OrbitalBuzzsaw

@fulgur

Episode 1 : New Beginnings Despite the Universe Reboot, mission naming continued over. Thus, the first mission in the Universe 2.0 was still labeled Bluesky 6. As is tradition every time the Universe is restarted, Valentina flies the first mission. Jeb tried to, but slipped on a banana peel and apparently you can't fly a rocket with a black eye because of "safety" and "administrative statutes" or something. The Science Points gathered were quite interesting. However, the mission being a standard Flea jumper really, really wasn't, so the Magicamera 9000 was kept off most of the flight except to document that it did in fact happen for "government accountability" reasons (read, the Scientists wanted something cool for the wall) For Bluesky 7, the engineers found an old capsule laying around from a previous iteration of the Universe and decided to use it for laziness cost saving reasons Jebediah managed to sneak on to the rocket ahead of Val, whose car was mysteriously up on blocks that morning. She got there eventually, but, posession being 90% of the law and already being in the air being the other 10%, Jeb got to fly this one Jeb repeated a manuver from the previous Universe's Bluesky 2 mission. The safety team were slightly less annoyed, but still threatened him with a safety seminar. He reminded them that he was the one with the rocket, and an egines effectiveness as a drive is proportional to its effectiveness as a weapon. Despite the Safety Team's insistence that he broke 71 safety guidelines, Jeb was allowed to return home without being tortured sent to a safety seminar. Bluesky 8 was a mission to gather Science! from the new Science Jr units. Someone called Samantha managed to sneak into the rocket, insisting she was in fact Val despite that fact that her suit was just as white as the rocket she was flying. The personnel manager that let her on didn't need to be executed for incompetence, as someone who insisted she was his girlfriend murdered him later that day. Whoever Samantha Kerman was, she was less drunk then Jeb and a better pilot than Val, so she was officially hired. With the mission recovered, the R&D Team went about melting down the hard drive of the capsule into new rocket parts. Tune in next time for orbits and Minmus!

Unfortunately, the servers running the Universe last time failed and the KSP decided it would be best to start over. So, welcome to the KSP 2 : Electric Boogaloo! This is a "soft-stock" (lightly modded) Science Mode playthrough (because screw career mode, money is hard). Mods: PARTS Kerbal Planetary Base Stockalike Station Parts Airplane+ PLANETS Outer Planets Xen's Planet Pack minus Mios and Duna Moons : Richell system, Eeloo moons (extra moons for Plock b.c. OPM), and Eve moons VISUAL EVE with SVE configs Scatterer UTILITY KER KAC Craft Manager

The Mun has some of that (sights to see, etc) but it's about the only body that does. That said you're entirely right

Finally got a crew launcher I'm happy with. Forum, meet Alyrna Shuttle! It'll replace the Iteria-A as my main passenger carrier. Despite being much bigger than the Iteria-A it retains the same passenger capacity. The increased size is due to vastly higher dV in orbit (650m/s compared to 1350-1500 depending on ascent) as well as a full length cargo bay and inline, rather than nose mounted, docking controls. Some specs: Crew Capacity : 6 Kerbals Operational Capacity : 4 Kerbals Cargo Capacity : 1 CRG-08 cargo bay's worth Mass : 158.7t dV in 100km Kerbin orbit : ~1350m/s Docking Capability : Yes It's almost perfectly balanced and remains so until about 15% is left in the external tank (has a Vector on the bottom).

Well I definitely agree with the sentiment of "the current planets are boring" for a few bodies I think SQUAD has done about as well as they can with the current system Moho : Mohole. That's about it. Rather lacking Eve : A unique challenge, but it's really rather lacking in terms of unique terrain. There's no reason to go other than the engineering challenge (or gravity assists, but you get the point) Gilly : Not much, but too small for any features Kerbin : Needs cities/roads/train tracks, etc. For the homeworld it's disappointingly bare. Mun : Interesting (to me at least) craters and lots of easter eggs. The best fleshed out body in the game IMO, and bringing all the other planets up to the Mun's standard would be a good goal Minmus : Lacking, but would be a bit small to fill up with features and not have it feel unrealistically "full" Duna : Has a good few easter eggs and some interesting terrain. A bit bare but would not be my highest priority Dres : Has the Canyon and asteroids but that's about it. Alright but some more terrain features wouldn't hurt Jool : Nothing really to be done since it's a gas giany Laythe : Interesting enough on its own. I'd like to see some evidence of simple plants near the interior lakes but not a priority. Vall : Needs improvement Tylo : Needs improvement Bop & Pol - Both too small to really have much by way of features Eeloo - Fine for what it is but would be better suited as an Enceladus analogue

Eeloo is such a terrible Pluto analogue because we don't have outer planets.

Ah yes, because Eve is such an accurate Venus analogue.

I think you mean Duna bars

Abort testing for the Altiron crew carrier

-Sarnus -Sure -Vegetation? Maybe not except on Laythe, but yeah sure -YES - Sure, but that seems like a huge programming load - Nah I don't disagree, but the planets (at least the OPM ones) already exist, so it's minimal work to make them stock

One of the most common requests I see here is to add more planets. I agree. The stock system is a little... barren. Thus, I propose an expansion of the solar system 1) Integrate OPM OPM (Outer Planets Mod for those who don't know) is, IMO, far and away the best planet pack for KSP. It's stock-alike, the planets are interesting and the moons all offer unique challenges. We even get to keep Eeloo as an Enceladus analogue. Why instead of pining for the long ago promised GP2 don't we just use the perfectly good planets that are ALREADY THERE. I've been playing with OPM since 1.0.5 and it's increased my enjoyment of the game tremendously. 2) Asteroid Belt Objects We all know that Dres is supposed to be a Ceres analogue. That's fine. Dres is fine. No problem with Dres. But the Asteroid Belt has more than 1 object in it!. Thus my proposal is - Add three more, smaller, dwarf planets (analogues of Vesta, Pallas and an irregularly shaped Eros called Karas, Pinios, and Gelo respectively). Maybe make the Eros analogue have some glowey spots as a nod to The Expanse? - Randomly generated asteroids orbiting Kerbol (also finally officially rename the sun Kerbol, please) in that area 3) Kuiper Belt If we're going to integrate OPM, then we should also add beyond Plock/Karen maybe one more planet as an Eros/Sedna analogue. We should have it be about Vall sized with a tenuous (a la Duna) atmosphere, and be a cratery ice ball 4) Real moons for Eve It only seems fair to me that Eve should get at a "real" moon, Gilly being so small it barely counts. I think something about halfway between the sizes of Mun and Minmus in a slightly inclined orbit at about the same relative distance as Mun seems fair. 5) Other things - I remember there being a mod that added a Gilly-like object orbiting well inside Moho's orbit as the ultimate engineering challenge. That might be cool.

Give us stock OPM. The planets are already there. A good chunk of players already use them. Make them stock.

1) Add two more runways, one facing north-south and another facing 30deg northeast/210deg southwest in an x shape. Call them KSC 09 (default), KSC 00/36, and KSC 03/21 2) Reorient the default in the VAB to be rather than facing north facing east (i.e. when you press W on a rocket it turns 90deg east rather than north) and add a second launchpad for polar launches (yes I know Woomerang, but maybe another one on the other side of the KSContinent? 3) Generally more airports (not launch sites, airports) around Kerbin and contracts to suit (e.g. carry Something Kerman from the Kerbal Space Center to Hyperion Field, etc) 4) The aforementioned wind-tunnel 5) The Propulsion Laboratory - Give the propulsion laboratory x amount of science, and then every 30 days there is a 0.1x % chance that they will improve a random engine's (or at 2x the Science cost a specific engine's) ISP by 10, up to a maximum of 50.

Yes.

We weren't switching boats, you said!

https://kerbalx.com/BuzzsawsKXAccount/XV-1 Very manuverable VTOL, 4 modded "Tiger" engines from AirplanePlus (basically mini panthers) in a cargo bay for VTOL, 2x Panther for horizontal flight. STAGE to toggle Panthers afterburner 1 to toggle Panthers on/off 2 to toggle VTOL engines and open/close cargo bay Known issues : Pitches up for no apparent reason when under 4x time warp Cargo bay sometimes gets out of sync with the VTOL engine's on/off state. Fixed by cycling the 2 action group until all is returned to normal

Launched the Kerbin System Transfer Vehicle (Better name pending) to the Mun with crew for the newly completed and enormous Mun Gateway. I used an R1 rather than building a custom booster (This is a new save and as of right now I only have the R1 in terms of standardized boosters. I really like how the R1 came out and it's a joy to fly. 3 Vectors drawing from 2 Jumbo64 tanks, plus 8x LV-T30s asparagus staged each with 2x FLT-800s, upper stage is a 32-size tank, probe core, 600 EC in batteries, 4x small solar panels, antenna, fairing and decoupler powered by a skiff. The heaviest I've hauled is ~35t to Mun orbit, but with some fancy flying it could easily inject that much to Duna/Eve, so using it to launch a 17t, self-manuvering ship that only really needs to be boosted to LKO is kind of ridiculous, but it looks really cool IMO. We got to orbit having barely touched the second stage and even then there was still about 200m/s of dV in the first stage, not used for space-junk reasons. I used this to inject, circularize and correct for rendevous with the Mun Gateway in orbit around, unsurprisingly, the Mun to save fuel on the transfer vehicle since surface mining operations aren't up and running yet and there's limited fuel reserves on the station. The crew of 6 headed by Station Captain Bob Kerman inject for the Mun. Mun orbit is getting a bit crowded: 3 equatorial medium range (RA-15) comsats at 500km triangular for communications coverage 3 polar short range (RA-2) comsats in a triangular formation at 250km polar for comms coverage over the pole Polar ore surveyor that also functions as a (RA-2) relay in a 200km polar orbit Mun Gateway, the massive 400 part station for fueling and as the main outpost for Mun, since bases are kinda hard without KAS and it's easier to build a big station than a big base. In a 50km, 5 degree inclined orbit Mun Polar Station for... reasons (I really like space stations ok) in an 80km polar orbit Plus on the surface: A mobile base (i.e. a big crewed rover) currently in the Farside Crater, but slowly being driven to the Southwest Crater (hence the waypoint) An incomplete surface base in the East Crater Ditching the transfer stage. From now until the inevitable aerobraking accident, this ship will move solely under its own power. Being within physics range of this behemoth makes my PC hate me Docking at 10fps is an experience and not a good one All's well that ends well, though Bill looks out the cupola (3.75m cupola from Stockalike Station Parts)

How fast do the Juice Geese fly at cruise? Can't be terribly aerodynamic with that Klaw in the front

My biggest yet : The Mun Gateway. 390ish parts and it's not even done yet (lacking LF pods and landers). Pretty proud of it but goddamn does my computer not like it (even with an overclocked 8700K and a 1080 Ti, I still get around 15 frames)

Yeah, the Vector is really a 2.5m engine in disguise

1) Some new parts - A 45 degree angled RCS block - A more powerful (425kN maybe) 1.25m engine for heavy 1.25m stacks -An electrical propellor engine 2) Stock KAC 3) What 5thHorseman said 4) Stock OPM. Please? 5) Optional stock clouds and/or Scatterer

Rebooting the universe So unfortunately, my PC decided that the hard drive didn't get to exist yesterday. I was able to recover the save but only from a point before the launch of Greenpeak 1. Thus, I'll be starting a new save file. Same mods, same everything (except EVE works now yayyyyy). I'll get through the early stages of the game and the next update will be on the progress of said save file.

So wait, are we switching boats or not?

Started up a new lightly modded Science Mode save for 1.7. Found here But to summarise Bluesky 1 - Flea jumper Bluesky 2 - Suborbital space hopper Bluesky 3 - Science Jr. equipped suborbital hopper Bluesky 4 - Orbiter and high-orbit science Greenpeak 1 - Minmus lander, 2 biomes Greypeak 1 (Ongoing) - Mun lander