Cavscout74

Dropped a Probes-Plus lander near Mun's north pole & caught a nice shot of Kerbin & the sun rising over the mountains:

In a new hard career in 1.3.1 (waiting on mod updates), my intrepid engineer Kelrik Kerman just earned his keep. A 4-seat Mun crew training lander was launched with a significant oversight – total lack of parachutes for the return leg. I considered just rendezvousing some form of crew reentry vehicle but decided instead of modify my Titan OTV-4 (Orbital Tourist Vehicle) into a 2-seater with KIS storage for chutes & tools. Other than launching at just about the worst time for a rendezvous, Kelrik was able to EVA over & successfully attach all the chutes, then return to his own ship for reentry, followed by a landing next to the KSC runway. The Mun lander followed on the next orbit and while nowhere near as precise, splashed down safely ~170km east of KSC. Apparently the mission didn’t go unnoticed as I was offered my first orbital rescue contract upon returning to KSC.

Messed with 1.4 a very little - the new command pod looks pretty nice, and I had fun splatting Jeb against the side of the VAB trying out the parachutes. The new decouplers are nice compared to what we had, but the black & white texture on the 2.5m parts doesn't look right at all. Then I went back to my 1.3.1 backup & launched a fleet of probes to Jool then got my Eve explorers started back home finally.

On an orbital mission to Eve, my engineer Kelrik Kerman got bored & needed to stretch his legs while on a quick side trip to Gilly & jumped to the surface to plant a flag. First flag outside of Kerbin SoI in this career. Jeb chewed him out after they rendezvoused back in orbit. Pics didn't turn out very good - and I totally forgot to snap one with the flag. Now they just have another year on the transfer window. I did get their ship partially refueled with a tanker probe I sent a few days after the original launches when I realized the crewed ship had plenty of dV to get to Eve but was gonna be substantially short to get home. But even that was marginal - the probe barely had enough fuel to transfer by the time it got into orbit. The fumes left in the tank were only enough to get Pe down to ~150km, had to use the RCS (and ~90% of the RCS fuel) to drop the empty tanker probe low enough to burn up in Eve's atmosphere.

Went back to my old career & launched my intrepid Laythe explorers back to Kerbin. Totally forgot I hadn't had them fly by or orbit ANY other moons, so no extra xp for this crew. Then jumped back to my newest career & launched my new version of a combined remote lander & relay. The original dropped a small relay sat in orbit, then took the entire transfer stage & lander out of orbit, dumping the transfer stage on the way down. Recently I had the idea - why waste the transfer stage, just use it as the orbital relay, so I came up with this: The vacuum variant dumps the aerodynamic nose & chutes for another fuel tank.

Last night I managed to get my new jet tweaked into being flyable - just needed to nudge the CoM forward a bit and Jeb stopped having to swim back to KSC every flight. Was very easy since the engine mount had oxidizer in it that I hadn't even realized, so dumping that did most of the CoM move I needed. I may make a few more tweaks, but pretty happy with it right now. I did keep a drag chute just for good measure:

Managed to get my experimental Moho NERV probe into orbit of Moho for a bundle of low & high orbit science today. I also - due to one lonely tourist who just wanted to go to orbit - launched & recovered my sounding rocket STTO (Single Tourist To Orbit), consisting of a sounding rocket I used for several early launches, a 1.25m bay, tweak-scaled inflatable heat shield & single external seat in the bay, plus probe core. I even remembered the parachutes. Moho Probe in orbit: Actually had >700 m/s dV remaining. STTO in LKO: Yes it was horribly ungainly & generally a bad idea. It was also very cheap & most importantly amusing STTO after staging the sounding rocket & deploying heat shield:

Eventually you get them around the sun & other planets & moons once you've been to them as well. The few I've taken around the sun have all been in orbits lower then Moho, so dV requirements are substantial - I'm sure higher orbits are possible, but I've not gotten any & I quit taking the contracts since it doesn't show the orbit before you accept.

It's sinking so the game considers it still moving & therefore can't be recovered

I did something that I haven't done in a while - tried to build an jet fighter. And by some miracle of collision forces, I managed NOT to kill Jeb 4 times in a row in my speeding arrow of destruction. It does go pretty fast - I cut the afterburners on the twin Panthers when they started to overheat at 940 m/s at ~1000m altitude. It's also fairly stable going straight. Try anything but go straight and it snaps into a flat spin, flames out one (never both) engines so spin rate gets worse, then pancakes into the ocean. I'm sure I can get it adjusted to fly a lot better, I just didn't have the time this morning & I felt Jeb's luck was running short after 4 unintended splashdowns. Perhaps a probe core might be in order until I get the controls & CoM/CoL worked out better - or at least a cockpit decoupler & chute. That is a really nice looking plane you've got going there, are you planning on posting it on Kerbalx?

On a fairly new career, I discovered that the Pancake engine from SXT mod does indeed live up to its in-game description of being very rugged. I had a new 4-seat tourist/training lander capable of Mun & Minmus landings without refueling. I was taking it out for a test run & misjudged my burn time for the Mun landing. I slammed down pretty hard & from past experience if it had been a Poodle, I would've needed a rescue mission. I'm still not sure how I didn't break a landing leg. Instead I got 4 fresh recruits safely back to KSC with a little fuel to spare so hurray for the Pancake! I also got a conveniently timed contract to test a NERV in Minmus orbit just a week before the first Duna transfer window. That Duna fly-by & return contract now has a more comfortable 5900 dV with the experimental NERV rather than the 3k or so I would've had with chemical rocket. AND with the Moho window a few weeks later, I have a Moho orbit capable probe instead of the impactor I was planning. Guess I should do the actual contract now, also.

My most recent facepalm-worthy moment was this morning while attempting to test SXT airbags on the Mun Ascent module on Kerbin. I used multiple sepratrons to fling it up and away from the descent module, after which it was supposed to deploy airbags & drogue chutes. First the whole thing went sideways, then there was a series of explosions when I attempted to stage the bags & drogues. Next attempted to stage the main chutes but was WAY too low since the launch was sideways. The ascent module blew up, leaving behind a pile of parachute mounts. RIP Edsted Kerman, my first casualty on this career. He was also my only pilot so far other than Val & Jeb who I'm trying hard not to kill. His brother Tedsted is pretty mad at me too. Worst facepalm remains the accidental self-destruct of a full 8-seat tourist rocket on the pad due to a mis-staged self destruct charge.

My first sandbox spaceplane I'm pretty sure bounced when it went sideways on the runway before coming apart, so 1-2m maybe

Successfully returned my roverless explorers to Laythe station after they decided not to conduct a 32km foot march to the boat from the floating base. At least they can do "Science!" at the station while awaiting their amphibious SSTO. Since the Star Ranger lacks a docking port, they rendezvoused with the Jool Transfer Vehicle, spacewalked over to it, then took it on to dock with the station & the Jool cycler (also docked) I also accidentally completed the lithobrake challenge - after it closed - when I was messing with a satellite I was deorbiting around Kerbin. I stayed on it too long & got stuck once it reentered the atmosphere. The engine exploded around 15km so it had well over a 1km free fall but both the probe core, battery & a structure piece or 2 survived. Didn't think to get any pics of that though.

Finally got Kerbals back on Laythe in my newest career. Set the modified Star Ranger (by XLJedi) down right next my 3-man outpost/fuel station (< 1 km after I managed to stop) Then dropped my Laythe floating base with attached 6-seat pontoon boat into the nearest sheltered bay. It did manage to straighten out before splashdown THEN I realized what I forgot this time: A rover to run from the fuel station & landing site the 30km to shore to get picked up by the pontoon boat. Oh well. I guess this batch of explorers will just have to hop back up to the space station & wait until the seaplane arrives in a year and half. I don't even have another Jool window for another half a year to send them a rover.

I had one that didn't want to complete and it was something like this. Was quite a while ago, but IIRC I transferred the ore from my existing Minmus mining facility to an ore tanker that I built for the contract. Ended up building a fresh ship with its own drills & sent it to complete the contract without going near my old mining rig.

I don't know how I missed this mod till now, but I'm glad I finally got it. Just installed & only been able to experiment for a few minutes, but my first impression is WOW!!! Great job!

It was a revelation for me too - was watching some video on youtube & the next suggested video was something like "What KSP doesn't teach about xxxx." I don't even remember exactly what the video was - something about hybrid rockets maybe. Anyway, it was interesting but also got me wondering "What in the world is Kerbal Space Program?" A quick google search, then watching a few videos & off I went to download the demo, followed by the full version the next day. Not quite a 32 hour day, but my wife sure got annoyed quickly.

After sending off fleets to both Eve & Jool, had time to collect science from Mun for a contract & caught a nice sunset over Kerbin & Mun:

Sadly, I had to scrap my current career because something got messed up with the save while placing a remote lander & relay satellite around Vall. I have no idea what happened & I've spent all my free time today trying to save it - to the point of loading a previous version, deleting the offending vessel & alt-F12'ing a replacement into orbit of Vall. Everything seems to go fine right up until I try to switch vessels away from the lander - the screen flickers a bit & then remains on the lander. I've tried switching vessels via Kerbal Alarm Clock & map view. I've tried switching to different vessels, no luck. So off we go from scratch again.

I've decided I have to launch an investigation into how these subcontractors keep losing kerbals around planets I've just barely sent my first kerbals too. I'll put Jeb & company on it once they get back from Duna. In the meantime, I successfully rendezvoused with Mitmung's debris in retrograde orbit of Moho - and thank goodness I noticed that retrograde tidbit before I got into orbit or I'd probably have 2 ships stuck. Successful docking: Re-circularizing after dropping the debris onto Moho: Now Mitmung gets to sit in the lander can for the next few months considering the trouble he put me through before he gets to come home. By pure dumb luck, I also just so happened to have an exploration contract to transfer crew between vessels in orbit of Moho so I guess it did work out in the end.

I mostly just performed the mid-course correction burns for a fleet of probes heading for Jool, then tinkered with a mostly-SRB version of my expendable 4-seat LKO tourist rocket. Suffice it to say it was good that I tested it empty. I "think" the last tweak I did will make it usable, but at a cost savings of only 1500 from the original LFO version, I'm not sure it's worth the headache. At least the testing was pretty, with all the fireworks in the sky.

After a RUD of my laptop a week & a half ago, I've actually got it working except for a cracked screen. It wasn't bad enough to prevent me loading up KSP & I just did a quick orbital tourist contract. Amazing how much fun that was after not playing KSP for nearly two weeks. I even brought them back in one piece this time.

Funny seeing "Space bar of death" today after I executed a load of tourists this morning after some minor tinkering with a fairly standard orbital tour ship caused a Tac Self-destruct charge to get placed as the very first stage followed by the engines in the next stage. I actually managed to stage enough times to separate the "victims" capsules & deploy parachutes, but they didn't open far enough to slow the pod as it fell into the ensuing fireball. In an odd turn of events, due to the reputation loss of killing 8 tourists from 3 different contracts, I now have MORE tourist contracts being offered.

While I had a recovery claw enroute to pick up a stranded kerbal around Minmus, I was offered a SECOND contract to grab another one. Much to my surprise, only one required recovery of the stranded module also. Due to not having changed my design since a unique mission a few days ago, I had an extra seat on the recovery vehicle & managed to finish both contracts with a single launch: Recovery #1: After grabbing it & transferring the passenger, I gave it a good fling & released the claw to get ready for recovery #2: After some simple maneuvering, caught the second module & headed back home: