means we have two trailers in orbit, one new and one old, so we will want to collect the fuel as soon as possible for future use. Also, we have reports that some of the local life forms, known as birds, have been seen by security. They seem harmless enough but please keep in mind that they are an unknown factor. Please make sure to secure all airlocks, access panels, and don't approach them. Somebody may wish to tell Matbo Karmen about this. And, no, Jeb, I am not handing out weapons. signed, Make sure not to feed the birds, B. V. Kerman