Cavscout74

Did a little work in my Out of the Sands career - Sent some fresh snacks to my Minmus station. The docking went well, as did the fuel & snack transfer. But when it was time for my engineer to transfer the empty snack cans from the supply ship to the empty mount on the station, he dropped one, which went spinning off into space. It was of course the fourth & final one, and the engineer was low of fuel so I just used the empty supply ship to nudge it into a suborbital trajectory Then I tested an experimental reusable 3.75m launcher. Things went mostly good - the payload was a bit too heavy to make orbit (I would have been ~50 m/s short) so the dummy payload got staged prior to orbital insertion. Then the deorbit burn was just a tiny bit too late - I overshot KSC and landed in the water 8km from the pad. Surprisingly, nothing broke during the water landing so I still got almost full funds back.

The last numbers I looked at showed the starting area of Covid-19 (Wuhan, China) had ~67000 cases. Despite this running basically unchecked there for at least a month, that works out to just ~0.6% of the population of Wuhan (~11 million) being infected. Actual numbers are certainly higher since not everyone getting it is getting sick enough to seek medical attention, but I doubt it's higher by more than 10x. I don't think this needs to be ignored - that would be flat out dumb - but the level of hysteria I see is way out of line with the severity of the outbreak. Several years ago, the largest ebola outbreak ever occurred, but here in the US people were called racist and any other insult for suggesting travel restrictions to/from areas of the outbreak. Despite the nearly 50% mortality rate of that disease. Note: I can't find where I got that 67000 cases number now, but it is what I remember seeing a day or two ago. If someone has better numbers, feel free to correct me.

Normally parts on the same vessel don't interact with each other - like a hinged part can be rotated through the rest of the vessel without interacting. By selecting that on, the hinged part would hit the other part of the vessel and stop. Another example would be gears - previously, they had to be decoupled to interact with each other. Now you can have gears that drive other gears on the same vessel. Somebody posted a video last week IIRC showing a 5 speed plus reverse transmission he made that drove a prop that was pretty impressive

Did you expand it? The lab, greenhouse and 4-kerbal crew module all need to be expanded before they can have crew transferred in or perform any of their functions

You are probably going to have plenty of company - my laptop is nearly 5 years old. It was pretty good five years ago, but its showing its age. It might still run KSP2, but I'm not holding my breath that it will run it better than KSP1. I've seen a few others mention being in similar situations on here. I haven't actually upgraded to 1.9 yet, but my 1.8.1 game definitely runs smoother than anything from 1.4 thru 1.7.3 And there isn't likely to be a replacement laptop in the near future - I mean, I had to go out and buy three thousand rolls of toilet paper and 27 cases of hand sanitizer, so I'm a little short of cash right now.

The last two days, I've not had any of my screenshots show up - first in my 1.8.1 career install yesterday, then today in my JNSQ install. Then I realized (after exiting JNSQ to discover no screenshots) that my F1 key was stuck & when I tapped it for a screenshot it wasn't hard enough to force it down. Grrr. Lost out on some new craft launches in both my career save & the JNSQ test install - I added TacLS for the first time, and had a very scenic launch to put a Mk 1-3 pod into LKO with over 1800 m/s dV and ~28 days worth of life support (limited by food, water was good for ~40 days, and oxygen for 90, although the fuel cell draws from the same oxygen supply).

It helps to have more info as atmosphere & gravity make a big difference, but as a general rule having the center of mass as low as possible will help keep them from flipping. Also, wider rovers are better at not flipping.

In the part window for the fairings, there is an option "Enable interstage nodes" or something like that. Turn it on to stack multiple items inside the fairing.

It would be SOOO nice in stock. Currently, this is the primary thing I use TweakScale for - fine tuning landing gear. Typically, I'm only using a range of 90% to 110% scale to get my aircraft to sit just right.

I don't know about 1.9+ but in previous versions the "disable staging" option doesn't even work on the pods - just fixing that would make a huge difference. I've had to launch rescue missions after a staging accident left a lander crew sitting in their pod on the surface next to the rest of the lander.

Finally ended the fourth year in my Out of the Sands career - full details here Most of the highlights have already been posted the last few days, but the probe fly-by's of all the Joolian moons was the biggest success I also upgraded my Falcon spaceplane, replacing the Panther with a Whiplash and adding a little extra fuel And finally got around to sending a greenhouse to my Minmus station

Update 05:005 Time Marches On Manned Launches: KSC Gi MiL6-5 04:408 - The newest kerbonaut Samantha and a group of 5 tourists to Minmus & back, with a "quick" orbit of Mun (for 5 days) thrown in for good measure. Landed on Minmus on 04:422 and returned safely to Kerbin on 05:005. Unmanned Launches: DSC GiH Bop Lander & Relay Mk 1v 04:266 - A new design inspired by the smaller Sojourner-Surveyor design. Built with Jool in mind, it boasts a 50G relay antenna and NERV engine with mixed solar & RTG power. The main bus - upon arrival at the destination - deploys the lander, then remains in orbit to provide a relay back to Kerbin and a full science suite rather than trying to build two smaller craft carried by a disposable bus like the previous Sojourner-Surveyor. Jool transfer was performed on 04:315 and the probe exited Kerbin's SoI on 04:417. Course correction planned for 05:135 KSC GiH Pol Lander & Relay Mk 1v 04:268 - Second launch of the new design, this one destined for Pol orbit. Jool transfer completed on 04:318, departed Kerbin's SoI on 04:319. Course correction planned for 05:185. Due to a glitch in the probe core, the transfer maneuver was delayed in mid-burn after a staging failure (aka I was distracted & forgot to stage for over 2 minutes). The tracking station indicates that while the craft will still reach Jool, it will arrive significantly later than the other craft from this transfer window. DSC GiH Val L&R Mk1v 04:283 - Third launch of the new combination design, intended for use on Val. Jool transfer performed on 04:317, departed Kerbin's SoI on 04:318. Course correction planned for 05:120. This image could be from either of the 3 Lander & Relay craft as they are all identical: KSC GiH Laythe Ocean Explorer 04:298 - Underwater exploration craft for Laythe's oceans. Transfer completed on 04:316, departed Kerbin's SoI on 04:318 . Course correction planned for 05:127. DSC SG Grav-Racer 04:421 - With the new Graviolli Detector available, a special probe was built to carry one around Kerbin orbit, then out to Mun and Minmus then return. Rather than carry the extra batteries to support transmitting data back, all data was saved in the Experiment Return Unit. After scanning low & high Kerbin orbit, Grav-Racer transfered to the Mun, arriving in high Mun orbit on 04:422. Transfered to Minmus on 05:001. Expected to arrive in Minmus orbit on 05:010 KSC GiH Minmus Station Greenhouse Wing 05:004 - Launch of a Greenhouse addition to Minmus Station to experiment with snack production away from Kerbin. Expected to arrived at Minmus on 05:013. Aircraft: The Falcon spaceplane CS-01A-02264 was converted to a "B" model with a new Whiplash turbo-ramjet in place of the Panther. The conversion only took 2 days and CS-01B-02264 was taken up for a test flight to orbit & back by Jeb on 04:395. He overshot KSC, but high-altitude (started at 26km) Split-S brought him back to a safe landing. Debris: None Ongoing Missions: Chadney Kermin Memorial Station - Uncrewed Minmus Station - Third crew arrived in STV-5-1 04:137. Buffalo-Minmus Heavy Rover - On standby at Lancer-Minmus SBX Lancer-Minmus SBX - First crew arrived 04:128. Departed on 04:328, after 200 days on the surface of Minmus. The made a short detour in Minmus orbit to pick up pilot Samantha Kerbin from her disabled pod. After the rescue, they burned for home after one more orbit. The crew splashed down safely on 04:337. Rendezvous with Samantha's pod after launching from the SBX Dres Surveyor - Entered Dres' SoI on 04:281, and safely landed in the lowlands on 04:282. Images returned by the onboard camera show a gray landscape, similar to the Mun. Pioneer-Jool - Fly-by of Tylo performed 04:308, resulting in Jool capture leading straight to a Laythe flyby. That was unfortunately on the night side of the moon, but a short course correction led from Laythe to a Vall fly-by on 04:310. Some more substantial maneuvers a few days later led to a Bop fly-by on 04:330. After Bop, a plane change followed by a course correction set up a Pol fly-by on 04:356. A course correction during the Pol fly-by sent the probe on a final Tylo intercept, where it established a highly elliptical, 75* inclined orbit to provide relay functions for the next wave of Jool probes. Jool Large Relay 1 - Arrival in Jool's SoI expected on 06:114 Laythe Pancake Lander - Expected to arrive in Jool's SoI on 06:137 Jool Voyager - Arrival in Jool's SoI expected on 06:145 Jooldiver - Expected to arrive in Jool's SoI on 06:148 Jool Large Relay 2 - Arrival in Jool's SoI expected on 06:157 Laythe Glide-Rover - Expected to arrive in Jool's SoI on 06:222. Eeloo Voyager - Arrival in Eeloo's SoI expected on 07:023. Eeloo Landercan - Eeloo intercept expected on 07:042. Other: Level 3 upgrade to the R&D center completed on 04:393. With over 2800 accumulated science, there was a rush of advancements made possible by the upgraded R&D Center including the new science experiments, ISRU, 3.75m engines & fuel tanks and hypersonic flight. This concludes the fourth year of Out of the Sands. This year had only 10 manned and 12 unmanned rocket launches, plus a single flight of the improved Falcon B spaceplane. All launches were successful. Four of the launches were probes on interplanetary journeys. The biggest event of the year was the arrival of Pioneer-Jool with fly-by's of all the Joolian moons. Plans for the upcoming year include a manned mission to Duna, with a transfer window near the end of the year - and/or a manned mission to Eve orbit, which would launch much sooner.

Continued progress on my career: Pioneer-Jool finished fly-by's of all the Joolian moons, then set up a 75* inclined elliptical orbit around Tylo to act as a relay until better probes arrive My third "flight" of Jool probes departed Kerbin for the long trip, pictured here is my Laythe Ocean Observer departing And also brought Jeb, Kelrik & Ambera home from their 200-day surface test on Minmus. A Minmus rescue contract popped up just before they departed and since they had an extra seat, Jeb insisted on stopping to help. It looks kinda low, but I had at nearly 4km clearance above the hills. I also finally finished the R&D level 3 upgrade and the 2800 saved up science points resulted in some very rapid scientific advancements - 3.75 engines & tanks, ISRU & Graviolli detectors, specialized electrics & hypersonic aerodynamics.

I decided to make some progress in my stock career after neglecting it for JNSQ testing. My Dres Surveyor lander finally arrived and set down safely in the lowlands, sending back images of grayness: Got another combination relay & lander into LKO for the upcoming Jool transfer, this one headed for Val Another new addition to the third flight of Jool exploration craft is the Laythe Ocean Explorer 1, a torpedo-based underwater exploration craft. No images of this one - the fairing stays on till Laythe entry, so not much to see yet. The highlight of my session was my Jool-Pioneer finally reaching Tylo for a fly-by, followed by fly-by's of Laythe and Val, then getting set up for a Bop fly-by, which should be in about 2 weeks. There should be plenty of fuel in the NERV stage to set up a Pol fly-by after Bop, then establish orbit somewhere. Both Laythe & Vall occurred on the night side, so there wasn't much to see unfortunately.

I haven't used it, so I can't give any real advice on the mod, but this is probably your best bet: It's labeled as only 1.6.x compatible but the last few pages on the topic seem to indicate its working in current versions as long as the dependencies are updated.

Typically I look for locations with at least a 10% ore concentration. I don't use scansat, but you should be able to use the stock surface scanning module to tell you the exact concentration where you are at. A 1% concentration will be extremely slow to mine. The ore tanks aren't filling because the convert-o-tron is using the ore faster than it's being mined - which is pretty typical even on better ore concentrations. Also, engineers speed up mining & ore processing (at the cost of increased power drain & heat production)

A lot will depend on your actual spaceplane design, but if you are purely gliding its almost always going to be better to have a little too much airspeed until you're at the runway. At that point, airbrakes and/or drogues can shed the excess.

I've encountered that in 1.8.1, most of the Kerbin orbits are well beyond Kerbin and the Eve contracts are requiring orbits closer to what were previously Kerbin contracts.

I've played every version to some degree since 1.3.1, hoping that we'll get a good stopping place that I won't bother updating again. And 1.8.1 was so close - it certainly ran much smoother for me than anything since 1.3.1. My usual strategy for updates is keep playing my mod game while waiting for mod updates, but still updating the steam install right after release so I can play with it a bit to see what's changed. When 1.9 dropped, I saw new bug complaints before I saw the message that 1.9 was out, so I actually haven't bothered this time. I'll probably update to 1.9.1 this weekend and see if it wants to behave. For now I'm pretty content with 1.8.1, running both a 20% science rewards career (shameless plug) and have started messing with JNSQ for a possible new career that has me relearning how to do pretty much everything.

More JNSQ missions today. My Minmus ASR (Automated Sample Return) arrived at Minmus for its science gathering mission. A few days behind was a crewed landing mission - using Jeb & Bill again, to get them their 2nd star. Finally managed a survivable reentry on the first pass through the atmosphere with the return capsule I upgraded the Girrok launcher used for the Mun/Minmus-range MPV, replacing 8 Shrimp SRB's with a pair of Kickback's. This puts the MPV in a 125km orbit with over 1000m/s remaining in the second stage, allowing it to handle most of the transfer before the MPV's Terrier engine has to take over. After reaching orbit & rendezvousing with the MiL-2 lander, Bill used KAS fuel hoses to refill the MPV before he & Jeb boarded the lander for the trip to the surface Bill planting the first Minmus flag Ascent stage leaving the landing site behind After transferring back to the MPV, they headed for home as well Much to my surprise, I was able to get the MPV to reenter on the first pass as well - the refill from the lander helped, allowing a significant amount of Jeb to shed a significant amount of velocity & just after entering the atmosphere. Pictured here just after jettisoning the orbital stage, with pieces of it exploding in the heat The heat shield did its job, and the crew passed through reentry safely, landing in the desert a few hundred km west of the Desert space center.

I used to use them more when I was newer, but mostly just use my own now. I still download craft I find interesting, but often just for a quite hop to test them out and/or reverse engineer. @XLjedi's Star Ranger was used for my very first trip to Jool, but it was modified, replacing the NERV with a tail docking port & RCS so it became the "bridge" of a much larger ship, then could undock to land. The ship had a separate mining lander & fuel tanker as well, but the modified Star Ranger kept its ISRU setup for self-fueling. It was also my first time blowing a tire on landing but not destroying the craft - on my first Laythe landing. That remains my biggest use of a downloaded design on a mission - which included stops at Minmus, Eve (orbit only, plus my first Gilly landing), Duna & Ike, Jool (with my first landings on Laythe, Vall, Bop & Pol). A modded version of his Star Ranger B was also my primary spaceplane for a long time, in two variants - the "regular" version and a crew ferry version with an inline cockpit & shielded docking port in the nose.

Made some more progress in JNSQ today. First up was launching a small space station in LKO. It's basically worthless as the science lab wasn't unlocked yet. Then my automated Mun sample return mission arrived and landed in Mun's midlands. After gathering all available science, the return probe ejected & returned to Mun orbit then home to Kerbin I'm getting better - only took a single braking pass, then completed reentry on the second orbit Shortly after the sample return splashed down, my Minmus probe arrived and entered orbit Finally, I built & launched an interplanetary probe. This one was just to see what I might be able to do with just chemical rockets. The only transfer window that is feasible and less than several months away is Eeloo, departing in just 9 days. The first stage core and all 4 asparagus boosters are hydrolox-fueled. There are also 8 Shrimp SRB's to help it off the pad. This thing was big enough I needed a 1000kN Boar engine for the second stage to keep acceleration above 1g. That got the probe & transfer stage almost to orbit, just needing a few dozen m/s from the transfer stage to enter a 150km circular orbit. The transfer stage features a Schnauzer engine (Restock+) with a central X200-32 tank, then a pair of FL-TX1800 drop tanks with fueled aerodynamic domes top & bottom. The drop tanks provide the first 2200 m/s, with another 5600 from the core, then about 400 from the probe itself. At full fuel, the Schnauzer can only manage about 0.24g acceleration. The Outrider should be able to get to a stable orbit for any destination out to Hamek (except Jool & Moho) without gravity assists. Whether or not it can maintain communications that far out is just a guess at this point - I only have the RA-15 unlocked so far. I'm starting to make some good progress in this larger system, but I'm also really missing some mods I usually use - MOLE being one of the big ones, with its early career 1.875m station parts I could've built a useful station rather than something just for show.

Someone upvoted it (the up arrow on the upper left side) as a good answer

Look in the "Gamedata/Squad/Contracts/Contracts.cfg" and there is a line "AverageAvailableContracts = ##" You can edit that value (or write a MM patch) to increase it. 20-25 is usually a good figure

More JNSQ science gathering. My Mun explorers finally landed back on Kerbin, after a total of about 10 braking passes into the upper atmosphere before the final reentry. All the ablator was gone well before the final reentry, but the heatshield held up, allowing Jeb & Bill to splashdown safely Last sunrise before reentry Through the worst of it Then I launched an automated science return craft to Mun. It's a little backwards since I'm using the Probes Before Crew tech tree. Currently en route. I only took a single image at the beginning of its second stage burn. This one actually took two tries - I mistakenly added the transfer stage dV to the launch dV, leaving me nearly 1000 m/s short for the mission, so some rebuilding was in order. Then I sent a relay/science satellite to Minmus, currently en route. Also only a single image taken, shortly after launch. The desert space center sure looks different!! Finally, launched another science/relay satellite into polar orbit - essentially the same as the Minmus relay, just with a few different science experiments on board. First sunrise with the aurora visible below Coasting to Ap Mission complete - in a 500 x 850km polar orbit