FezCool

Neat!

I was more referring to avoiding returning to Kerbin at night but thank you

After stranding Jeb and the crew on the Mun with an unfortunately designed SSTO and having to rescue them, today(yesterday) I designed a different SSTO that was actually able to make it the Mun and back. Due to my struggles with mk3 sstos I basically just decided to scrap everything about the previous design and start from scratch, the only major elements being kept being the payload(mk3 crew cabin), rapier engine cluster, and 4 nerva engines. I also changed the wings considering the Big S series seems to break off too easily. Only thing I forgot was a ladder so Jeb had to use RCS to get back to the craft. The TWR and gimbal must've been better than my previous ssto as it was able to take off from a flat surface pretty handily without needing a hill as a ramp like the previous craft. Reentry was pretty standard, I was a little worried about the wings being clipped off from aerodynamic force so I slowed down before making any maneuvers. Unfortunately we landed in the ocean so the ship discombobulated. Not really sure how to avoid this but I assume waiting for the Mun to be at a different spot could help avoid landing during night.

Neat! What's the twr if I might ask?

Today I tweaked my Hawk mk3 SSTO once again and sent Jeb, Val, Bob, and Bill up to test if it could land on the surface of the Mun. Flying was routine except for the predicted Mun encounter changing as I timewarped to the circularization maneuver node but irregardless the ship was able to successfully land on the surface. Unfortunately as I tried my initial ascent from the surface I clipped the engines on the ground and in my hubris reverted to a previous quicksave, meaning I couldn't revert the flight anymore. Unluckily while the plane had enough fuel to reorbit it did not have enough to return to Kerbin, and also likely not enough to rendezvous with the station. In order to rescue them I decided to leave them on the surface and use the Mun Shuttle I had docked to the station to pick them up and rendezvous, with a later craft to rendezvous with the station and take them to Kerbin. I experimented with KER's landing GUI but sadly undershot and had to spend more fuel to get to the plane. Since the shuttle was only at like half fuel that extra fuel expenditure left us with less deltaV than the Spaceplane, so it was decided to revert to a quicksave and send a different rescue craft. Except I kinda forgot that I quicksaved after deorbiting the lander so I was forced to try the landing again. This time went more successfully, although I was a little concerned we'd still be out of fuel for the rendezvous. Luckily I was overestimating the deltav needed to and we got there with 50 dv to spare. From there I sent dashing pilot Lando Kerman up in a more nimble SSTO to pick up the veteran Kerbals. Interestingly this ship had less DV and lower TWR(although I could be wrong my memory is fuzzy) than the stranded SSTO although it performed much better atmospherically. This one was a lot more fun to fly so I'll probably update it's design at some point. For some reason I don't have any pictures of the station but the pickup went smoothly and the spaceplane was able to land safely on the sunny side of Kerbin. Lando got out to investigate a tree seen on the descent.

How'd you get those camera shots?

Today I mostly fiddled with my interplanetary trajectories heading to Dres but as I did so time passed and my crew from Duna(Jebediah and the other veteran kerbals) arrived at Kerbin. Using quicksave I tried the reentry a couple times as it kept either exploding or not slowing down enough to be captured. Eventually I had a run in which the lower part of the craft was destroyed but the Kerbals landed safely in (mostly) one piece. After that I flew Jeb, Bob, and Bill on a short munar journey to test the reentry limits of my currently in use reentry vehicle just incase something goes horribly wrong in the future.

The fuel wasn't really that big of a deal as I only had one other craft docked that actually used fuel, I'm just mentioning it for future reference. With the solar panel orientation originally I had the station placed in normal(?) orientation and rotated so the solar panels would always face the sun, but I assume the many dockings have changed that orientation. Anyways as for what I did. Yesterday I designed a space station for my Dres expedition. I wanted it to be ambitious so I came up with this long design with a science lab and gravity ring. Eventually to save weight(and because I didn't want it to be too long) I cut down on those two aspects for a more compact design(which was still larger than my other stations). I sent both modules up into orbit and finished by docking a refinery module to the end along with a detachable booster that would fly the station to it's destination. Today I sent another similarly sized booster to dock with the station to refuel and transfer an engineer and scientist to the station. Upon rendezvous I realized I had made a crucial error; the jumbo docking ports were attached backwards! The solution I hastily came up with was to undock the booster, dock it to the fuel tanker, and then redock after refueling. Unfortunately I had made an oversight to the detachable booster idea as it had no battery beyond the probe core and no way to resupply that battery. So thusly the solution was just to use the tanker as our booster as it was basically identical anyways besides the added batteries and crew module. After this ordeal I experimented with the EVA construction tool for the first time and reattached the docking ports in proper orientation. I was really glad this worked as I had thought it might've had a size or part requirement but it turned out splendidly. After this we sent them on their merry way to the forgotten planet. Besides that I also built a Dres surface base which was basically just an extension of my previous Duna outpost but with additional crew containers. I attached my trusted buggy to the ship and then launched it where it waits in orbit as I haven't figured out the maneuver yet and had to cut my time short to do something else. Don't have any pictures unfortunately.

Looks sick! I can never get spaceplanes of those size to work Anyways for what I did; yesterday I did a lot of stuff but the clock struck midnight before I could post so I will just recount them here along with what I have done today. The first thing I did was orbit my mining ship from the surface of the Mun and dock it to the station to test out the new refinery module I added. Unfortunately I made a bit of a mistake when activating the refinery as the mining ship being still docked to the station meant it was also getting refueled, which while not the end of the world was not my intention as I had enough DV to land and refuel. Among my other Munar exploits I revisted the Mun Buggy I had on the surface and took Nelzor for a little drive. The buggy works surprisingly well despite the Mun's lower gravity, and the flat planes looked like a nice place to set up a potential surface base until I checked my scansat and found the place had no ore. There is a similar flat section to the west of the buggy but I do not have the patience to drive all the way over there. In interplanetary exploits I had the sudden urge to go to Moho. I'm not sure why as I think the launch window was not open but I just decided to go regardless. To do so I sent a scansat up first to scout the planet and test how I would be doing the orbits. Then I used the same Spaceship and rocket I used on my Eeloo mission as it has way too much delta-v so the mission would be guaranteed to return home. While the Moho crew were speeding on to Moho(considering they would be encountering closer to periapsis) I realized I had a Dres launch window coming up. I was a little inspired by a Dres base that I had seen on the KSP reddit to build my own system around Dres, however I was not really in the mood to design such an endeavor so I just did the same routine I had done for Moho where I launched a Scansat to scout and my mothership to land on the planet. This time I just left it in a parking orbit around Kerbin and used the maneuver node planner to burn in 15 days. I should really name this thing someday. My Moho crew arrived to the planet a lot faster than I expected. Also the apogee was about 40km higher than it was the last time I fiddled with it which was weird but not the end of the world. After a long circularization burn I decided to just go right ahead and land on the surface. For some reason my computer crashed froze after the landing as I tried to manually save and when I booted up the game after a restart the lander was saved as on a suborbital trajectory. I quickly took control of it and ended up crashing at 40 m/s which for some reason just bounced the craft wildly from which point I was able to land unharmed. I didn't really wanna spend too much time on the surface as we hadn't brought any surface equipment or rovers with us so we quickly orbited and docked with the mothership. I was a little worried it wouldn't dock as the lander only had 2350m/s dv initially and 300 left after orbiting but luckily the orbital transfer burns were really light so I had no need to worry. Now they're just waiting for their transfer window in 323 days.

Today I rethunk my approach to refueling via ore mining by designing a spacestation module to do refinery instead of doing trips between the surface and orbital stations with a mining ship. After testing it's refueling capabilities on the launchpad I sent it to my Mun Spacestation.

After a long hiatus from the game I got the motivation to come back. To my surprise my save file was still in tact despite getting a new computer, so I spent a good part of yesterday fixing orbital correction burns for my interplanetary spacecrafts. Today I tested out a redesigned variant of my Eagle SSTO. I had this issue where the wings kept getting ripped off as I was turning and I was gently informed that you're not supposed to make supersonic turns at low atmosphere, so I tried a different approach to the ascent profile where I just aimed it up 15 degrees and let it coast. Unfortunately as a mk3 spaceplane with 6 rapiers it doesn't have a lot of airbreathing thrust so a lot of oxidizer was used to get into orbit. Upon entering orbit I found I had a good 3500 m/s dv on the craft without any payload, which I'm pretty sure is less than my previous iteration but whatever. Upon deorbit and landing a familiar issue that I've encountered with mk3 sstos occurred; the fuel wasn't completely empty so the center of mass was behind the center of lift! Luckily I was pretty high up so I quickly shifted a bunch of fuel upwards. I also failed somewhat at landing at the KSC so I had to use the engines to fly to the desert. This thing flies like a brick but other than the brakes not braking enough the landing went well. The other thing I did was send my Mining Ship to the Mun to test out it's capabilities in hopes that the one I sent to the Jool system will perform well. The thing only had 1.4k dv after refueling and stocking up on ore so I'm not sure if I was successful on that front. There was also a small crater feature nearby that I assumed to be an anomaly from the Scan Sat's "?" reading, landed a bit far away but cool.

Darn that's pretty cool!

After spending a while in deep space I decided to take some time off during the 4 year gap until the Jool Expedition arrives and send a rover to the moon for a nice little road trip. Nelzor has some fun with the Mun's surface features I also decided to test out the desert runway and noticed something sus...

I noticed that I had an Eeloo Transfer window open so I merged an unused mothership design with a simple lander and put it on a giant rocket that is way too big in my opinion. I I flew it out and messed around way too long with Maneuver nodes only to kinda give up and just do a correction burn at our Sun DN. I also had a bunch of my Joolbound spacecraft correction burns come up but I didn't take pictures of that.

Out of curiosity what planet is this?