NHunter

Today, I've landed the EL workshop for my Ceti base. Unfortunately, no screenshots as it was a way too tense ordeal to do any. Plus, actual landing took place during a local night, so it was too dark to see much anyway (I still managed to land right on top of the flag I used as a target!). At least, my skycrane has a more than enough electric charge to keep things running in kinda-hibernation mode till next sunrise. Then, I discovered that I made a mistake and didn't pack enough Rocket Parts to actually build the hub of the future base. Thus, I'm sending a this little package: A skycrane 2, carrying a container with 15200 Rocket Parts + the transfer stage to get it all into low Ceti orbit.

There hasn't been much going on in my GPP career recently. Just flying tourist contracts and doing other small jobs. Today, though, my space camp #1 finally was finished and granted me three new Gaelan astronauts. The camp itself was held in three 6-seat crafts held together through the magic of docking ports and struts. Not very pretty, but, hey, it was the lightest craft of required capacity I could build at the time - I hadn't unlocked Mk3 or OPT parts yet when I launched this thing. Deorbiting this thing was done by splitting it into three separate landers, and due to very limited fuel, I had to land at Rook's Glory instead of GSC. And I really need to brush up on my targeting: only one of the three landers actually landed within Rook's Glory site.

Didn't KSPIE have burn-in-full-timewarp engines? To quote one of the guides to KSPIE. Not sure if it is indeed so, but...

I've seen those. But batteries tend to run out sooner or later, unless you provide a power source. That and you'd rather put fuel tank in their place most of the time - you need lots of dV to go places, and pure batteries provide none. I generally have electric charge stored only in probe cores, cockpits, SAS units and heat resistant nose. Still, that usually gives me around 4500 to go around. Probably not enough to completely survive a night on a tidally-locked moon, but...

@Threadsinger, yeah, there is something wonky going on with engines' heat production, and KA is being hit really hard with that. I've observed Scylla Nuclear aerospike produce whooping 3GW of heat when running in LH2+Ox mode. That is... a bit more than you can feasibly get rid of without turning your ship into one big flying radiator (unless you have those otherwise-OP radiators from KSPIE). Granted, I did boost the engine's ISP a bit but, c'mon, did the exhaust really carry away that much heat?

I've been working on my heavy-lifter sky-crane (mostly so that I can land a EPL workshop on Ceti - that thing clocks at just under 15 tons when filled with rocket parts, and I'll need those to begin the construction of the surface base). And since it was getting quite big already, I decided to slap some high-power solar panels onto it and then keep it as a source of power for the fledgling base until I can get either fuel cells or nuclear reactor up and running. And it still doesn't have enough torque in those reactions wheels (there is fifth one (upscaled to 3.75m) in the central part of the ship) - they can't rotate the skycrane while it's landed on Gael. ----------------- @anoldtincan, I'll add mediafire to the list of suggested image hosts. It might not be a dedicated photo hosting site (it's a generic-file storage service), but you get 50GB of space for free and you can link images from there. I've been uploading all of my KSP screenshots there and it's been working just fine.

This jet looks a bit like an upsized FFR-41 Mave. Get rid of tail fins, install an AI and emo pilot, and you're all set.

@FluxOrbit, if you use pure EPL, this should work: @PART[sspx-cupola-375-1,sspx-cupola-125-1,cupola]:AFTER[Launchpad]:HAS[!MODULE[ELSurveyStation]] { MODULE { name = ELSurveyStation } } For SimpleConstruction you'll probably need to replace "Launchpad" in the AFTER block with whatever internal name SimpleConstruction uses.

@Sresk, I would like to point out though that OPT cryo tanks do NOT suffer from boiloff (and I hope they will not in the future), so their lower capacity is paid off by not having to worry about feeding them with electricity to keep your LqdH2 liquid and still inside the tanks.

My space hotel (take 2) Weight: 79 tons Crew Capacity: 78 Docking Ports: 4x 1.25m, 2x 2.5m Solar Panels: 4x Megalador (NFE)

Today, I've finally put a BIGGER space hotel into orbit around Gael. It weights just shy of 80 tons and its ring is about 20 meters in diameter. It's "crew" capacity is only slightly larger than that of the previous on at 78 Kerbals Gaelans (versus 68 on the first space hotel), but the accommodations are much more luxurious. I actually forgot to take screenshots during launch and ascent, so... Here's me finishing the inclination adjustment burn to put this monstrosity into equatorial 500km orbit. And given the size of it's booster stage, I needed something more powerful than those tiny separatrons. Meet separatron 2.0 (aka hammer SRBs). Yup, world's largest separatrons... Solar panels deployed, communication systems online. Space Hotel is ready to receive it's first guests.

Today... I took a pretty screenshot during a reentry. I think, it was my Ceti expedition returning home, but I can't be sure anymore (had a busy couple of in-game days after this). And, after having played the game for over a 1000 of hours, I finally realized that the icon on the "go-back-to-KSC" button is a top-down view of the KSC and not some weird helicopter.

If you're about space station, I posted another pic a page or two before. If it's about SSTO - ... well, that's just a random flying thing I cobbled together from OPT parts.

A first group of tourists has been sent to the space hotel high above Gael. Hm.... I think, I need a bigger space station...

That's 'Vista' Astrogation Module from Stockalike Station Parts Redux

Thanks to Laythe's lucky alignment, KSS Discovery was able to save dv and go the the blue moon almost directly. The course took the ship through Jool's rings, and, I gotta say, you can get quite some views there. Meanwhile my Moho station arrived to its destination. I've been a bit aggressive with this particular transfer, so I had to perform a deceleration burn just shy of 4.5 km/s to put the station into roughly-circular 250km orbit around Kerbol's first planet. And, for once, I haven't over-engineered the transfer stage. After one massive burn, there was only 160 m/s dv worth of fuel left in the tanks. Once the station was put into the intended orbit, the transfer stage detached itself and (now having 600 m/s dv) was sent to crash into Moho's surface.

Following the relays closely behind, a lumbering behemoth that is KSS Discovery arrives to the Jool system. Back when it was launched, it was the pinnacle of Kerbal engineering and the first crewed ship capable of reaching the outer planets. Now, a mere year later, it's an outdated design with many flaws: it is big, extremely heavy and under-powered in both engines and reaction control*. It also look not as cool... Too bad, sending a replacement ship will be both too expensive and require waiting for over a year for it to arrive... * dry weight: 98 tons, fuel: 150 tons, engines: 2x NV-500 Poseidon nuclear engines (which, even in LOx-augmented mode, provide only 6.65 m/s² of max acceleration) and it has to rely on just a few reaction wheels to reorient itself. Compare and contrast with the much more advanced KSS Voyager exploration ship I had sent to Sarnus: dry weight: 68 tons, fuel: 44 tons, engines: 1x Vista fusion engine (13.25 m/s² of max acceleration) and similar amount of torque from reaction wheels to rotate half the mass. And it's much better in the looks department: ----- Meanwhile, in a far-away Gael system, the first space hotel has been put into orbit. Accommodations aren't exactly 5-star and it pulls a double-duty as a communication relay, but it does provide the guest with some nice views of their homeworld.

Have you thought about feeding a more conventional map of Kerbin to GDAL (gdaltransform function to be specific) ?

Just a few pretty pics: Nightime Kerbin launch. Orbiting Laythe.

That tiny, pale-green dot near the center of the picture is Jool. Almost there... Ready to perform the capture burn... And at long last, after a long journey that lasted 1 year, 79 days and 2 hours (okay, maybe it wasn't that long of a journey ), the first of the Jool relays has entered its designated orbit... "This is Jool Relay #1 commanding AI. We can hear you loud and clear, KSC."

MechJeb might have its uses - "perfect" accuracy burns being most notable - but more often than not I'd rather fly my crafts manually (unless I'm really really bored). The reason is that MJ disables SAS while it does things (at least with default settings), so anything with thrust offset will wobble off the target marker even if there is enough engine gimbling and reaction wheel torque to keep it pointed straight there -- I should probably start installing RSC thrusters, but my poor PC oftentimes struggles even with crafts that don't have those "extras". Not spending hours fiddling with maneuver node controls to get a burn that gets you to an exact pe/ap / inclination is another useful feature of MJ, but I do set any and all SOI-change maneuvers up manually. More wasteful? - Probably, but I tend to overengineer (often, by a factor of 2) anyway, so why not? As for actual auto-pilots? Ascent one might be finding some use with me, but fine-tuning it to fly more or less efficiently takes more time than launching everything manually anyway. So, unless I'm really really bored AND it's a "Standard Satellite Launcher #XXX", it's a manual flight for me. Overall, MJ is an assist tool for me.

Today, I've sent my first probe to Tellumo. I've also prospected another potential site for EL base on the surface of Ceti. It has whooping 10% ore concentration but isn't as flat... Damn, I kinda miss Minmus with its perfectly flat - well - flats. I'll probably switch over to my stock + OPM game for a while. I should be something like 50 days away from arriving to Jool there, so one big time-warp should be enough to finally give me something more entertaining than shuttling tourists to do there

Today, my brave crew has finally arrived to Ceti. And once the science was collected, Jade Gaelan went to survey a nearby valley to see whether it can indeed be used to build a surface base. While there isn't as much space as I would've wanted, the valley is reasonably flat with 1.4 degree slope and has a large ore deposit underneath it. Perhaps, it will be possible to build an extra-Gaelan launch site there... Meanwhile a rescue mission returned from Iota and once again showed that I can't hit a wide side of a barn (from space)...

Today I've made first steps in designing my surface EL base. I had to do that in sandbox as I haven't unlocked all of the parts I want for it in my GPP career. The central pillar is a command tower, which is primarily there for the EL survey station (which I modded into SSPX Vista Astrograde module). Arranged around this central are a EL workshop, a EL rocket parts fabricator, a nuclear reactor, an ISRU processor, a nuclear fuel processor and a EL smelter. Ore is gathered by three Terratrove Mining Excavators and processed fuel is stored in those two giant tanks (one for LfOx and one for LH2Ox). I still need to find a good place for Monopropellant, Argon, Xenon and Lithium storage tanks, though. And, probably, more space to store Rocket Parts... Even without any resources bar nuclear fuel included, this monstrosity weights over 180 tons. This base will be eventually split into subassemblies and then built from the workshop segment. Once I find a large flat area on Iota - preferably somewhere close to the equator - that has a enough ore to sustain the production cycle.

You're damn lucky. For me, the game stops responding (as in, application itself) for 15-20 seconds. Granted, my specs are a bit worse than yours (3rd generation i7 @2800 MHz, 32GB DDR3 and a pathetic 2GB videocard) - but this is the first time I have an issue while changing scenes like this, in KSP or other games.