Zeiss Ikon

You can also just click the "lights" action group button (right side of the altimeter display, top button of three) while EVA to toggle helmet lights. And yes, they most assuredly work; they cast a nice light that's not just good to see what you're doing while flying in shadow, but can give a sort of depth perception (because the light falls off quickly with distance -- ten meters and its dim, twenty meters it's almost gone). Handy for EVA maneuvering around an unlit/unpowered vessel.

I'll testify how easy it is to do this by accident. I ran three launches in my science game before I figured out why my own asparagus was acting like a big dumb booster.

This. This has been the spirit of EULAs since I got into computers in 1986 (and much of the software I bought then was used; EULAs at that time couldn't restrict "right of first sale" because copyright law at the time didn't allow doing so. "Treat it like a book" was the law). The legalese has gotten more and more and more restrictive over that time, but the EULA for KSP isn't any more restrictive than most, and significantly less so than that for, say, Photoshop (one of the most pirated software packages of the modern day). Squad/Take2 have already done the most important thing to protect against wholesale piracy: their software is affordable. Bottom line is, if you're not distributing copies or stealing the internal IP, a software publisher isn't going to go after you -- not if they have any sense, anyway. Trying to chase down the guy with copies on two machines that he doesn't/can't use at the same time is a massive waste of resources and has the potential to generate massively bad publicity. "Software giant sues Podunk man for accidentally installing "Generic Game" twice." This is not a headline any software company management wants to read.

One thing I noticed a few months ago is that it's quite easy to mess up putting six boosters around a same-size core on radial decouplers-- instead, getting (some of) the boosters stuck directly on the core tank. If that occurs, not only won't the fuel flow work the way you expect (it'll act like one big tank feeding all the engines under it), the boosters won't stage off when you fire the decouplers.

By the letter of a one-copy clause like the one quoted above, that's correct. Which is why they're very seldom actually enforced.

Okay, I'm going to ask a question along the lines of "did you put gas in the tank" -- please, don't take it personally, every one of us has forgotten parachutes, ladders, decouplers, and heat shields on multiple occasions. But: are your probe controller and reaction wheel both in the upper stage, or are one or both staging away with the booster?

It just occurred to me -- perhaps @T.C. is a troll. Look at the long, contentious thread this started...

For those who might get bogged down or whose eyes glaze over easily, here's the "one copy" clause extracted from the above post: Read literally (which is how courts usually do it), this says you may not have more than one operable copy of the software at any time (without paying for additional licenses). It also says you may not have a backup, may not keep the downloaded file after installing, and muddies the waters relative to whether you can actually legally install the software at all -- since the installer makes a copy of the contents of the downloaded file and doesn't simultaneously delete the original, you'd be in violation at least for as long as the installer runs and until you can delete the download. Which is exactly how most EULAs are written. In practice, I've never heard of anyone being persecuted for having multiple installs on a single computer or even on multiple computers all used by only a single person (desktop and laptop example from my previous post). Not to say it hasn't happened, I've just never heard of it happening. As I noted previously, clauses like this (ridiculous on the face, because impossible to comply and still use the software) are, in practice (as far as I know), used to pursue software pirates who make the licensed property available to others -- it's far easier to prove violation of the EULA's one-copy clause, than it is to prove someone uploaded the installer to The Pirate Bay or whatever dark web site has replaced it. Now, one way to make your install portable without violating this clause might be to install the software on a portable storage device (such as a thumb drive -- make frequent backups, if you can find a legal way to do so; thumb drive wearout is far less predictable and much less extended than SSD wearout). You have only one copy of the software, but it's in a form you can use one any one computer (at a time) wherever you might happen to be. I'm pretty sure this would not work for the Windows version (because installers almost always put files into the Windows folder tree), and virtually certain it would work for the Linux version (because installers virtually always install in a self-contained chunk to avoid issues with different Linux flavors). Can't say for certain what MacOS does, I've never been a Mac user. Sadly, installing to Dropbox would violate the letter of this clause, because Dropbox's installed software makes a copy of the Dropbox cloud storage on each local computer connected to a particular Dropbox account (for access time reasons, I presume). So, moving my desktop system's install to my Dropbox would amount to making a copy of that install on my laptop (but not on my phone or Android tablet; the Android app for Dropbox doesn't create a local mirror of the cloud), thus violating the "one copy" clause. Edit to add: I just noticed, however, that the EULA I quoted from probably isn't the one for KSP -- first, it references a company called Deported B.V., rather than either Squad or Take2, and second, it doesn't mention any Windows version newer than Win7 (or Linux in any flavor or version, but many EULAs ignore Linux even when the software has a Linux version).

First off, if your engines have gimbals, the fins are completely superfluous. I see you 're using a Reliant in the first stage, so you'll probably want some fins, as far back as possible, on that stage, but by the time the upper is on its own, the reaction wheel in your probe core ought to be sufficient. Additionally, you probably don't need fins that big or with control surfaces on them. If the Pug is based on the Terrier, it ought to have some gimbal, and the fins on the upper stage are counterproductive. A tendency to yaw to the left may be due to assymetry, either in mass distribution or external mounting (the radial parachutes produce significant side force if single mounted on a stage). If you're not getting to orbit with a vessel that has 10% or so delta-V margin, it's probably your launch profile. As I understand it, aero losses are significantly lower in 1.2.2 and 1.3 than in older versions post 1.0, so initiating gravity turn earlier than you remember may improve things. I've recently launched a couple vessels (my Explorer II and Explorer IIp -- see my "What Did You Do" posts from a week or so ago) with barely enough dV to orbit, and I found (with a 1.8 to 2.0 TWR) that it wasn't too early to start the gravity turn with a 5 or 10 degree tilt as early as 30 m/s (though that was with a vessel that had no gimbals in the booster and non-steerable fins, so it was locked hard on prograde as soon as it was moving well). With only the Mk. 1 command pod's reaction wheel, I found it worked very well to initiate maximum yaw eastward immediately on ignition, and hold that command all the way to MECO, or until the air thinned enough that the fins lost effectiveness. If you're getting an apoapsis higher 80 km before you circularize, you're probably turning over too late for a vessel with minimal dV.

Hmm. I read the title, and thought "rapidity". And no one else has mentioned it. Rapidity is similar to Lorentz factor, except that instead of being linear with all the relativistic dilations, it's linear with applied impulse. It's essentially "internally perceived velocity" in that, if you have a "torch" drive or other long-long-term constant boost system, and keep accelerating to the point where Newtonian physics would put your velocity near or above that of light, your rapidity will reflect the expected Newtonian value -- and can be used to calculate perceived trip times in the same way. Even better, rapidity is additive (at least in one dimension, which is usually what you care about for things like ship travel times). The rapidity of light is infinite. The math involved (which I don't really understand; my calculus is about like my Spanish -- it was never good, and that was a long time ago) is similar in complexity to getting Lorentz factor, but the result is a lot more intuitive. The units aren't those of velocity, but when your Lorentz factor is small, rapidity is proportional to velocity, diverging only when dilations start to become significant.

(career save) Okay, the previous headline about Val being out of fuel on the way back from the Mun was a little overblown. Well, all right, it was true, at the time, but after attempting "get out and push" (and finding that with a dead battery and no one/no probe core aboard to stabilize the craft, it was effectively impossible to do anything but induce and modify a tumble), I loaded a save from earlier in the mission, before doing most of the contract work (and long before reaching the Mun). Explorer III is a simple outgrowth of Explorer II, with three pairs of boosters instead of one, and the core upgraded to a Swivel liquid fuel engine, allowing deletion of the fins on the old version. The boosters were progressively reduced in thrust -- one pair at full, one pair at 60%, and the final pair at 40%. This gave plenty of thrust for liftoff, but kept the G load from getting too high as well as preventing excessive aero loads in the lower atmosphere (aka "the soup"). With this much booster thrust, the core Swivel could be thrust limited to 50% as well, ensuring it would burn through the entire booster burn and well beyond. The sharp-eyed will spot a pair of "Flea" solid boosters mounted to the transfer stage -- those, and the Hydraulic Detachment Manifolds they're attached by, are contract hardware; this launch carried four contracts: transmit or recover science from Kerbin orbit, test the Flea booster in orbit (160-170 km), and test the experimental HDM in orbit (220-230 km), as well as fly by the Mun. There was also rather a load of science gear -- a Science Jr., first time that experiment has been flown (for the "science from orbit" contract), a pair of goo canisters inside the storage bay, and a pair each of thermometers and barometers -- the latter to recover data from the new regimes this craft was to fly through. And she's off. The four throttled boosters give equivalent thrust of two at full power; that plus the two full thrust boosters and the half thrust Swivel make the craft quite spritely at launch. Even at near Max Q, the boosters slide cleanly away from the core when they're released. The assymetry of the layout after beginning to discard boosters leads to a small pitch moment that eventually turns into a little orbit inclination. The Mun is big enough and close enough it doesn't cause trouble, but upgrades will be needed before Kerbalkind can venture further out -- because everything else in the system will require a certain amount of control over orbit inclination, and at present it's hard to even detect at small values, never mind measure or compensate. G load drops off every time a booster pair burns out, then builds slowly as mass burns off. The thrust limits were chosen as much for timing as for G control, but you can bet Val enjoys not feeling like Jeb, Bill, and Bob are sitting on her chest at the peak of boost. Once the last of the boosters are gone and almost all of the atmosphere is below the vessel, and apoapsis is established above the Kerman line, Val turns ship from prograde to horizontal to build up orbital velocity without pushing her apoasis too high. Unfortunately, the still-inert Fleas are dead weight, and the core, which has been burning since launch, doesn't have enough delta-V left to leave the vessel in orbit with full transfer stage tanks. On the bright side, LKO has been referred to as "halfway to anywhere" (it really isn't, quite, but it's more than 80% of the way to the Mun in terms of delta-V). Even burning half the propellant in the transfer stage will leave enough to get to the Mun and back once the Flea test is complete and those boosters are staged away. Once in stable orbit, another little kick is all that's needed to raise apoapsis into the parameter range for the Flea test. Sorry, no photos of that test; it was short and I was a little busy. The Flea test (which fired both boosters) easily set up the parameters for the HDM test in a little higher orbit, but didn't push the vessel into anything like a Munar transfer. Still, once the boosters had been pushed away (always gratifying when experimental hardware works as advertised), it was a simple matter to burn the transfer engine long enough to raise apoapsis to the Mun's neighborhood. Fortunately, not only is the Mun big enough and close enough that a little orbit inclination won't keep you from your goal, it's also in an orbit that's easy to find with minimal technology. If you simply point prograde, wait until the Mun is dead ahead, and burn until your apoapsis is close to the Mun's orbit, you'll fall up to your new apoapsis ahead of the Mun, and then hang there (in the slowest part of your own orbit) while the Mun catches up. The tricky part is controlling your ejection vector after your swing past the Mun. The exact values are pure guesswork with the current technology, but there's a useful rule of thumb. If you set up your apoapsis above Mun's orbit, you'll swing behind and get a gravity boost, adding velocity and raising your periapsis (by thousands of kilometers, if it's a close pass). Set up to pass below Mun's orbit, on the other hand, and you'll swing in front, and Mun's gravity will slow you, dropping you directly into Kerbin The former condition will take a lot more delta-V (almost as much as the original Munar transfer) to turn into a reentry profile -- quite possibly more than you have, in a mission that, like this one, involved hauling a lot of dead weight into orbit. The latter requires only a tiny tweak to raise periapsis out of Kerbin's crust to an appropriate altitude -- that is to say, it's a free return orbit, though the return wouldn't be survivable without a small correction. On the advice of the big-brains back at the Center, Val left her orbit a little below the Mun's, and as predicted, the Mun's gravity collected her, slipped her past on the Kerbin side, and then ejected her. After subtracting the Mun's velocity, she came out almost dead in space at the Mun's distance. Getting home was assured; getting there alive and intact would still require a little effort. Despite her status as the most isolated Kerbal in history to date (the nearest other being roughly 11,000 km away on Kerbin's surface), and having a view no other Kerbal had ever had (the Mun from only a few hundred km), Val remembered to perform her science duties -- she observed one goo canister near Munar apoapsis, and logged one thermometer and one barometer reading as well. During the return voyage, once she was clear of the Mun's gravity, she observed her other goo canister, logged the second thermometer and barometer. Comparison of those readings with the ones within the Mun's sphere, and others from prior missions in Low Kerbin Orbit), will increase Kerbalkind's knowledge of space, at least in the general neighborhood of their homeworld. Once that was done, and the waiting as the vessel fell toward its meeting with Kerbin, it was time to get set up for her first atmosphere pass. There was reason to believe the materials experiment was less capable of withstanding thermal stresses than the rest of the vessel, so the reentry profile was chosen to go easy on that module. Accordingly, a two-pass reentry was chosen. The first pass had a high periapsis, and was used to lower the apoapsis (and hence the velocity of the second pass) as far as possible. In conjunction with that, the remaining propellant in the transfer stage was burned near periapsis, providing about as much braking as the high altitude amospheric pass. Once the stage was dry, Val discarded it in favor of the higher braking effect of the blunt heat shield -- but by then she was already climbing again, heading out on her orbit with another hour or two of waiting ahead. With the transfer stage gone, there's nothing to do but wait until it's time to point retrograde again for the landing reentry. Once again, no photos of that period; preservation of the materials experiment required maintaining a high roll rate throughout reentry, and there weren't enough fingers to go around for a time. Eventually, Val did succeed in bringing the entire vessel, intact, through the fiery reentry and -- with multiple parachutes installed -- to a very gentle splashdown. Including donations for several "world's first" achievements, and a science haul exceeding any prior mission in the program, the administration declared the mission an unqualified success, and immediately shelled out for more facility upgrades. Val will be the last Kerbal to fly to the Mun by the seat of her pants.

Virtually every EULA, everywhere, for everything prohibits multiple installs. You aren't allowed to install once on your laptop and once on your desktop machine, you aren't allowed even to have more than a single backup at any given time, and so forth. Passages like this are clearly intended to allow the rights holder (in this case, Take2, formerly Squad) to pursue folks who make and distribute copies for which the rights holder hasn't been paid -- and there have been court cases that invalidate the very idea of restricting backups. In between is the case of installing on your desktop machine and your laptop, so you can play more comfortably (and likely with more mods/higher frame rate) at home, but still play when you're on the road. The rights holder would like to be paid twice for this. If you treat software like music, the courts have said they don't have the right to demand multiple payment in this case -- if I buy a vinyl LP or a CD, I have the legal right (even under DMCA, as I understand it) to make copies on 8-track, cassette, or digital file (MP3 and such) to allow me to listen to music I've paid for in locations where it isn't practical to carry the original media and/or a player for it -- in other words, I've paid for the right to listen to the music, not solely for the recording material it's sold on. Years ago, American courts used a principal of "treat it like a book" for software -- allowing reselling used software, lending it, and so forth. Copyright law (in the United States) was changed to prohibit that, binding users to the EULA until or unless some clause in the EULA was invalidated (and the severability clause in standard EULAs maintains that in that case, the rest of the agreement remains in force). As things stand, if the EULA forbids multiple installs, you're in violation if you install on two machines -- even if you can't possibly play on both at once (technically not the case with KSP, because someone else could play on your laptop while you've got your head down over a new Jool station design on your desktop system). Even if it's multiple installs on the same machine, for instance, to run with different mod sets, or different versions, the EULA forbids. IMO, the likelihood of individual enforcement of this kind of clause is very slim -- in the end, it's an anti-piracy clause, and the main intent is to prevent you giving all your friends (including the tends of thousands on that torrent site you enjoy so much) copies of the software that haven't been paid for. The rights holder has little or nothing to gain by spending huge sums to try to get another $39.95 out of individual users. Just like Sony back in Napster days, their effort is spent on those who enable mass piracy, and the "single install" clause exists mainly so they don't have to provide "court case" level proof of a torrent upload (likely impossible) to take action against a pirate. Mind you, I could be wrong -- assess the risk for yourself. If you're risk-averse, pay for additional copies if you need to make multiple installs. If you're a believer in the inherent rightness of DMCA (with all its excesses) and ridiculously over-written EULAs, pay for additional copies. If you're an ordinary user who wants to play with different mod sets in different saves, or play on your laptop when you're out and your desktop when you're home, let your conscience be your guide.

(career game) Val flew around the moon -- but ran out of fuel before she could get home. Photos later, after attempting "get out and push" self-rescue.

Design time is a lot of the fun, at least for me. I could spend hours just trying to optimize stuff in VAB -- but then I have to fly the vessel to see how well I did. At present, I've taken on contracts to test a Flea SRB in orbit between 160 and 170 km, then test the Hydraulic Separation Manifold in orbit between (IIRC) 220 and 230 km. Guess how the Flea(s) will be mounted to the core? And I've also accepted the first "explore the Mun" contract, along with one to send or bring back scientific data from Kerbin orbit (and I've added an instrument I didn't have on previous orbital flights, so I should get usable data even if the goo, thermometer, and barometer readings are no longer of interest to anybody). I'm certain that with the right vessel, I can do all four of those on a single flight, as well as getting a bunch of donations for "world's firsts". Hopefully, I'll be able to afford to upgrade R&D and/or Tracking. There was another contract I was reminding myself to get, too (now that I've upgraded Mission Control, and can have up to seven active at once) -- I'll have to look when I'm back in game to remember which it was. Once Val is back from the Mun, there'll probably be more tourists to fly. A rocket that can fly around the Mun ought to be able to lift a Crew Cabin into orbit, right?

Even with Merlin engines throttling to 70% (a figure that, to my eye, looks more like "throttle back for Max-Q" than "throttle down to hover" -- though if you do it with one engine out of nine, you've effectively got around 8% total thrust), Space-X is essentially doing a one-engine (or, for at least one landing, the "maximum damage" flight, a three-engine) suicide burn. The only reason you really need any kind of throttling during a computer controlled thrust landing is to accommodate slightly variable ignition time -- if the motor lights fast, throttle back a little, but start the ignition sequence early enough you'll get down in one piece even with a maximum tolerance ignition delay. Otherwise, you'd always want to minimize the fuel you can't use boosting your upper stage and payload, by burning as late and as hard as possible (minimizes gravity loss, maximizes aerobraking effect by holding high airspeed, hence high drag force, as long as possible).

If they have 100% reliable timing on restarts, they could just do a suicide burn with all four engines. That actually uses less fuel than a less, um, vigorous deceleration, though it's much more stressful to watch... And three-around-one wouldn't be that wacky an engine layout, let them land on the center nozzle.

Oh, I agree, bewing. I did manage to combine Thumper engine testing (at launch site) with my "go to orbit" contract. Or was it the spacewalk in orbit? One of those, anyway. Now, since I've been flying tourists, I seem to have nothing but more tourism contracts. Might have to go find that "Flea booster in orbit" test to get the parts testing going again.

(career game) Yesterday, I flew the last of the suborbital-only tourist contracts. Three tourists made their journey into space atop Taxicab II. Taxicab II is a trivial upgrade to Taxicab I -- stretched crew cabin, increased delta-V in the upper stage. With the increasing mass of the upper stage and payload, however, it can no longer reach the Kerman line on boosters only; the pilot has to give a kick with the Thud engines to break 70 km. And with all the tourist demand switching over to orbital sightseeing, this is likely to be the last fight of the Explorer II derived Taxicab series. On the pad, with three tourists (and Jeb, who snuck into the empty passenger seat). Not sure what's wrong with the KMT clock -- MET works fine once I stage the launch, and that clock was showing Day 1 and several hours last session -- should be Day 2, early. Boosters away. Funny, with all the extra fins added to compensate for the foward fins (which exist to keep the crew cabin oriented before the main 'chutes open), the strap-ons no longer collide behind the vessel after they're decoupled they way they did on Explorer II series flights. Forgot to take photos during the "space" part of the flight, and was a little busy during reentry ensuring that braking was effective (as was a concern during design, the double crew cabin won't slow down enough on its own to open parachutes without shredding). As with Taxicab I, the tourists get their own, separate recovery, and Val gets a few minutes of quiet without the intercom blowing up every fifteen seconds with people asking where's the bathroom (there aren't any, the flight is less than fifteen minutes), where are the barf bags (it was in your hand, what did you do with it?), is this weightlessness (no, weightlessness will be that time when we're floating in our harnesses, this is still boost). Jeb, that old dog, managed to sit beside the lady tourist. You can bet he spent the whole flight seeming knowledgeable, pointing out the curve of Kerbin, explaining that this isn't really no gravity, we're just falling at exactly the same rate as the spaceship, and getting her hotel room number so he can debrief her after the recovery. And the tourists get a space-Kerbal style splashdown (yes, that's rear end first, remember those fins are at the nose end of the cabin section). Flight was longer than five minutes -- that timer restarted when the cabin was staged away from the upper stage and command pod following reentry. Now, it's time to start work on a craft that can carry tourists into orbit more efficiently than Explorer IIp (with its Stayputnik atop a Mk. 1 Command Pod).

(Career game) Today I accepted and fulfilled a couple tourism contracts. I'm still pretty early in the career; it's a little bit of a challenge to make orbit, still (requires careful pilotage, at least), and I don't have maneuver nodes; my only two pilots (so far) can only hold stable, prograde, or retrograde. The first contract I grabbed was an orbital VIP tourist; I modified my Explorer II (the craft that took Jeb and Val on their first orbital flights) to be remotely piloted -- deleted all the science and the service bay, changed from Mk. 16 to radial parachute(s), and installed a Stayputnik on the nose of the Mk. 1 Command Pod. The result was christened Explorer IIp (passenger version). Even without SAS capability, it was a breeze to pilot. The fins make it stable enough that Jeb's piloting technique (maximum yaw until the air's too thin for the fins to bite, wait for near apoapsis, and boost toward the horizon until AP and PE start to reverse. Check PE is high enough and AP not too high, adjust if needed. In this case, overcorrection led to running out of fuel just as the orbit was circularized with PE barely out of atmosphere, so control deorbited by waiting until the craft was a AP, pointed retrograde (manually, of course), and staged. The staging impulse lowered PE to about 60 km, which was low enough (with an AP around 100 km) to do the job. Taxicab I was created when I realized that two of the remaining tourism contracts were for suborbital flight -- one for two passengers, the other for three. I originally intended to make a remote piloted version of this craft for the three-passenger contract, but after flying it, decided I could easily get enough performance to carry a second crew cabin just by stretching the upper stage tank. And yes, those are basic fins attached upside down on the forward end of the passenger cabin. During reentry, the pilot waits until there's enough atmosphere for the fins to start working, then turns the craft sideways and stages away the cabin. The fins keep it heat shield forward during its reentry, and staging arms the radial parachute (hidden by a fin in this photo), which then automatically fires when it's low/slow enough. Yes, this vessel has flown. Jeb himself was in the command pod for the flight. Next time it's Val's turn. Taxicab II is more of the same -- a double crew cabin, doubled upper stage fuel capacity. Given the low cost, there may be a test launch to ensure the double crew cabin slows enough during reentry for the parachutes to deploy (approximately double sectional density means a significantly higher terminal velocity) -- but the VAB systems say it should still be stable on launch.

Yesterday, in my career game: Val got her turn to go to orbit in another Explorer II (same design Jeb had flown), and became the first Kerbal to do a spacewalk: went EVA in orbit, filed a report, and slipped back inside, without ever letting go of the ladder. Once she was back, I took a contract to fly a VIP tourist into orbit and bring him back safely. Halfway through rebuilding Explorer II for ground-controlled "spam in the can" flight, I discovered I have a Mk. 1 Passenger Cabin in inventory. Won't change the plans for the VIP -- passenger cabin is too heavy, where the Stayputnik that will actually be flying the vessel weighs less than the Service Bay and experiments I deleted for the passenger version, Explorer IIp. It does, however, explain why I'm getting all these tourist contracts, for two and three tourists at once. Guess I need to work on designing an orbital passenger flier. Fortunately, I got the VAB upgraded, so I can use more than 30 parts if needed... Pictures of Explorer IIp and the first space tourist flight upcoming; vessel isn't quite done yet, and hasn't flown.

Okay, I found the problem. First, as noted above, I hadn't discovered the "test" button on the engine's right-click menu. Second, examining the auto-save craft from the test flight, it appears I hadn't switched the Reliant to the required Swivel when I rebuilt Val's suborbital Explorer I to give the right performance. Reflight resulted in a successful test, between 61-65 km altitude, and between 410-510 m/s velocity. Modest payout, but enough to be worth doing.

(First career game, on my laptop) Last night, Jeb orbited Kerbin. It wasn't my intent to specifically emulate John Glenn, but danged if what was intended to be a longer mission didn't wind up ending at three orbits after a dead command pod battery cut short any attempts to transmit science and required waiting for the nozzle to be pointed the right way to deorbit (and charge the batteries enough to maintain control during descent). It started with the construction of Explorer II, a logical outgrowth of Val's Explorer I, which made the first sustained flight outside the atmosphere (a fifteen-plus minute jaunt literally halfway around Kerbin). Addition of the storage bay allowed mounting the goo canisters out of the plasma stream, to prevent the problem Val had with one burning off during reentry. There was some concern over whether the pod and bay combination would be stable during reentry. Jeb said it'd be fine. Engineers said it'd hopefully be fine. The core Thumper had a modified fuel grain, reducing thrust to 40% of original, while the strap-ons were unmodified. Several engineers voiced concern, saying the fins looked too small, but Jeb said they'd be fine -- three times the size of the basic fins on the first Jumping Flea, and much, much further from the command pod; they'd have far more effect, plenty to offset the extra booster mass. In the end, since it was Jeb's pale green body going in the cockpit, his opinion won out. The upper stage was identical to the one Val had flown, except for using newer, larger tanks and increasing fuel capacity by a third. The rocket was rolled out to the pad and Jeb climbed to the command pod. The recently upgraded pad now sports a blast deflector, coolant system (to protect the concrete), and fueling capability for liquid fuel vehicles. R&D hopes to come up with a practical method to stabilize a rocket on the pad in the near future, but for the moment, they still have to depend on designs that can balance on the nozzle bell. Fortunately, that includes nearly everything that will fly at all well without (recently developed, not yet fully tested) gimballed engines. Mission planning had emphasized a lesson learned from Val's Explorer I flight: that the aerodynamic stability of the vehicle would make it logy to turn with only the command pod's reaction wheel. Jeb had a simple solution for that "problem" -- put the controls at maximum yaw as soon as he was clear of ground obstacles, and leave them there. Slowly, slowly, the vehicle began to turn, pulling its velocity vector over with it, starting to build up the horizontal speed needed for orbit right from the beginning. The unmodified boosters burned out while the core Thumper still had more than half its fuel remaining. Jeb cut them loose and they separated cleanly, though aerodynamics pulled them together not far behind the nozzle, causing a spectacular explosion that startled the ground crew. When Jeb called in to report successful staging, they realized that it wasn't his vehicle that had exploded, and cheers went up before everyone went back to his job. Meanwhile, Jeb continued to command maximum yaw rate, still turning the nose over to push velocity toward the horizon, else he'd go too high, and too slow, to make a stable orbit. A couple kilometers higher, Tracking reported that Jeb's course looked nominal. Jeb's response was terse, as one might expect: "Continuing maximum yaw maneuver." Once the core Thumper had burned out, Jeb staged it away. By then, his altitude was high enough to immediately orient to the horizon, and wait for his vector marker to drop near his nose before starting the Reliant and burning until Tracking ordered cutoff. Orbit achieved! Periapsis about 86 km, apoapsis close to 108 km. Time to relax and do some science. The "new thing" for this flight, other than being able to stay in space for as long as needed or wanted, was a data link antenna. Jeb was to transmit the data from his goo, barometric, and thermometric experiments. Unfortunately, someone in Mission Planning had dropped a decimal somewhere (slide rules require manually tracking that stuff) -- before the first experiment transmission could complete, the command pod's internal battery was fully discharged -- also leaving Jeb without any maneuvering capability. Fortunately, his voice comm and parachute had their own, internal batteries, and the engine controls were fluidic. Solution was simple: wait for the proper vessel orientation, and fire the deorbit burn. The alternator in the engine would partially recharge the pod battery, even in a burn of a few seconds. They'd simply have to hope it was enough to maintain pointing until reentry forces could take over -- and then hope Jeb was right, that the pod and storage module assembly would be stable during reentry. So far, so good. Hurrah! Even Jeb looked relieved once the pod was deep enough into the atmosphere to confirm aerodynamic stability. There clearly wasn't enough battery power left to keep the heat shield forward if he'd been wrong. Even with that, Jeb looked a bit relieved when the parachute opened well clear of the mountain terrain. He was supposed to do a surface EVA and make use of the newly issued surface sample kit after landing, but the capsule tipped and rolled after landing, and continued to roll (without the external goo canisters to stabilize it, as had been the case on his last mission). Mission Control agreed with him that it would be too risky to leave the command pod on the steep slope -- not for fear of Jeb slipping, but out of concern that the capsule might roll away and leave him on foot, complicating the recovery process. It was enough that he had, in fact, orbited Kerbin, solved problems in space, maintained control of the vessel in prolonged weightlessness, and returned safely through the atmosphere. Proof positive that the new technology R&D had been pumping out did what it was supposed to do -- and also that Jebediah Kerman was a Bad-S.

Okay, we'll see for sure when I can repeat the launch (fortunately, my agency isn't down to its last fund, even after upgrading the VAB -- orbiting Jeb brought in a bunch o' dough). I suspect it was a case of not knowing I needed to find the "test" button in the right-click menu for the engine. I easily could have done; conditions were stable enough there was time to click a couple times (even with a J-mouse) and still be in parameters. I just didn't know I needed to do that. Previous contracts had been "haul" type -- 1.25 m decoupler, Mk. 16 parachute -- or the Hammer booster which was "test at launch site", and completed when I started the engine to launch. I already knew to avoid contracts with too-specific conditions, which includes most of the "explore Kerbin" family. Low payouts, low prestige, and a PITA to complete because they have to be a particular height and velocity over a specific biome.

I'm still pretty early in my first career game (been playing KSP for around 9 months, mostly in a science game, never done a career before). I just sent Jeb up for three orbits (a little challenge there, going to orbit with fewer than 30 parts), and after he landed, I accepted a contract to test a "Swivel" engine in flight above Kerbin -- 61-65 km altitude, 410-590 m/s, if I recall correctly. Okay, built a rocket (Thumper booster w/ fins, decoupler, "Swivel" engine, 400 tank, decoupler, Mk. 1 pod, Mk. 16 parachute) -- pretty basic stuff. Launched Val almost vertical, staged away the booster at burnout, waited. Apoapsis was going to be a little short, so I kicked a little with the Swivel. Made altitude going too fast, so turned tail first and burned to slow down, passed through the velocity range while well within the altitude range, had both parameters ticked green in the contract display before I shut down the engine and staged. Got back to splashdown, contract unfulfilled. What'd I miss?

I got a little time to play in my stock career game. Now that I know where to get contracts, I picked up a couple -- test a Mk. 16 parachute, and test an RT-18 Stack Decoupler, both in flight, with parameters compatible with the same flight. That's convenient, much more so than the level or specificity some of the "focused observation" contracts. The altitude/speed needed were a little high for a Jumping Flea, however, so I tried to grab the Hammer booster test contract as well -- and was disappointed to realize I needed upgrades to have more than two contracts open at once. Oh, well. Off to VAB, and the crew banged together a Hammer with three basic fins, decoupler, Mk. 1 pod, a couple goo canisters, and two each thermometers and barometers; the result was christened Hammer Flier. In went Jeb, and up, up, and away! A little tilt out to sea during boost, and the decoupler contract was completed before burnout. Near apoapsis, Jeb jettisoned the booster and reoriented the pod (as well as remembering to take some science readings). On the way back down, the pod nicely dropped into the Mk. 16 test parameters for speed and altitude, and it was a good day at KSC. The contracts more than paid for the cost of the booster, and all the pod components were recovered, so the funds balance went up. While the VAB crew were bodging up another Hammer Flier, I grabbed the RT-10 test contract, and Jeb took another flight, this time angling the boost the other way. R&D wasn't interested in goo readings from these flight parameters any more (they said something about orbit?), but were pretty happy to see more barometric and temperature readings over the mountains. Jeb even remembered to file a crew report and make an EVA report after landing (cleverly using the reaction wheel to upright the pod after the goo canisters stopped it rolling right down the valley). Even that single contract paid off with a modest profit. That provided enough funds to upgrade the Astronaut Complex (permitting hiring more Kerbals, when funds permit, as well as allowing Kerbals to plant flags) and the Launch Pad (which now ought to easily accommodate a vessel that will reach orbit) and still leave enough funds for the next vessel; also, enough science came out of the two missions to unlock still better engines and larger Lf/O tanks. There's a Flea SRB test contract open, but after that, it may be time to grab the "Go to Orbit" contract and let Jeb get his chance to really be a hero (after Val was the first to fly in space).