Opus_723

Thanks Elthy! That's exactly the sort of advice I was looking for. Could you maybe clarify by means of an example what you mean by "the cheap ones" with regards to a mainboard? I don't plan on messing with overclocking, so that sounds great. Also, what precisely do you mean by the "efficiency" of the PSU (is there a particular number you're looking at?), so that I can look for something better?

I'm getting ready to attempt building my first PC. I've got a part list that's just a slight modification on a Logical Increments build, but I would still like to trim down the price some more. I know very little about this stuff, so I thought I could get advice from some more knowledgeable folks on how to build something of *roughly* this performance level for the best value. I don't care if it ends up sacrificing some performance, I just picked this out as a rough ballpark. But I don't really know all the pros/cons of, say, using a cheaper motherboard, or whether I can skimp on the cooling or not, or whether there is another graphics card with better value and only slightly worse performance. That sort of thing. It's just the "Excellent" build from Logical Increments, only I picked out a cheaper case and I found a slightly cheaper version of the graphics card at Best Buy that had good reviews. Also, if I have made any mistakes (anything weird about the different graphics card, or maybe that case won't fit certain things well?) please let me know. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/QFNjPs Thanks!

First fuel tanker went up today! It's been awhile since I launched Atlas, so it was good to see it in action again! The fuel tanker launched carrying only a small fraction of its fuel capacity, which was just enough the get to the Mun on its own. To rendezvous with the station in a polar orbit, we only barely captured on the first burn, letting the tanker swing out on a long orbit and then perform a plane correction to align its orbit with the station's. Then it was just a matter of circularizing and performing a Hohmann transfer to the station. The view approaching the station was just awesome. And that's our first tanker! The station's not terribly symmetric yet, but we have actual fuel storage capacity now! This is meant to be a liquid fuel tank, although some of the parts can store L+Ox mix in a pinch. But we've only got Sisyphus L in operation so far, so we couldn't bring up oxygen from the surface anyway. Now at least Charon has a fancy station to refuel at rather than docking with Sisyphus itself. The point is, between Sisyphus L, Tower Station and Lupus Station, we now have all the functioning parts of a liquid fuel supply chain! Our next task will be a quick and straightforward one: there's no reason to leave Sisyphus L drifting out in space anymore, so we'll dock it to Lupus Station and transfer its remaining fuel. After that, we'll go ahead and outfit Lupus station with its second liquid fuel tanker, as well as a monoprop pod, to bring the liquid fuel supply chain to full capacity.

And now for the first mission of the resumed space program. Today we moved Lupus Station to Munar orbit! I think originally I had planned to attach the fuel pods and then drag the whole thing to the Mun. But I've decided, upon reviewing the crafts in the VAB, to redesign the fuel transport system, so I decided to go ahead and bring the station to the Mun while I work on that. I originally planned to have fuel pods that could be picked up by a tug and transferred from one station to another, but I've decided that, given the sheer size of the fuel pods, it would be more fuel-efficient to add some engines and RCS to the pods themselves and convert them into full-fledged fuel tankers. The redesign is actually progressing quite quickly, but I was eager to post some new pictures after the long hiatus, so I'm going to go ahead and document the transfer of Lupus Station to the Mun. After entering a circular polar orbit of altitude 20km, we ditched the tug, crashing it into the munar surface. And now Lupus Station has become my very first space station around a body other than Kerbin! Our next task is to make the station functional as a fuel depot by launching and docking at least some of its accompanying fleet of fuel tankers. Then Sisyphus L will actually have some work to do! I'm really glad I'll actually get to see this project through to completion. I had big plans for this setup, and I'm dreaming up new plans as I go. My hope is that the results will be quite grand.

My apologies to anyone who was vaguely interested in how this turned out. I was having a lot of fun working on this project, when unfortunately, my laptop got dropped and the screen was destroyed beyond repair. I dejectedly tucked it in a box and made a mental note to try to recover as much of my stuff from it as I could later, as I was getting ready to move to another state around that time. I've still been playing KSP off and on, but it has felt a bit hollow this year. Sandbox has always felt too directionless and overpowered for my taste. I don't feel like I should go to Jool until I've gone to Duna, etc. But I didn't really have the heart to start over on a new career either. Especially the fundraising. So I was a bit bummed, to say the least. In all the rush of the move (and starting my Physics Ph.D.!) I almost forgot about the old laptop, stuck in a box that sort of went directly to storage without getting unpacked because it was full of semi-useless junk. Today, however, I finally dug out that old laptop, and through a lot of trial and error clicking blindly around the dead parts of the screen, managed to get my old save file onto a thumb drive! I just booted it all up, and it all still seems to work on KSP 1.3! There was a harrowing moment when Tower Station, upon loading, jumped about a meter into the air, but the shock absorption was enough to keep everything together upon landing. So what I'm saying is... I'm back in business! Lupus Station is still orbiting Kerbin, and I expect to resume Operation Underhill shortly, although I might make some tweaks to the original plan since I have become a bit more experienced at the game since earlier this year. Look for an update soon!

Hi, I'm starting a physics PhD in a couple of weeks and the department has awarded me a (generous) chunk of money to spend on academic supplies as I see fit. I need a new computer for school anyway, as my old school laptop got dropped one too many times, so I thought I would spend part of the award to try building one to get more bang for my buck. For school/research purposes, I would like a computer that can crank through decently heavy Mathematica code (or compile in other languages) so that I'm not so reliant on school computers. I figure that gives me a decent excuse to build a good gaming computer while I'm at it. I pretty much only play KSP, but I would love a machine that would let me run a lot of mods, including visual mods, and build high part count ships without lagging much (my old laptop could pretty much only run stock). I would also like to try a few more recent, more traditionally "pretty" games, but that's not as much of a priority as running physics simulations for school and really maxing out KSP. My budget for this computer is $1,000, including peripherals (I would like a nice monitor, but I'm fine with a dirt cheap mouse and keyboard, which I already have), but not the OS, which I think I can get heavily discounted as a grad student. I know enough about computers to know what all the parts do and roughly how they work, but I don't know anything at all about specific parts/series/brands. Could someone suggest a parts list?

Speaking of the Falcon legs, I was wondering if this is a bug, or just how the colliders work. I realize they're not really intended to be used at this angle, but... I really want to.

Phase II has begun! The Lupus Station core isn't particularly heavy without the fuel pods, but it is very large and unwieldly. Definitely the largest thing I have ever tried to launch into orbit. The original plan was to launch the core in at least two pieces on Atlas and dock them together, then use Charon to tug it to the Mun. I was feeling a little gutsy, however, and designed a new launcher shell around the whole thing, including a small tug. Charon will get a break to go do other things. I present to you the launch of Lupus Station! That thing flew WAY better than I expected. Now, you probably noticed that the launch stage is pretty intertwined with the space station itself. We have to ditch the fuel tanks without damaging that large ring. The ring will serve as the shipyard for refueling as well as construction. In the future, large interplanetary motherships will be built piece by piece and fueled at Lupus Station, ready to leave Kerbin's SOI with little effort. This will also let me get away with low accelerations which are frustrating in Low Kerbin Orbit. But back to the current problem. I fired some seperatrons as well as the Thuds on the orange tank tug, hoping to slip the fuel tanks out of the ring without damaging anything. The large fins force me to go the long way, though (putting the ring in the back near the fins made the launch more aerodynamically stable, so that wasn't an oversight, just unfortunate). This was absolutely terrifying, and I didn't quite pull it off... I nicked off one of my struts. I probably could have carefully placed the separatrons around the center of mass of the empty tanks, but I didn't feel like making the tanks into subassemblies and I just eyeballed it. So the tanks tilted a bit and I lost a strut. It's alright though. I don't really need that strut. Right? Right. Right. And of course, we were responsible and dumped all of those tanks into the ocean. All in all, a pretty great first mission for Phase II of Operation Underhill! (except for that one strut) Lupus Station is much further along that I expected it would be by now. Launching the whole skeleton in one go has really accelerated things. It already dwarfs Ouroboros Station, the first and only other station I have built. But it won't look truly impressive until we attach the fuel pods. This is going to be a massive fuel depot, storing over 100,000 units of rocket fuel, over 175,000 units of liquid only, and over 9000 units of monopropellant , so... Next Mission: Launch Lupus Station fuel pods to LKO

Quick update: Contracts are all wrapped up! I snatched up a bunch of Ike contracts at once, then sent a miner and a scanner to Ike to gather some ore, do some gravity scans, and test some parts. I also rescued a couple of kerbals in Kerbin's SOI so that we have enough crew to keep all of the upcoming infrastructure occupied. I had tons of money, so I also set up a relay system that gets me a workable signal in Duna's SOI for all of my old probes with 5k antennas, sent my first ever ion-drive probe to Dres to collect a bunch of science, and finished upgrading my runway and the astronaut complex. After all of that, I still have over 3 million funds left in the bank, so Phase II of Operation Underhill should have all of the funding it needs. I'm gonna give the operations checklist a once-over and make sure I've got Lupus Station set up the way I want it. Once I'm confident in the plan, (and done toying around with the new plane parts I just unlocked) Phase II will commence!

Thanks for the help! That sounds like just what I need. I'll give it a shot!

I'm trying to rebalance the relay antennas to my preferences by tweaking the antenna ratings in the config files. Specifically, the RA-15 seems kind of useless to me, since I can cover Kerbin's SOI quite well with the RA-2s but the RA-15 can only go a frustratingly small fraction of the way around Kerbin's orbit. I successfully boosted the RA-15's performance so that I can just manage to bounce signals between 4 relays in Kerbin's orbit spaced at 90 degree angles and then on to Duna or Eve. But I'm still dissatisfied as boosting the relays ability to communicate with each other by increasing their antenna ratings also greatly boosts their connection with the Tracking Station. I only tweaked the antenna rating from 15G to 20G, but now the relay at Duna has a fantastic connection straight to the Tracking Station with no need for a wider network, which kind of removes the challenge completely. So I've realized that what I really want is a weaker tracking station but to compensate with better mid-game relays. That seems the most fun for me personally. So my question to the forums is if there is a way to edit the config files to decrease the antenna rating of the Tracking Station and/or other ground stations on Kerbin. I've looked through and I don't see a folder for "Buildings" or anything like that. I'm sure the numbers must be in there somewhere, but I've missed them. Thanks!

Since I turned on communications in 1.2, I haven't had contact with my probes in the Duna and Eve systems. So today I started setting up the Mid-Kerbolar-Relay system. Managed to load up four relays into a fairing and launch on an escape trajectory. We deployed one of the relays while still in Kerbin's SOI, and it circularized into a large orbit containing the entire Kerbin system. Notice that I don't have the largest relay dish yet. I'm pretty sure this setup will get me a good signal, though. The main deployment ship then left Kerbin's SOI and entered orbit around Kerbol. It burned off a precisely calculated amount of DV in order to achieve and elliptical orbit with a period of 3/4 Kerbin's period. The plan is to release an additional relay each time it comes back out to Kerbin's orbital distance and let the relay circularize. I should end up with three relays in Kerbin's orbit, spaced at 90, 180, and 270 degrees from Kerbin, plus the relay we left behind AT Kerbin. We also packed some extra DV in case I have to maneuver to avoid Eve at some point, since the elliptical orbit crosses Eve's. Finally, I have a contract mission to Ike currently parked in LKO. One more relay is hitching a ride to the Duna system on that mission, and will circularize near the edge of Duna's SOI. The end result is that, even when Kerbin and Duna are furthest apart, I should be able to bounce signals to the far side of Kerbin's orbit and then to the Duna system from there. I'll send a similar relay on its way to the Eve system soon. It'll take a few in-game years to set this up, but I should have a good signal throughout the middle solar system at the end of it (eclipses will still be a problem, but I'll deal with that later), as long as I don't miss a burn.

I've been toying with the idea of putting a station into a solar orbit between Duna and Jool to serve as a waystation and fuel depot for large missions to the outer solar system (Or between Eve and Dres for the inner solar system). The practicality seems a bit dubious though. I can't think of a good reason not to just use Duna as the rest stop if I'm really going to do that, and it's kind of a waste of fuel anyway. Mostly I just want a deep-space asteroid station for the heck of it, and a reason to go there.

Here we go: our first refuel mission. Sisyphus L descended from its parking orbit to a smooth Mun landing. Fairly routine. Looks neat with all the thrusters going though. Then we drove on over to Tower Station and docked for the fuel-up. This is thankfully getting much quicker after the practice I got with the equipment beds. That and I discovered the "Aim Camera" feature which makes the alignment WAY easier as you can see. After a very painless time warp, we had 35,000 units of liquid fuel ready to put into orbit. We also topped off the chemical rockets with L+Ox mix and the monoprop tanks as well. Sisyphus was now quite heavy. I was a bit nervous to see how well I could actually control it in flight. I waited for the launch window to meet up with Charon, and we attempted our first laden ascent! Sorry the first liftoff images are dark, I was forced to do a night ascent to meet Charon properly. We quickly got high enough to see the Sun and take some better shots, though. We ran into Charon across the terminator on the day side. Surprisingly for its mass, docking the Sisyphus to Charon was rather painless. The RCS seems nicely balanced. And there we go! We proceeded to refuel Charon completely! This marks a milestone for me. I have, for the first time, mined ore on a celestial body, processed it, and transferred the fuel to a ship in orbit! Sisyphus L still has quite a bit of fuel left over, so it will simply stay in orbit for now, serving as a temporary depot until more permanent infrastructure can be put into place. Charon, on the other hand, has to get back to Kerbin. Jeb's got work to do yet. Just a few housekeeping tasks left. This is a fun one though: I don't actually need that set of girders that the equipment beds were attached to anymore, so we should really dispose of it. I meant to deorbit it at the Mun and just slam them into the surface several posts ago. But then it occurred to me that Charon would be heading back to Kerbin, and I thought of something much more dramatic. Direct reentry from the Mun. We got some nice fireworks off of that one! I think its important to bring a few things along on a mission that are supposed to blow up. It helps Jeb stave off the temptation to blow up the important equipment and/or himself. Meanwhile, Charon adjusted into a non-deadly orbit and performed a periapsis burn to get its apoapsis away from the Mun's orbit. Jeb then took one more long-ish orbit out in order to adjust the inclination efficiently in order to get a nice equatorial orbit. One more burn and Charon is now settled into a tidy 120km parking orbit around Kerbin, ready to pick up the next payload when its ready. Alright everyone! This concludes Phase I of Operation Underhill. We have completed Tower Station and broken ground! Our mining operation is humming along nicely, and we have tested every component of the system. Our space program now has the proven infrastructure and capability to refuel liquid-only ships in Munar orbit, provided they have a large docking port. This alone should be extraordinarily useful to our future endeavors. But we're not done yet! I'll be taking a short-ish break from this mission report in order to raise funds for the next phase of Operation Underhill. But as soon as the funds are ready, we'll begin Phase II! Phase II centers on the construction of Lupus Station, an orbital Mun fuel depot and shipyard. It will be the orbital complement to Canis Base, serving as an entry hub for all visitors to the Mun, a launch point for interplanetary travel, and as the munar fuel reservoir for Tower Station's mining operations. Thanks to everyone who has followed this mission report so far, I hope you've enjoyed it!

Quick update: Tower Station was very nearly destroyed by the almighty Kraken last night. Thankfully Bill is an accomplished student of Autostrut, and with quick thinking he was able to calm the Kraken's wrath before the station was torn apart by rogue gravitational waves. Tower Station is unharmed. The moral of the story kids, is that the kraken doesn't like spindly little I-beam skeletons with lots of wobbly solar panels attached, and you should autostrut them BEFORE landing such things (and docking them to even more such things with part counts in the hundreds) on the Mun. Everything appears perfectly functional now, though. A real update will come soon.

I've heard of these, but have no clue how they're supposed to work. Could someone point me to an explanation/instructions on building one?

*AHEM* Begin initiation sequence. Extending Solar Array... Activating Radiator Bank.... Engaging Drills.... Firing up Fuel Processors.... Tower Station online! Operation Underhill has broken ground!!! We did it!!! Bill has banged on all the right pipes and the mining equipment is creating more fuel than I can handle! In less than six in-game hours, the station filled all of its on-site tanks. That's 4 orange tanks of L+Ox mix, an additional 10,000 units of liquid fuel, and 4 of the largest monopropellant tanks. It also filled 9 small ore tanks which are on standby in the lower deck. All of that in less than six hours, and I only have a level 3 engineer. Once I train up a level 5, this station is going to be an absolute dream to work with. You can see all of the resource capacities in the upper right corner of this shot: By the way, I also do love the view from Canis Base now: But all of that capacity is just for local emergencies on the Mun and to keep Bill from getting too bored in between fuel ascents. It will be dwarfed by what we can accomplish by docking the Sisyphus class rovers. Our next project, now that Tower Station is operational, will be to attempt our first orbital refuel. Charon could do with topping off after lugging all that mass to the Mun. After all, Jeb has more work to do. Operation Underhill is just getting started. Next Mission: Landing and Fueling Sisyphus L

Same procedure as before: we needed to do a quick orbital adjustment, as the Mun has rotated under us since we landed the radiator bank. Jeb is dealing with an asymmetric payload this time, though. His strategy was to turn on all of the RCS thrusters and slowly throttle up the nukes, making sure he didn't start to spin out of control. He settled into the sweet spot and it worked out okay. Then the undocking of the solar array, followed by a straightforward landing (or as straightforward as it gets when piloting a spindly skeleton frame of I-bars with a bunch of engines strapped on). The mobile bed drove on over to Tower Station and proceeded to dock. This time I discovered that shutting down the rear engines and lightly firing the engines closest to the docking port gives me a VERY helpful bit of vertical wiggle. I got a successful dock almost instantly when I tried that, even though I barely moved. I'll definitely remember that when docking the Sisyphus class rovers. And the assembly of Tower Station is COMPLETE!!! Bill is ready to break ground! But the grand unveiling deserves its own post!

I've always considered landing within sight of my Mun base "good enough" and used rovers to make up the difference. But I've had enough. I'm ready to move on and start making precision landings. This was my first concept test. Spider engines action-grouped to behave like RCS. I plan to use this method to build a new Mun biome hopper that can land on a docking port to refuel, and maybe a construction skycrane for vertical expansion of the base. Test was done in roughly Mun gravity with Alt+F12. That'll do, pig. That'll do.

Assembly is coming along nicely. Jeb made a small adjustment to Charon's orbit to account for the rotation of the Mun since Tower Station landed. After that, he undocked the large radiator bank that will be needed to keep those 16 large drills and 4 ISRU nice and cool. These equipment beds, as I mentioned before, are just the stripped down skeletons of the Sisyphus class fuel lifter, so they're tremendously overbuilt for a Mun landing. I didn't even fill those tanks halfway. I just calculated how much fuel I needed to get the dV for a Mun landing and filled them up that much plus a bit extra. They could be more elegant, but after fine tuning the Sisyphus docking ports to line up with Tower Stations ports, I really didn't want to do all that work again. The upside, though, is that I got a break from all of that low thrust maneuvering and got to do a pretty straightforward Mun landing. These beds are a little spindly, so the wobble at full thrust was a little concerning, but it didn't end up causing any problems. Then it was just a short drive over to the station, and we were ready to dock. The largest rover wheels are great for docking, I think, since you can rotate the vehicle in place. If you need to translate laterally, just rotate in place, drive forward a bit, then rotate back. Still, this was a bit more difficult than in my testing on Kerbin since the ground here isn't perfectly flat. It took a few tries to get the docking ports just right (the largest ports are very picky). I was glad that I made Tower Station's ports very flexible. The tower was hardly affected by even my most clumsy docking attempts, and the flexibility is probably the only reason I was able to dock at all given the slight slope. So, a bit of a pain, considering that I will have to dock this way every time I want to lift fuel to low munar orbit in the future. But it's not as awful as I was afraid it might be. And the Sisyphus rovers will lift massive amounts of fuel to orbit. More than I know what to do with, in fact. So I won't have to do this very often. All things considered, this docking process is something I can live with, and I'll presumably get better at it over time. So we have our radiator bank! I won't extend them yet, though, even if we have the battery capacity to run them for quite awhile. We'll wait until the solar array is attached. Then I'll unveil Tower Station in all of its glory when we fire up those drills and break ground! Next Mission: Landing and attaching the Solar Array

Oh, this got serious. I actually had this ready earlier, but it felt a little mean to post it right after that cute 11 m/s QBE rover. So here's my best attempt: 53.4 m/s And a quick carriage shot to confirm no batteries or other shenanigans: The black wheels have 58.0 m/s listed as their max motor speed, so I have a feeling that we're not going to go any faster than that. From here on out I think it's just a matter of getting the mass as low as possible while keeping a serviceable amount of solar panels to try and eke out those last few m/s. We've all seemed to independently converge on black tires+cubic struts+stat-XL panels as a winning formula. Hmm. EDIT: Also, Martian Emigrant, you should redo yours on the runway instead of flat grass to qualify under the new rules. If you can repeat that speed you'll beat me for the top spot!

Thanks! I have to admit, I'm considering that I should probably have gone higher thrust, if only to save myself a lot of tedium. This landing was kind of adhoc, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to kill my velocity fast enough. Speaking of which... THE LANDING! Tower Station will be the resource extraction complement to my existing Mun base, Canis Base. Canis Base was actually my very first attempt at base building, and I started it shortly after my first Mun landing. It's not the most elegant thing, but I think the first modules came out pretty good for a first attempt. The resident scientist Sany Kerman has provided a considerable amount of science since arriving at the base. Canis base unfortunately never got beyond a science lab and a communications/power generation module. My construction method relied on disposable rovers, which quickly accumulated into a small junkyard since I was also using separate connectors between modules. I decided that I needed to rethink my methods before the debris got out of hand, and left the base unfinished while I worked on other projects (my first Duna landing, then Operation Underhill) for awhile. One of my next projects after I set up Tower Station and its associated fuel infrastructure is to come back and give Canis Base the attention and expansion it deserves. After transitioning to a new construction method while grandfathering in these initial modules, I plan to develop it into a glorious hub for all Mun exploration, commerce, and science. But that's all a project for another day. Today is Tower Station's day to shine. The landing, as I said, was tricky. I couldn't do anything close to a suicide burn, due to the low acceleration the heavy mass and weak thud engines. I ended up sort of frantically setting one maneuver node after another, burning off about 100 m/s at a time while moving my projected landing closer and closer to Canis Base. I wanted to keep Tower Station at a remove from the science base, so the landing didn't have to be super precise. We can't have the noise from the mining equipment disturbing anyone's sleep, after all (and a bit of distance might help frame rates in the future as well). But I am surprised and pleased to say that Val brought this beast to a gentle landing less than 500m from the base proper! All that was left to do was detach the sky crane and send it off to a glorious crash landing. Now that fancy cupola actually has a view! Also, I brought that old mining test Olivine over a bit closer for a proper comparison. So far, I feel quite proud of my second attempt at mining in KSP! Finally, Valentina hopped out of the cupola, stretched her legs, and then jetted over to settle into Canis Base with Sany and Taniella until the next crew shift arrives and she can catch a ride back to Kerbin. Bill, on the other hand, is going to be running Tower Station until we get a proper engineer training program going. I also discovered that Tower Station lives up to its name, and actually looks quite impressive on the horizon from Canis Base. Next Mission: We're almost ready to fire up the mining operation! Tower Station still needs its full accoutrement of radiators and solar panels before we can safely turn on those drills and ore processors. The equipment beds are still in orbit with Jeb, so we have two more landings before Operation Underhill can officially break ground. Nonetheless, finally landing the core of the operation on the Mun's surface is a huge milestone, and I want to take the moment to thank everyone who has been following along! Whether you've commented, liked a post, or just checked in without making your presence known, I've enjoyed writing this mission report for you all, and I probably wouldn't have stuck with this project without it. I'm still pretty new to KSP and I know there are far more polished and ambitious projects on these forums, so thanks for stopping by to read mine anyway!

New new winner. 21.4 m/s.

Hmm, getting ideas for my someday Minmus colony. I've been trying to make everything bigger and more epic lately, but now I'm in the mood for a swarm of little one- and two-kerbal scooters whizzing around Minmus. Maybe a little army of scooter-kerbals will ride along with the next base.

I've tried building a suborbital guided missile, and I've had some success. But I'm trying to increase the impact speed. So far the best sea-level impact I can get seems to be about 1400m/s. If I try to use the engine to surpass that, the fairing overheats and explodes. And the heat shields are far too blunt. I was hoping to at least crack 1500m/s. Any tips on surviving atmospheric flight at those speeds?