Grogs

I launched the main body for the new Kerbin Station up to orbit. I'm sure I've launched taller things, but never this tall with just a single stack. I had to limit the angle of attack in the early phases of the launch or it would just tip over. Here it is docking with the old Kerbin Station. This completed the contract to upgrade the original station. Now I can deorbit the older bits. Here's the station after everything was reattached. The old station is the part on the left. The Icarus arrived a couple of hours later. I grabbed the old station with the Icarus and pulled it along until it was on a re-entry course. Once in the atmosphere, the Icarus released the old station to meet its fate and then concentrated on coming down near KSC. Other than the loss of a couple of airbrakes, it survived re-entry without any problem. Since the Wolfhounds provide basically no thrust at sea level, I just burned off the fuel to minimize weight for landing. Everything landed on the water intact, but rolling over caused the cockpit module to snap off. The crew was unharmed and I still got full value by recovering both halves, so no harm done.

I sent another old fuel tanker down to its death on the Mun. Nothing huge, but it registered a respectable hit on the seismometer. The I launched the first piece for a contract to 'upgrade Kerbin Station'. Up into orbit without the fairing. The cargo is just the S3 tanker and the two sets of docking crosses for the ends of the new station. Docked at the existing Kerbin Station. I'll bring the new station up and hook it to one of the senior port on the docking crosses. Once the upgrade contract completes, I'll deorbit the old one. With the old connections being all Jr/regular docking ports it isn't really stable enough to handle the larger ships and fuel tankers I'm building now. I sent the booster from the launch home and landed it on the KSC crawlerway. It still only gets 98% recovery even though it's closer to the VAB than the launch pad. And finally, I took one of those "do what you're already doing anyway" contracts to mine ore from Minmus. Switch to the miner, contract completes almost instantly. Thanks WinterOwl!

I use a rover design with ISRU, drills, and a claw on front for my refueling. With the claw, I don't have to worry about lining up docking ports.

One of my older Rockomax fuel tankers arrived at Mun Station on its final mission. It docked and transferred almost all of its fuel to the S3 tanker already there ... ... then deorbited itself near the deployed science setup. It didn't have enough fuel to really add a lot of speed, but it still made a decent impact that probably woke up the Icarus crew nearby. Speaking of the Icarus, it had finally managed to refill its tanks so it closed up the bays and prepared for liftoff. I managed to get it into orbit manually, but it's a real bear to fly on heading. I got a rendezvous with Mun Station, but it will take another orbit. In the meantime, a Giant MOFO tanker set down on Minmus and began refueling ops. That's a lot of fuel tank to fill up! When Giwig and Halby signed up to be kerbonauts, they probably didn't realize they'd be glorified gas station attendants.

Mostly fuel transfers and design work today. After playing around with the Icarus for a while, I decided that I just don't like it. It does a lot of things - rover, ISRU, large crew carrier, VTOL - but it's just too complicated. I'm going to go with a dedicated lander for Duna/Ike and just do multiple hops from the surface to orbit. I'll also put an ISRU rover similar to the one I have on Minmus down on Ike and leave it there. The only noteworthy event other than design work was a mission to rescue a kerbal in LKO. Jeb and Val decided to take a break from their vacation and took the Winterlance up. Up into space Intercept. They didn't even make Roald work very hard on this one - only 18 m/s difference to make up. Heading in after making the crossing I didn't time the re-entry very well and blew past KSC. Got turned around and headed back, but ran out of fuel just off the coast Decided to go with the chutes and missed it by that much

I launched the second package for the Duna expedition. The cargo is two survey satellites and two unkerbed rovers. One set will go to Duna and the other to Ike. The ship made a brief stop at Kerbin Station in LKO to get just enough fuel to make it up to KEO station. Then it moved up to KEO Station where the fuel tanks were completely filled from the large reserves there. Over at Minmus, the ISRU rover finished fueling up a Giant MOFO XL tanker ... ... which then headed to orbit. It was topped off in Minmus orbit and then set off for KEO Station. And a smaller S3 tanker took its place and started fueling up. And I'm happy to report that Absolutely Nothing Happened Today in Sector 83 by 9 by 12 on the Mun. When I checked on it, the Icarus was sitting on the surface of the Mun drilling away.

I've never needed anything like WorldStabilizer because the worst problem I've had before has been some bouncing landing legs. No gameplay mods at all - the most invasive thing I use in Mechjeb. And the drill placement is good - they're all the way in the Mk3 cargo bay and don't raise the ship. My working hypothesis is that the game got confused because Gerbas was 30m above the ground (on top of the monolith) so it "fixed" the problem by bringing the ground up to where she was. . Or maybe the monolith opened a portal and the crew were in the process of getting transported to another star system. I kind of like that idea.

When I opened my game and switched over to Gerbas Kermin, she was no longer standing on top of the monolith where I left her (see previous post). In fact, the monolith seemed to have disappeared along with the Icarus. Gerbas looks as confused as I was. When I zoomed out, things became a little clearer. Umm, KSC, we have a bit of a problem here. Switching over to the Icarus, it was now below the terrain and heading towards the center of the Mun. Maybe those drills work a little too well? There was no easy fix I could see, so I had to ALT-F12 the ship and Gerbas back into orbit. The ship still needed to take on fuel to get home, so I landed it in the Farside Crater next to my deployed science and started drilling again. Hopefully the problem with the terrain won't recur when I switch back to the Icarus again.

The Icarus arrived at Mun Station where five kerbals loaded up and prepped for a Mun landing. The destination was an anomaly located near the Mun's north pole. None of my other Mun landers had the dV to get there and back to the station safely. Descent is tail first just like any other lander. The landing was in the highlands, so it was super hilly with slopes of 30 degrees or more. The wide landing legs kept the Icarus form rolling over even in this terrain. Unfortunately, I didn't do a good job placing the scanner arm and it got smashed when I brought the nose down for landing. My only 'repair' option would be to return the ship to Kerbin and launch a new ship with the arm in a better location. It also handled like a beast. Some tweaks of the traction control helped, but it still took 30 minutes to navigate the 1 km from the landing site to the anomaly. Apparently it isn't possible for the Claw to hook into a monolith, which makes sense given the 2001 lore. Landing the Icarus completed a contract to build a new outpost. It just had to have power, an antenna, and space for 5 kerbals. A view of the monolith (with a kerbal on top) and the Icarus for scale. The only other item of note is that my relay satellite carrier made its transfer burn towards Duna. It's leaving well before the optimal transfer window so that the relay networks will be in place around Ike and Duna before the other ships start arriving.

Yesterday was more design than anything. I spent some time playing around with a small lander. I have no idea what I would need it for, but it seems like it would make a cheap lander for small worlds or maybe an emergency ascender if a crew got stuck somewhere. It was mostly just fun to fly around. The A-team decided to take it up for a spin. I didn't put parachutes on it, but I thought I could just open a kerbal's EVA parachute and land with that. It ended up putting the lander into a violent and uncontrollable spin. Despite hitting the ground at 30 m/s in a hard spin, all the kerbals walked away. So, successful design? I did some work on more practical designs as well. I completely revamped my Duna Station design based on some of the things I've learned building the Minimus and KEO stations. And I did a redesign of the Duna lander. The biggest changes were the legs and moving the engines to outboard fuel tanks so I can put a Sr. docking port on the rear. I did a test re-rentry on Duna and everything seemed to work well. Landing was good and stable. I did a few drop tests at 12 m/s and nothing broke. I packaged the lander and station on top of the lifter/transport stage that will launch for Duna in a few weeks. The transfer stage will use a Rhino engine, which seems like a good compromise between fuel efficiency and TWR at this size range. Outside of the design work, the only thing that really happened in game was that a Giant MOFO tanker arrived at KEO station with a huge load of fuel freshly mined from Minmus. The Icarus was fueled up and then set out for the Mun. It will do some test landings to see how it performs over the course of several biome hops and surface refuelings.

The Icarus (upper right in the photo) arrived at KEO station. It will stay there until the fuel tanker arrives and then head to the Mun for landing trials. Over at Minmus, the crew shuttle arrived carrying a couple of engineers from the Mun. Docking the crew shuttle with the extra engineers completed the last objective (4 engineers onboard) of my 'Expand Minimus Station II' contract for a nice payday. Then it was down to the surface for some mining. First the ore tanker. Then a Giant MOFO XL tanker arrived and started fueling up. This one is going to take a while.

This is one I put together a couple of days ago. The rover has two Wolfhound engines mounted on rotary swivels. Takeoff is in the horizontal position with the engines pointing down. Then rotate the engines back and point the nose upwards for a regular rocket ascent. It seems to work OK. There are some minor instabilities I haven't worked out yet, but I'm not sure if they're due to having the engines on swivels or just the design of the body.

I worked on the Mk2 lander before I read this, so I ended up going a different way. This is really useful if I decide to go back and revisit the design. This is the latest design. I moved most of the fuel to the center so the CG won't change much, ditched the engine at the rear, and replaced the Thuds with 2 Wolfhounds on BG rotors for a true VTOL craft. With Wolfhounds, it's obviously not going anywhere on Kerbin, but it should be able to operate anywhere except Kerbin, Eve, Laythe, and Tylo. Instead of RCS, I went with a boatload of reaction wheels instead. The rear cargo bay has two more reaction wheels, ISRU gear, and a full set of scientific instruments. First flight test was on Minmus using the F12 menu. Horizontal takeoff was steady. Next up was a full simulation on Duna using F12. Re-entry was stable tail first. Needed a little engine thrust to slow down to parachute-opening speed and then burned near the ground for a soft landing. After landing on the tail, I flipped it over onto the wheels. Here it is fully deployed. Liftoff from Duna. I ascend horizontally and turn to get the nose on the right heading. Then point the nose up 45 degrees and pull the wheels in. Ascent was slow, but there was still plenty of dV remaining after making orbit. It's not the most stable flight though - some weird yaw/roll instabilities. If it starts pulling to the left and I push back to the right, it will begin rolling. I could fly it manually, but using the autopilot turned out to be much more reliable. I decided it was good enough for KSP and launched the first prototype underneath a giant fairing. I dubbed it the Icarus since there's a decent chance it will fall from the sky at some point. The Icarus is now on its way to KEO Station, and from there to the Mun for some trial landings. One thing I've found that's a bit obnoxious is that it doesn't hold on the maneuver node during burns. It doesn't behave like an imbalanced ship (which will eventually go into a spin about the long axis with enough thrust). Instead the nose just drops 5 degrees below the maneuver node and stays there. There's plenty of control authority for me to hold it on the maneuver node manually, so it's not a typical imbalance.

I took Aller (the new Kerbal I just rescued) down to the surface of the Mun. He got his flag planting xp and it also fulfilled what seems to be an eternally renewing contract to plant a flag on the Mun. Good thing I pick them up every time or there would be dozens scattered around this little spot. Over at Minmus, the new station module, module E arrived. I got it joined to Minimus Station, then deorbited the small tug that brought it. Then reconnected the docking cross at the end (with fuel tankers still attached). The station has gotten huge. This will probably be the last addition to the actual station, although I'm toying with the idea of building some liquid fuel/Nerv tankers to suport long-range ships in the future. Back at KSP, the engineers played around with a design for a large lander/rover/ISRU craft. Having the wheels on pistons like this makes it really hard to flip over. I did a hard turn at 35 m/s as I went off the side of the runway and I just did a bunch of donuts (which was kind of fun). The Thud engines are another story. I can't seem to get the engines placed so it doesn't flip over on ascent. For one thing, the center of gravity seems to move around too much as the fuel level changes. Definitely still a work in progress.

Yeah, I'm doing my first real career playthrough, and I was surprised Eve came up as the first interplanetary, too. @jimmymcgoochie makes good points about Eve being easier to get to, but doing a manned return there is maybe the hardest thing in the whole game. Landing a small one-way probe on the surface may not be too hard, but landing something with the 8,000 m/s dV to get back to orbit takes some serious engineering and lots of practice. It seems like up through Minmus the World Firsts do a good job of giving incrementally more difficult contracts, but that trend seems to break with Eve. Maybe if it gave you an Eve flyby/orbit, and then maybe a Gilly landing before shifting to Duna/Ike that would make more sense. I've seen enough posts from @king of nowhere to make me think this is at best extremely difficult. Admittedly, king of nowhere is trying to make a dual electric/rocket powered SSTO, but it still looks pretty daunting even for a simpler craft.

I launched the new module for Minimus Station The thing is so top-heavy, the rocket flew funny. MechJeb is having to hold the nose above prograde and the plasma effects are on the bottom side. It all worked well though. The module made it to orbit and initiated the transfer burn to Minmus. Then I landed the lifter stage and recovered 77k funds. Net launch cost is less than 90k funds for a contract that will pay about 800k. Over at the Mun, I had a contract to recover a kerbal from orbit. He was in a retrograde orbit, of course. In order to make the recovery manageable, I had to swing up to a high Ap, reverse course there, then lower Ap back down to get a rendezvous. After which, I had to reverse the process to get back to Munar Station. The rendezvous was successful. I didn't bother slowing down and made Aller close the 60 m/s differential using his EVA pack. He didn't seem to mind too much.

Right, I installed this one in 1.9 and I haven't had any issues with it. The only mod I updated with 1.10.x was MechJeb and even that worked pretty well until I got around to finding the new version.

Leeden and Malden went down to the surface of the Mun to check out an anomaly. I didn't have the fuel to try and get closer, so Malden went over with his EVA pack. Turned out it was the green monolith. I don't understand the text though. What's nanolathing? My tech tree is already full. After the visit, they made it back to the station with plenty of spare dV - a whole 7 m/s! Then I picked up a contract to expand Minimus Station. It's a nice 3-start contract worth about 800k funds. I put together a module to complete the contract. It will add liquid fuel storage and fill out the last arm of the station. Launch cost is only 164k funds, less whatever I get for recovering the booster stage. The module will go here on Minimus Station where the fuel tanker is docking. I'll pull out the docking cross and put it on the end of the new extension to give it more standoff from the station core.

I feel largely the same way. There's tons of science out there. When I did the Kerpollo challenge, I completed the tech tree with just 5 or 6 missions using no labs, no deployed science, and only a single landing on each body. The labs and deployed science really just add some roleplaying value because without them scientists would become virtually useless once the tech tree was complete. It would be nice if the overflow science was good for something other than converting it to reputation/funds that I don't really need either.

The first thing on the agenda was assembling the new KEO Station. I started by launching a small module with a lab and a hitchhiker module. I don't really plan to do any science there, but the lab will be useful for leveling up any kerbals that need it. I also put some small and regular docking ports around the side so the station will have ports for all three sizes. I launched the module on another Giant MOFO XL refueler, which then docked it directly to the KEO station core. Then the second Giant MOFO arrived carrying the two docking crosses for the ends of the station. The first one was attached directly, while a tug handled moving the second one into position on the other side. Then I took a minute to admire my newly completed station ... ... before sending one of the fuel tankers off towards Minmus to fill up. Over on Minmus, the ISRU rover finally finished filling up the original Giant MOFO after several days. This is the first time I've flown one of these with a full load, and even with two large reaction wheels it turns slowly. I managed to get it docked to Minimus Station, where it topped off the tanks before heading out towards KEO Station. Then I sent one of the S3-based refuelers back down to the surface to restock Minimus Station. Even though this is an S3-14400 tank, it's amazing how puny it looks compared to the behemoth that was there before.

I did some design work today. First up was a long-range probe capable of 10.7k dV thanks to the Nerv engines. It has both survey scanners and all of the resetable science experiments. I don't have a specific destination in mind yet, but I'm thinking it would be good for Moho, Eeloo, or possibly visiting several of the Joolian moons in one go. The next piece of design work was on my new KEO station. It's similar to the core of Minmus station except that I added a second crew module and a large liquid fuel tank for future missions using nuclear engines. Despite the size of the station, launching it empty didn't require all that much. I mounted it on my standard 3.75-m recoverable lifter core with 4 Kickback boosters. It was a really LONG ship though. The station core was launched just before sunset at KSC, making for lovely views of the ascent. Once safely in low-Kerbin orbit, the small tug at the end was enough to move the station up to kerbstationary orbit. Thanks to my meticulous planning, I was able to place the station in KEO directly above the KSC. OK, full disclosure, that's not exactly how it happened. I actually screwed up the transfer orbit and ended up with the station above the Desert Airfield instead of KSC. I could have fixed it, but it would have taken a lot of in-game time. I decided to just roleplay that part and used F12 to put it in the right spot. Then next up was a Giant MOFO fuel tanker. This one is a new XL model using a senior docking port on the front. Since these tankers have no shortage of dV and a decent TWR I attached the two docking masts meant for KEO station. The tanker is now in LKO awaiting a transfer up to the station.

FYI, you can use a BZ-52 Radial Attachment point to attach a senior docking port to the side of a craft. It's the part in the 'Structural' section that looks like a regular docking port. Using this method leaves a gap between the side of the craft and the docking port, but I use the 'Move' tool to push it flush.

Well, a kerbal can dream, but I definitely meant interplanetary.

I had two contracts to put satellites into a polar orbit around Kerbin, so I decided, why not? I forget sometimes that just because two orbits are inclined 90 degrees doesn't mean they're in the same plane. Luckily there was plenty of extra fuel in the lifter stage, so I used it to transfer up the the 2 Mm Ap for the first orbit then handled the rest with the satellite engines. And, of course when I got the 2nd satellite placed in the 4 Mm orbit, I realized I had forgotten the thermometer. Luckily, the first satellite still had just enough remaining dV (and a thermometer), so I pulled it up and completed both contracts. Then my Atlas XL Asteroid Grabber finally reached the Class C asteroid to move it into orbit around Minmus. I was really surprised at the mass of this thing - only 51 tons. I was thinking Class C's were more in the 200-ton range. Apparently, the surface is powdery because Algard sank up to her waist getting a surface sample. Renamed the asteroid based on the names of the three crew members. The crew mined their 'roid until it was just 3 tons of hollowed out husk remaining. It should be easy to put this in Minmus orbit now. Over at Minmus, the Giant MOFO landed and the ISRU rover started filling up the colossal tanks. I never really appreciated the size of this thing until I saw it next to the rover, which isn't puny by any standards. Even with 6 drills and 2 convert-o-trons run by a 3-star engineer, it will take about 3 days to fully refuel this beast. Then the question will be where to put it. I'm toying with the idea of setting up a station in KEO and launching interstellar missions from there. It's not as efficient as lunching from Minmus, but it avoids problems with the inclination and long orbital period.

Now that's the kind of impact I usually get on the Mun. I'm getting better at it though. I crashed one of my older Jumbo-64 fuel tankers last night. It had around 2000 m/s dV left. I moved it up a 100x100 km orbit to have more time to accelerate towards the ground, canceled out the orbital speed over the target, and let it free fall for about 10 km to start moving straight down before pointing straight down. Even so, accelerating prograde caused me to miss by a couple hundred meters. That was only a 7% attenuation and managed a respectable 156 science. One more good hit like that should max out my sensor.