GwynJHawke

What are some your favorite or must have mods? I have a big love for DarkSideTechnology's 2.5 meter centrifugal habitat mod. Im also a huge fan of KAS and KIS. I've spent a lot of time building bases and orbital stations part by part and I enjoy the new difficulty it affords me. And I've yet had a modded game without all of the future tech mods.

IT WORKS!!!!! Now to add my favorite mods one by one.

I'll trouble shoot this in a while, but haveI mmentioned how wonderful you are Jane? Thank you so much for your suggestions, assistance, and advice.

Welp... Eeloo has disappeared.... but no new planets. Did i download the death star at some point?

I downloaded 1.2.2 last night, but i was having the same issue with an early version of 1.2 from before i took my little hiatus. I had TAC LS, NFTech, Cryo and Atomics, and a number of others. They all seemed to work together except OPM. Just downloaded Kopernicus 1.2.2, so lets see how this goes... Don't you just love minor version updates?

I'm running on 1.2, so i know most of those are up to date with that mod. For some reason I can't get OPM to work right . I've got the most recent Kopernicus update, KAS/KIS, all the NFTech, Atomics, Cryo. They all seem to work, but i can seem to get OPM to work right. Plus TAC LS.

Im starting a new career mod and was wondering if anyone had any good suggestions for mod choices. I've stepped away for a little while and want you to really make things interesting. I know I want life support mods, extra planets, EPL, but does anyone have suggestions on those or any other types of mods I should try. I really want to make this interesting and challenging.

Alright, i'm throwing myself onto your mercies. With all of my favorite mods up to date with 1.2, i just started a new career game, but i've run into a small glitch. My maneuver node doesn't appear on my map screen. The little dot doesn't show up over my trajectory path. Everything else works. I flew by the mun and landed on minmus, but if i plan to have any more complicated missions, i'm going to need that lovely little node. Does anyone have any ideas how i might solve this issue? The only mods that i have installed are all the Near Future Tech mods, Extraplanetary Launch Pads, KAS, KIS,Planetary Bases, TAC Life Support, and Module Manager. To my knowledge I've installed them all correctly, however, my knowledge base on this is only enough to get me into more problems than anything else. Jeb has tried hitting the console with a wrench, but all that did was change the units from Metric to Imperial.

Finished fueling up my Juno 5 Mothership last night. It only took EIGHT trips. Eight identical trips. Ugh. After I finished fueling up and transfering crew, I launched the ship on a prograde burn to leave Kerbin SOI just ahead of the required plane and Jool iinterception burns. It's really interesting how much fuel I'm burning this early in the mission profile. I think my ship lost a third of its mass just to leave Kerbin SOI.

After many failed design projects, the KSP software engineers decided they needed a hardware update. After a new installation, the engineers at KSP found themselves capable of flying larger ships with higher part counts. This lead to a desire to take up a mission so challenging that it would test the abilities of the new computer tech at hand. Thus the Juno 5 mission was born. The mission profile calls for six kerbalnauts, 2 pilots, 2 engineers, and 2 scientists to visit all five moons of the Jool system and then return safely to Kerbin. The first issues faced by the engineers was designing a command module with enough DeltaV built in to safely get the CM to orbit in the event of an emergency in mid-ascent from either Tylo or Laythe. This meant that any engines on the CM would have to be attached radially in order to make room for the 2.5m docking port at the rear of the CM. Then Public Relations made the job ten times worse when they discovered that public opinion found cargo bays to be "kinda kool". Thus, the CM needed radial engines that could fit inside a Mk.3 cargo bay. After about three different reiterations, the Intrepid class CM was built. With 800 units of Lf/Ox mix and 900 units of monoprop, the CM has a little over 2100 m/s of DeltaV. The Intrepid CM is also fully equipped with scientific instruments and onboard RTG to provide constant and steady electrical power. After the CM was designed, the Tylo and Laythe landers had to be worked out. The Laythe lander is pretty much a freefall, aerobreaking design. The detachable heat shield has a small fuel supply meant to power the CM's radial engines just enough for the CM/Lander to fall gradually from low Laythe orbit. The biggest challenge is managing to land on solid and level ground. Once i'm over a landing site, lateral momentum is killed with drogue chutes, followed by the main parachutes. Then, before landing, the heat shield and its small fuel tank are jettisoned, the Mainsail engine is primed, the landing gear is deployed, and a minimal retro burn is fired as briefly as possible. With Laythe's lower gravity and thinner air, there should be plenty of fuel to return to orbit in the CM, even if too much fuel is used in the descent. The Tylo lander is attached to the forward section of the mothership. Its an orange tank with six smaller radial tanks. It's powered by 6 aerospike engines and, by the time landing approaches, will have plenty of TWR to safely land on Tylo. After, the lander should have 1/4 of its fuel supply left to start the ascent, the rest being attained by the CM. The Vall, Pol, and Bop lander is a fuel tank with poodle engine and landing legs. The mothership holds the CM, VPB and Laythe landers in two very large cargo holds. These holds are flanked by the majority of the fuel for the single rhino and six LV-N engines. Foward of the holds is a Mk. 3 passenger cabin. Launching the mothership and all its tenders took some practice, but LKO of 94,000~ meters was attained. The next and hardest part of the pre-mission phase were the eight separate refueling missions. Eigth identical launches carried fuel and crew members up to the Juno 5 mothership as it was in LKO and passing directly over the KSP launch center. All pre-mission resupply flights and crew transfers were completed and the Juno 5 broke LKO mid-day on year 8, day 419 in order to exit Kerbin SOI, make an orbital plane change, and commit a planned Jool rendezvous burn on year 9, day 44. Planned Jool SOI intercept is year 11, day 390, followed by an aerobreaking maneuver in Jool's upper atmosphere. Next mission update will be post-plane change and rendevzous burns.

Finally finished designing my Command Module. With it's built in supply of monoprop and Lf/Ox, it has a little over 2100 m/s of Delta V. That should be more than enough to get it back to a safe orbit if anything goes horribly wrong in mid flight, and if not, plenty of fuel for a fuss free rendezvous with the Juno 5 mothership. Hopefully designing the mothership will go just as smoothly. (Thank goodness I'm not trying to build a mother-in-law ship, cause that would never go well, ha ha ha ha......)

I wonder, but has anyone ever looked into how the order of planetary vists affects fuel efficiency? I was looking into hitting Tylo first, followed by Layth, and then Vail. Has anyone else thought this out or did the math?

Spent the day designing a compact top stage command module with a healthy amount of built in Delta V for a Jool 5 mission. It's supposed to be able to attach to multiple lower stages for the various mission profile requirements for Laythe, Tylo, and Vail-Bop-Pol.

Launched and returned the Discovery II mission to Duna. The mission shared the same insertion window as my Duna Recon probe, so I had to juggle both at the same time. The recon probe had a low-thrust, high efficiency xenon engine and had about a 5 minute burn to slow enough to keep the probe from leaving the SOI. The Discovery II inflated it's 10-meter heat shield and used it with a 15,000 meter perigee to save fuel and slow down into a low orbital speed. The atmospheric lander used air brakes and a shallow descent profile to bleed off velocity, deploy it's chutes, and safely land at an equatorial lowland site. Half an hour later, I managed to time my launch and ascent angle perfectly so as to rendezvous with the Discovery II mothership before even stabilizing into my orbit. Afterwards, instead of breaking orbit I sent the runabout, a secondary two person variable thrust craft, to Ike. The runabout is a 10 ton craft that let me leave low Duna orbit and intercept Ike, circularize, land, and then return to low Duna orbit and rendezvous back with the Discovery II without even going through a quarter of it's minuscule fuel supply. I left both the lander and the runabout docked together in low Duna orbit before making a burn for home. I had two options for the trip home, either transferring orbits from Duna down to Kerbin and then burning to set up a rendezvous over a year later, or burn retro long and hard to swing low towards Kerbol and rendezvous with Kerbin. The only issue with the second option is that the intercept with Kerbin would be at very high speed. Because I still had my inflatable heat shield, i decided to chose the fiery option. I set my perigee at 30,000, pulled in my radiators, and pulled out the marshmallows. http://imgur.com/LcMQeVm

Just arrived into orbit on my first manned mission of Duna since updating from 1.0.5 to 1.1.3. I also downloaded some near future tech mods, and so I'm getting to build some pretty impressive and nice looking ships. The thing is, I've started to notice that when I build stuff, be it stations, bases, or probes, I'm noticing that the aesthetics of the craft seems just as, if not even occasionally seem more important to me than the function/performance of the craft. The feeling of this has only grown the longer I've been playing KSP. Because of that, it made me curious if the rest of the community made the aesthetics of their ships important as well.

Launched a long range transfer ship. It can carry 54 kerbals if need be and has two cargo bays capable of hauling either smaller ships, fuel tanks, probes, or smaller space station components. It's fuel capacity and Cycletron VASMIR engines give it a really long and broad reach on destinations. It's over powered as far as its reactors go, letting all four run at 2/3rds of their rated output, granting extended core life and uranium fuel supplies. There are some cons however. The engines only run on either Xenon or Argon, which is much harder to come buy in the outer system mod. The Near Future tech has an atmospheric harvester that sucks the rare gases from any gravitational body that has atmosphere. That doesn't leave a lot of options in the outer system past Sarnus and it's moons, and at that point, any trip out there will take a decade or more. It does raise an interesting issue and challenge in ship design when it comes to missions past Sarnus. I'll have to mess around with some self sufficient ship designs specific to each planetary system. You can't really run on a fuel that you can't mine in a system when the closest gas station is 10+ years away.

Got a new computer and was finally able to update from 1.0.5 to 1.1.3. The new computer runs a lot better than my old one, so I decided to also download a few mods such as planetary bases, outer planets, KAS/KIS, Near Future Propulsion/Spacecraft/Electrical, and Kopernicus. First off, the Outer Planets Mod is amazing. Its really good work and I love the variety in all of the moons. I'm still trying to figure out how to work some of the elements of KAS/KIS, but I'm looking forward to figuring it all out. Planetary bases is giving me some grief, but I love how the modules are deployable and how they look after they're deployed. I spent most of the past few days playing around with the Propulsion, Electrical, and Spacecraft mods. I'm kinda in love with the two seat command pod. Its lighter than the Mk. 2 lunar can, has a nice aerodynamic shape, good reaction wheel strength, and really nice electrical and monoprop storage. Add to it that it has a built in probe core and its a perfect candidate for almost anything. The Propulsion and Electrical mods are kind of two sides of the same coin. Most of the new Propulsion engines require at least several hundred units of electricity per second and the only practical way to power them is by using the fission reactors from the Electrical mod. But as for today, I launched seven recon probes just prograde of Kerbin's SOI and two recon probes just retrograde. The recon probes are equipped with a full range of gravitational, resource, and atmospheric scanners. They're meant to investigate and survey each planet and its moons for potential fuel mining and colony sites.

With a Duna transfer window fast approaching, I designed (this save file) Kerbin's first interplanetary and fully reusable spaceship. From the back moving foward, the KSPS Discovery is propelled by three NERV engines and carries 10000 units of liquid fuel just for the nuclear engines. Also in the fuel section is enough Lf/Ox mix to completely refuel the ship's lander, the KSPS Wanderer. The Wanderer holds enough fuel to land and launch from Duna to orbit twice, with a healthy margin of error, allowing the lander crew to visit multiple biomes on the planet. Foward of the fuel section is the habitat ring and auxiliary docking ports. The habit ring can carry a total of 48 Kerbals to Duna orbit with another threein the lander command momodule. foward of the habitat ring is the main docking port for the Wanderer. The ship looks great, easily one of the prettiest ships I've ever designed. The habitat ring is made up of Mk 2 crew cabins in a 12 sided ring. The interior of the ring is lit by soft green light and looks spectacular. I can't wait to see what it's going to look like when back dropped against the red of Duna. I'm 4 24/hour days from my launch window and all I have left to do is rendezvous the fuel tanker to top up the reserves before leaving. I'm thinking about docking a few auxiliary fuel pods on the ship before it leaves, maybe just a little extra for the Wanderer so it can do some prospecting on Ike as well. I've only ever been to Ike one in any game file, which is less than I've been to Moho or Laythe. I could dump the fuel pods after I'm done with them. If I have the time, I might do exactly that.

Launched two fuel stations, one in LKO and another in low Munar orbit. Had the good fortune in using them both while mining the Mun for science. Landed in multiple equatorial biomes, refueling my Heavy Munar Lander. The HML has a skipper engine as its main source of thrust. Its the largest multi visit lander I've ever used, and the extra power and fue was quite handy. Some foolish person tried to land in the farside canyon while in the dark and with no lights. Miraculously, I found a suitable landing site. After that was done, I pit stopped at the 600K orbital research lab and dropped off the data. The scientists there turned all I had into 5000 units of science. This let me unlock the majority of my tech tree and start the major process of my major Duna Project, The Corps of Discovery. More news on that project tomorrow.

Built, launched, and completed my Magellan mission, a 7-Kerbal mission of two pilots, 1 engineer, and four scientists. The mission took all seven Kerbalnauts to plant flags to the Mun and Minmus, and then pop outside of Kerbin SOI before burning towards home, all in a single go. This was a XP preamble for a 7 man mission to Duna called.... well, the PR people are still working on a catchy name for the mission.

Started a new career game a few days ago. Sent my first probe to Eve. Managed to arrive quite safely in less than 50 days. Got into a circular polar orbit to mine the planet for science with the gravioli detector. Tried to land on one of the ejecta blanket fields, but over shot. Thankfully that was the sole failure of the mission. Landed on the shoreline of a bay near local noon. Transmitted all the science home and left a lonely and dutiful unmanned lander on the surface.

I've been making all the connection ports a uniform height. That hasn't been an issue. The issue has been fitting my construction rover under the landing legs of the vertical sections so I can move them into place. I have a few ideas. On how I might deal with this. I'm going to try redesigning my rover and going from there. Right now, the rover is too wide and can't fit between 4 equidistant radial legs at my standard height. I'm going to see what I can do with narrowing the rover, or widening the leg base of the vertical sections. Hopefully option one will work due to lower eventual part count.

This project is frustrating. I built a good rover and tested it with moving tunnels, but discovered that it can't fit underneath/between the landing legs on a vertical 2.5m section (science lab, habitat, ISRU). I'm going to test whether or not I can attach wheels and turn those sections into trailers that I might be able to drag to and fro. I quite enjoy the challenge, I just wish the test phases were able to be conducted more quickly....

Don't tell me something is impossible to do in a stock game. I take it as a challenge @ineon, thanks for the link to that thread! Already started some prototype work using it.

Ideally? A crew quarters section, science lab section, ISRU section... three or four sections, ideally.