kraden

@nisskepcsim you've made my day, good sir! Reading the lyrics and looking at the pics, I thought of that very scene from First Contact, well done! This most recent post may not have flowed like you wanted, but it was still quite an enjoyable read. Oh, and as far as kerbal emojis go, on the top of the box you type posts out in is a smiley face icon, they're in there

This seems handy even just for ease of running experiments. What mod do you use to weld parts together?

Steppenwolf and Heart were my favorite bands as a kid

@Freshmeat it looks to be Near Future Construction, if I'm not mistaken.

Haven't had much time so this has taken place over the last few days. My original visit with Niven went poorly. I had three probes land on the surface and their transfer stage was to remain in orbit and act as an intermittent relay so I could transfer the small amount of science they gathered and fulfill a contract. Only I put the wrong antenna on the transfer stage and it's now essentially worthless. It's now the next transfer window so I've launched my two standard relay packages. Each has three relays, the first is for low equatorial orbit and the second is for high polar orbit and is the main communication with Gael. I've also sent my standard ScanSat probe and a probe designed to test DV requirements for returning to orbit. The latter has a transfer stage that should be able to bring it home to fulfill another contract. We'll see if I have time to fine tune my encounters tonight.

What mod is that for stage recovery?

@JadeOfMaar do you sleep?

@Enceos I kind of see what you mean with the centrifuge and secondary ships docking location. Yours definately has a more industrial look to it (which is in no way a bad thing) @NISSKEPCSIM how about An Ulchabhan Dubh, or whatever color you want.

The Kodiak's maiden voyage was a success. Details and more pics in the spoiler.

@DerekL1963 he mentions adjustment burns for that reason in his second paragraph.

@Galileo that's funny. As soon as it started to click that it was likely a joke, I thought to myself, "well it wasn't Galileo's doing".

@Kertech check Red Shirt's post 4 above yours. I think someone was playing a prank.

JadeOfMaar is correct. The mod also has the 6-way connectors I used, a couple of which have one or two sides that are larger, which is handy both asthetically and for part count (so you don't need an adaptor). For a while I had minmus showing up with Dr. Warner Von Kermin's textures wrapped around it. I'm not sure what fixed it but yeah, been there before.

You've lost engines on a couple of launches. What mod is this, Kerbalism? Also, since this is sort of a story type mission log, even if the mod just breaks an engine, it would be kind of cool to see a recap of "why" it failed. I realize you'd be making it up but I think it would be kind of cool. Thanks

@regex I love xkcd, that dude gets me.

A couple drinks brings out some interesting ideas, but more than that and the likelyhood that I'll forget say... parachutes, increases exponentially.

This is not 100% complete, but all it's missing are two landers. My newest ship, the Kodiak, has enough DV to travel to Gael, it's moons, Iota, and Ceti, as well as a trip out of Gael's SOI and back to it's 100km parking orbit. It carries a crew of 2 and is intended for up to 6 passengers. It can carry more than these 8 kerbals, however they would likely start to go nuts and starve become displeased with the accommodations before the trip was over. The Kodiak's primary assembly was done in two large stages; Jeb and Bill flew the propulsion, fuel, docking, and power systems up, while Val and Rosphe flew the command, crew quarters, life support, and passenger quarters up. Val handled primary docking but Jeb was standing by as backup. After successful docking, Bill welded the docking ports together (Konstruction mod) and Jeb and Bill disembarked to return to the surface. Hopefully I'll have time before the night is out to fly up the landers and top off the Kodiak with a refueler and its first crew and passenger compliment (likely to be a training run for those less experienced kosmonauts).

Well, I'm enjoying your logs thus far. I think shortening launch explanations for previously tested and used crafts was a good call. Speaking of tests, I enjoy seeing the testing process. I've actually created a science save since reading your posts where I intend to play similarly (though with unscaled GPP). Can't think of anything any critiques, so keep up the good work.

@OhioBob comes to mind.

After putting some probes in orbit for the next Niven transfer, I decided to have a go at building a rover to fine tune the location for my Iota base. I ended up with my first halfway decent rover which was very nice, and my first rover I felt was good enough to try to land on another body. Jeb and Bill headed to Iota in the new Lander 3 ship which is designed around dropping off a rover. They headed to the poles and Jeb hopped in before Bill could give his two cents. After a bit of fun, Jeb settled down and got to work analyzing the surface for "resources of sufficient quantity and quality to merit the construction of a long-term or even self-sustaining base", whatever that means. Jeb planted a flag anywhere that seemed to get big numbers, that will make the eggheads happy, right? Jeb stopped to oggle at Gael over some mountains then discovered that this location had the best numbers yet. It also happened to be fairly flat. Since this was almost 2k away from the landing site and Jeb was wanting some snacks, he coaxed Bill into flipping the probe core on to come pick him up. After an uneventful polar departure from Iota and a surprisingly smooth reentry, Jeb and Bill are back home on Gael. Now its time for the eggheads to design a base.

This thread lists 1.5.2 as the current version but he asked about 1.5.3 and 1.6. It looks like he has a development build off of GitHub.

@JadeOfMaar I can't get off work soon enough! They look awesome!

Very yes... to both.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same part. USI-LS has a mini copula that has all of the capabilities you've mentioned. In my experience however, the one from this pack has no effect on habitation from either USI-LS or Kerbalism, can seat no kerbals, and has no lights on option. Using the picture in the OP as a reference, I'm talking about the small part attached to the small 6-way station core in the upper left. If this is the same part you're talking about then perhaps I have an odd mod conflict.

I can't build a station without these parts thanks for all your work! Question, will the miniature copula part ever have a function aside from looking cool (even if it just holds a single kerbal)?