jimmymcgoochie

First up- Grey Sphere 4 heads off to Mars on the slower transfer window: Game-crashing stack overflow not shown . The difference between this and the earlier window that Grey Sphere 3 took is pretty striking- while Grey Sphere 4 left Earth only 44 days later, it will arrive at Mars over 300 days later. Next to launch was Orange Plate 2, heading up to the Moon with all the latest surface science experiments: In the end I had to fly it back out of its first landing site because the terrain was so bad, and fly over to the nearest flat-ish bit before landing. Another new biome: Mare Fecunditatis- Sea of Pregnancy? Who named these things? Many more tech nodes are being added, but the backlog is so long now that I won't bother showing each individual node that I add on. Highlights from this lot include the 80 point materials science and electronics nodes to unlock all the next generation parts. The contract payout for landing on the Moon funded the next upgrade for the Tracking Station: I've also skipped the usual accept satellite contract > build Green Starling > complete contract cycle; they happened, but what's the point in showing them when I've done so many of them? On the subject of contracts, though- I just found out that I didn't actually launch a scanning satellite to the Moon and there's a contract to do just that slowly ticking down. Cue a hasty retrofit of the Grey Tet Mk2 to carry a radar altimetry scanner and some large solar panels, imaginatively named Grey Tet Mk3, which was added to the build queue: Two more Orange Bowl probes are under construction (so far) for the Ceres and Jupiter windows, but due to the improved communications tech and tracking station I could turn down their antenna strength to save mass and power while maintaining signal no matter where the planets were, whereas before they would only just be in range when the planets were closest. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/jNw6sJR Coming up next time: Three transfer windows approach for three different planets, each with its own flyby contract. Deploy the probes!

I've found this issue in an RP-1 career game in KSP 1.8.1, one part just keeps duplicating itself whenever I unlock and try to use it. Checked the logs and there's an error that looks like the culprit, but no indication of what's causing it or how to fix it: Link to log files: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7vsngwl7vn7c7vv/AAAa5sguccePbgliYbzehWD_a?dl=0 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/U76F6S7 I have over 100 mods in this save, most of which are RP-1 dependencies; this issue has only been happening today and I haven't changed any mods that could have caused it. Mod list ('tis long!): Is this a mod issue, a problem with a cached file somewhere or a corrupted save that can be edited to fix it?

I would argue it’s because he lights it on fire and then moves to a safe distance, which may explain why so few of his classmates show up to their annual reunion...

Dr Wernher von Kerman, PhD in Applied Stuffing Explosives into Barrels and Lighting One End On Fire. Jeb probably has an honorary MSc in Lithobraking.

Outer Planets adds stock-style analogues to the real outer planets- Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and cough not a real planet cough Pluto along with moons for all of them (it moves Eeloo to be a moon of the Saturn-esque Sarnus). There’s also JNSQ which has a second gas giant and a Titan analog called Huygen (named after the first probe to land on Titan’s surface) but that’s a considerably upscaled system (so will destroy most craft in flight due to bigger planets and higher orbital velocities) and the planets look radically different than stock. If you’re interested in a more challenging system give it a try, but otherwise (and especially if you want to add into an existing save) use OPM.

Does it affect only the save game you’re using or anything at all e.g. missions/training or a brand new sandbox? I see nothing untoward in the logs from a quick scroll through. You might have to do this the old-fashioned way: Make a copy of the affected KSP instance and keep it somewhere safe. Remove half of the mods in the original copy and see if the issue persists. If it does, remove half again and repeat until you narrow down the list of suspects; if it doesn’t, you’ve removed it and have still reduced your list of suspects, so u install the half that aren’t it and reinstall the first half, then carry on as above. Once you have a shortlist, put just those mods into an otherwise stock copy of the same version of KSP and see if you can replicate the issue there, and if so exactly what mod(s) you need to cause it.

More ambitious contract accepting as I take the first lunar rover contract. Rover wheels are still 360 days away at the current rate, but the contract gives another 200 days on top of that so it should all be fine. The first 350 ton launch came with Orange Plate 1, heading to land on the Moon. It's a considerably souped-up Grey Cuboid but it actually had too much delta-V and the solid rockets ended up pushing it away from the Moon's surface before burning out. A good quantity of science was gathered and spent on the first two hydrolox engines nodes as well as better avionics. Hydrolox has vastly superior ISP (about 100s better than the current kerolox engines) but also has low fuel density and really bad boiloff issues, plus if you put a heavily insulated (with MLI layers) tank exposed to airflow, it will almost certainly catch fire and explode during ascent. Now for a close-up look at the new Orange Bowl interplanetary probe, destined to travel to Ceres, Vesta, Jupiter and (in a modified form) Mercury: No solar panels as they're essentially useless that far from the Sun, instead two RTGs provide all the power (at considerable expense) while the experiments are clustered on one side to counteract the weight of the huge S-band antenna. Obviously I changed the design as soon as I took that screenshot to swap the visible imaging camera (on the top) to be built in to the avionics because I haven't bought that part yet (but Kerbalism lets you put experiments into probe cores once you've researched them, not unlocked the physical parts) and will need to change it again very soon when I unlock level 4 communications tech. Whole rocket for scale. The probe body is 65cm across and 65cm high, which gives you some idea of the size of the whole rocket. Could I build something more efficient? Probably, but this uses entirely tooled parts and engines that have plenty of data units in them meaning low failure rates. With the new science experiments unlocked I also upgraded the Grey Tet orbital science probe and sent one out to orbit the Moon: One of the science experiments wanted an orbital eccentricity above 0.1, but I only saw that after capturing into a nice, low, circular orbit and spent almost all the remaining fuel getting the orbit just right then pointing the solar panels back at the sun: That was close! A second Grey Tet Mk2 is being built and will be going into a high orbit of Earth where it can dip between space low and space high (relative terms here- the boundary is at geostationary altitude, over 30Mm up, compared to the Moon's 150km) and get as much science as possible from the Earth's SOI. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/qGw9zPg Coming up next time: Actually sending those probes off to distant worlds, with some fairly tight build deadlines to meet the optimal transfer windows.

“Over Macho Grande?” - Airplane 2 Also:

Procedural parts maybe? Stick a few 1cm3 ‘probe cores’ on and set them to action groups and you’d be set. Otherwise you could try Luciole or KNES which both contain some very small cubesats.

Maybe the reason that rover isn’t moving is because the wheels aren’t touching the ground? They’re attached at the completely wrong angle, pointing up into the air and apparently at 90 degrees to the ‘forward’ direction. The brakes are also on, but those wheels can usually overpower their brakes by accelerating so if the wheels were actually in contact with the ground I’d expect the rover to move; not in the direction you’re hoping for, but move nonetheless.

Boring satellite contract montage: In between those launches (which included two on the same day from the same launchpad thanks to the second build queue and rapid turnaround times) there were some more significant launches: Tim Sullivan's first orbital flight went without a hitch, racking up a 500km crewed altitude achievement, completing an orbital flight contract and crossing the inner radiation belt repeatedly (good thing I added shielding!) before coming back down and grabbing some data while flying over the Sahara. Tim is planning to stay for a while now too, so once he's back from R&R/quarantine (basically the same thing these days!) he'll be starting the Gemini proficiency course and hopefully be sticking around long enough to get some Gemini missions before he retires. Another important launch came with Grey Sphere 3 heading to Mars in the earlier and faster transfer window: Grey Sphere 4 will be waiting for the later window, which also means it got retrofitted with the newly unlocked science experiments that arrived on the same day that Grey Sphere 3 launched. The build queue is a bit fuller than before with two new Orange Plate Moon landers- basically a Grey Cuboid but with more boosters and a bit more delta-V to make landing it easier- and two Grey Tet Mk2s which have the new science experiments fitted and will be heading to either a high Earth orbit or an elliptical Moon orbit to grab as much science as possible; Orange Plate 1 still has the old science stuff on it but Orange Plate 2 was retrofitted with the new stuff. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/vRzAfVq Coming up next time: A small fleet of science probes and landers plus some design work for the next generation of interplanetary probes.

Today I realised, for the first time, that contracts in the contract window on the stock toolbar are sorted alphabetically...

I haven’t done all that much in 1.11 but from what I remember a Kerbal should be able to carry the EVA pack and a surface experiment at the same time. Is it a lack of carry mass or volume that’s stopping you?

Is it just me, or is the Martian Moonhopper 2 arriving into a retrograde orbit? At around 17:30 it’s clearly going to be orbiting in the opposite direction to the moons.

Rule number one of playing RP-1: forget everything you know about stock KSP. Me: Not enough delta-V to get to Jupiter? Add MOAR BOOSTERS! Amazingly, this actually worked- going from two to six boosters gave it the weight capacity to add a much beefier upper stage which has the delta-V needed (6.5km/s!) to get to Jupiter for a flyby.

When you add Principia to stock KSP to get n-body physics, it results in the ejection of Minmus, Bop and possibly Vall from their respective planets’ gravity wells. It’s also a lot harder to know where you’re going if, for example, you’re trying to go from Kerbin to Duna but the gravity of Eve and Jool can knock you off course. Unlike real space agencies, who have supercomputers to crunch the numbers and calculate their trajectories to the nth degree, the average KSP player does not. Copy your current version of KSP and stick Principia into it, then just watch the chaos unfold in the tracking station...

Not a particularly interesting update today as not a lot happened. First, another boring satellite launch for a contract: Then I took a swing at a 350t rocket, though I'm not hugely impressed with it as the delta-V tanks from 17k to just over 10k when I add a dummy payload to take it up to the 350 ton limit (it weighs 342 without it): After that, Green Eagle 5 was launched to complete the set of orbital imagery satellites: Now for some more ambitious contract accepting, but this time it makes perfect sense: contracts for orbiting Venus, lobbing a probe into its atmosphere and landing on its surface can all be completed by the same mission. With a 6 year deadline I see no reason not to take all three and use the generous advances to buy more KCT points to get R&D moving faster. Rather annoyingly, Tim Sullivan's Mercury mission training expired so I had to send him to do it again before he can fly on Yellow Cookie 4. This messed up the build priority a bit, but there are only three rockets in there anyway so it didn't matter too much. On a related note, I launched a cluster of 8 cubesats on a Green Starling B rocket to gather orbital perturbation data at a much faster rate than before, and to fill out the build times a bit: They didn't deploy properly, tumbling once decoupled so their solar panels weren't all pointed at the sun, but the trick with Kerbalism is that if you get the solar panels pointing at the sun and then leave the craft, it will remember the last solar panel exposure value and use that until you go back to the craft and it updates. TL;DR- point near sun and then leave it, the exposure will stay the same regardless of where the craft or the sun move to. With all that moving around in the tracking station I noticed that Green Eagle 2 had been in space for over 200 days, so I brought its return capsule back down with its sample and data: The science gained allowed a new node to be unlocked- lunar rated heatshields, which for some reason also contains rover wheels and landing airbags even though the previous node was called "early landing" I then did a bit of testing with the Grey Sphere design, adding the latest science experiments and bigger, better RTGs. It could reach Mars without any difficulty, but lacked the delta-V to get anywhere beyond Vesta and most likely to Mercury as well: Hmm, need more delta-V but don't have the capacity on the existing launcher. Time to do the Kerbal thing, and add MOAR BOOSTERS! A combination of MOAR BOOSTERSTM and a fatter second stage gives this model enough delta-V to get to Jupiter (by a thin margin) or anywhere sunward of it, even Mercury: It was at this point that the game broke, making the cursor disappear in the VAB while various windows were open and meaning I was stuck there, so I had to force close it. Note that in those two plotted Jupiter transfers the delta-V on the craft increased by 1300m/s (a 23% increase) despite the burn time increasing by 3 minutes (89% increase)... That’s the rocket equation for you! There are two Mars transfer windows available- an earlier and faster one that requires more delta-V and a later, slower one that is more efficient. My plan is to launch Grey Sphere 3 on the faster trajectory and then send Grey Sphere 4 on the later one with the new science experiments added. A whole plethora of transfer windows are about to open in short order so there will be a lot of Grey Spheres and the 350t heavy variant in the near future, however I am pretty reliant on unlocking RTGs and possibly the next level of communications tech to send the data back home with a stronger antenna signal and more powerful DSN. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/AN1eYgj Coming up next time: Will I do to the VAB what I've done to R&D and run out of things to build?

The first thing I did in this session is dump two million funds into KCT points, spending half of those and saving the rest for the soon to be upgraded VAB and its second build queue (there will be a lot of this happening): Contracts are acting weird- two completed when I don't think they should have, this is the first: A crewed altitude record, for a probe? Odd... I went to that craft to check if its orbits were overlapping and if so to shift them a bit to make sure the whole of the Earth's surface would be scanned. Enough radar altimetry data has been gathered to complete the contract, but there's still 20% of the surface left to go: Next up was Yellow Cookie 2 and Diana Zonova's first taste of orbit. Things didn't *quite* go to plan in this mission though... First the main engine failed during ascent, then when I brought the pod back down later it ended up more or less at the South Pole, which isn't something that NASA ever did for some reason. This flight was otherwise very successful, but a second phantom contract completion kicked in- the first rendezvous contract was marked as completed even though it didn't go particularly close to any other crafts in space: A lot of science was gained though, which was immediately spent on unlocking more science experiments and hopefully some better scrubbers, since the Mk1 pod's scrubbers only last 2 days. The next mission after that was Grey Cuboid 2, which repeated the flight of its predecessor and landed on the Moon's surface (though not without a few 'practice runs'), this time in Oceanus Procellarum: This mission was mildly hampered by a Lunar eclipse- see if you can spot the Earth in the image above! More science and free KCT points came back from the Moon's surface, allowing new nodes (better communications and the first fuel cells) to be unlocked. Most of those KCT points are still being saved up for the VAB upgrade though. Grey Spheres 1 and 2 arrived at Venus next, getting A LOT of science as they whizzed through its SOI and some nice images too: I checked in between the two probes arriving but the flyby contract only happens once and then it's orbits, atmospheric probes and lander-type things after that. Almost 150 science was sent back by the two probes, which allowed some key tech nodes to be added to the queue: the first docking ports and second generation capsules (Gemini). With the Gemini capsule in the research queue, I decided to actually do the proficiency training before they unlock this time- good thing too as it takes over a year! With the four original pilots either waiting for their Mercury flight or on leave after it, it was time to expand the roster with some pilots and engineers to fill out the crews of those Gemini missions. There's a slight female bias in the roster now, but so what? While the four newcomers started on their Gemini proficiency training, it was Alexei Ogorodnikov's turn to fly into orbit, mostly because his retirement date is soonest and this mission is intended to do several new things. Unfortunately, the mission didn't go according to plan... A second stage engine performance loss led MechJeb's PVG to massively overcompensate, burning vertically up then vertically down in a desparate attempt to reach the target orbit. Next, what should have been an easy rendezvous with a nicely positioned satellite went awry due to time warp (separation went from ~100m to ~10km) and then the remaining engine ignitions were wasted trying to resolve that problem, leaving Alexei to watch out the window as the satellite flew past at close to 200m/s at under 200m distance. As if that wasn't enough, it turns out that you can't do space EVAs in a Mercury-era capsule so that part of the mission was ditched, however the 24 hour endurance record was completed without further issues. A dicey re-entry later and Alexei decided to try the hatch again, since it didn't open in space. To his surprise it opened this time and he was sucked out of the pod as it parachuted down! Fortunately he had his emergency parachute on him and was able to land safely, but it was just the latest in a long list of issues on this mission. Despite his impromptu skydive (or maybe because of it) Alexei has decided to stick around for nearly a thousand days longer than before, plus a contract and an achievement made this flight pretty profitable. At last, the VAB has upgraded! The build times on the second queue are abysmal, as you can see from the six hundred thousand day build time on that second Green Eagle: But a hundred saved up KCT points dumped into it made a big difference and now it's operating at about 2/3 the speed of the first one. A few rockets suffered from a minor issue on the launchpad, as seen here: 'But none were harmed and they still flew fine. With all five Green Eagles either deployed or about to be, the first one's experiment has now completed and it's time to send that film back down. The full 40 science from this flight, as expected, plus some orbital perturbation data that couldn't be transmitted because I put a really terrible antenna on all the Green Eagles. More KCT points were spent, both the freebies from recovering that science and a lot more that were bought from advance money for no less than four flyby contracts- to Mercury, Ceres, Vesta and Jupiter. All have deadlines over 6 years away and most should be feasible, if not with the Grey Sphere design, then by something similar using the 350 ton launchpad that so far hasn't been used yet. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/DAueaXu Coming up next time: the Mars transfer window approaches rapidly, followed by a series of transfer windows and a series of tech unlocks for more science experiments and beefier RTGs; but will the tech be ready to launch for those transfer windows? And will Tim Sullivan get his orbital flight at last?

Was that a transcript from the CVR on that last flight? “Eject! Eject! How do you eject? *pause* Oh well. Bye... *crash*”

I seem to be having progressively worse ‘incidents’ with my crewed missions in low Earth orbit: the first one went without any issues whatsoever, the second lost the main booster engine close to stage separation but still made it to orbit and back, but the third... The second stage engine lost thrust during orbital insertion, then MechJeb PVG overcompensated for that by pointing vertically up then vertically down to try and make the target orbit and still made a mess of it, then when I managed to salvage a nice intercept of a random satellite to within 100 metres and within one orbit, time warping immediately messed up the orbit and the separation distance went to 10km; trying to fix that wasted the last engine ignitions so all I could do was watch the target sail past at nearly 200m/s. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the pod then refused to let me do an EVA, saying there was no hatch. Once an orbital flight contract was completed I used the remaining fuel in the RCS system to deorbit; as a result the pod came dangerously close to overheating (previous missions used the remaining fuel in the second stage to slow down during re-entry, dramatically reducing the heating problem) before suddenly the pod could EVA after all and the pilot bailed out while the pod was parachuting down. Fortunately he pulled his own parachute and landed safely, as did the pod, but that could have been much worse...

Which is exactly why I didn’t accept that one.

Two updates in one day! Not because I'm sad and have no life, but because some of the last update was from yesterday. And because I have no life... In other news, Green Hawk went into a polar orbit to do some radar altimetry scans with some very large solar panels: Grey Sphere 1 headed off to Venus, although the intercept was a bit fiddly so I forgot to screenshot that bit: It will arrive at Venus in about 190 days. However, before it gets there it'll spend a lot of time in orbit of the Sun, which means it'll send back a load of new science! That science was put into several nodes, including the previously cancelled solid rocketry node: About a month later, Grey Sphere 2 did exactly the same thing, but due to a more favourable alignment by that point it'll arrive at around the same time as its predecessor: A quick montage of launches: And now for the most important launch I've done so far! Ann Horton becomes the first Kerbal ever to go into orbit of the Earth, in a very Kerbal design- a 2m diameter pod on top of a 1.25m diameter rocket! There's a lot of science to be had from crewed orbits- early pods can do four different crew experiments as well as crew reports from space low above every biome. Later pods have access to a lot more experiments, as you might expect. After orbiting for several hours doing lots of science-y stuff, Ann Horton came back down in a spectacular shower of burning debris- fortunately none of it attached to the pod!- before splashing down safely somewhere off the Japanese coast. A double payout from the X-planes contract (just get over 140km and come back) and the first orbit contract. 600k funds is a lot compared to what I've been getting for most other contracts, but trust me, it's chump change compared to what's just been unlocked by that first orbit... It's no surprise that Ann Horton, being the first Kerbal in space, is sticking around for another 900 days in the hopes of going to space again. She added nearly a hundred science to the total on that single flight, but will have to wait her turn as the other pilots need their own first orbits- Alexei Ogorodnikov is due to retire in September 1958 so he's the first choice for Yellow Cookie 2, although Yellow Cookie 3 is going for a 24-hour duration record so maybe that would be a better choice to extend his retirement date even further? Blue sky power and materials nodes added to the research queue- the power one is empty, but the materials one contains a service module upgrade plus fuel ducts, which should also allow radial decouplers to use crossfeed. I could end this report here, but then I went to Mission Control to see what contracts were available and I just... Nearly six million funds in total, enough to upgrade every building I can (except the Administration Building, because it's literally useless in RP-1), even up the KCT points to 300 in the VAB and 250 in the lab, buy the latest avionics levels for all three types and still have 2.5 million left over to plough into the second build line in the VAB. Now, I realise that I've had a habit of making rash contract choices before, and these are particularly high value contracts meaning that if I fail, the entire career could be over, but they're worth SO MUCH and to do fairly easy stuff too: a rendezvous with a crewed mission, not that difficult since I can target literally anything to rendezvous with it; a crewed Lunar flyby which should be easy to do with a free return trajectory, all I need is a chunky 350t rocket to get the pod towards the Moon and the lunar-rated heatshields to bring it back in on piece; and the single crew orbital contract is something I'm already planning to do with Yellow Cookie 3 as the contract asks for 18 hours but I'm aiming for 24 to get the 1 day mission achievement bonus. Now, if I was being really ambitious, I would accept this one: I'm pretty sure I have a very low chance of doing a Moon landing inside the 6 and a half years that contract is asking for, but just look at the advance payment! It's more than all the contracts I just accepted put together, and then some! I made a save before accepting all those big juicy contracts and doing the upgrades etc. with the money, and another save afterwards so I coud decide whether or not to go ahead with this high risk, high reward strategy. After asking on the RP-1 discord I've decided that I'm going to go ahead and do it- six years is plenty of time to get hold of Lunar rated heatshields and build a rocket to throw a pod at the Moon with enough supplies and power to get there and back again, and the rest are easy LEO missions that I can do with the Yellow Cookie design. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/h3Gbf6h Coming up next time: How should I spend 2.5 million funds? Suggestions are welcome!

A series of launches put up the Green Seagull rockets for the communications network contract. Four launches, which by pure coincidence were nearly evenly spaced, put the four relays into orbit; on at least one of those launches, a previously launched Green Seagull acted as a relay during the ascent, so at least it works! The contract completed just in time- I was down to less than 500 funds at that point! I was initially researching a solid rocket node, but swapped that for a node that unlocked hydrazine RCS. Once that had finished, no research was being done due to a lack of science On the plus side, 400k funds is going to be very useful for testing, tooling and eventually building the next generation of science missions, starting with this: Thanks to hydrazine RCS (over 50% higher ISP than HTP while having a similar mass and volume) and the use of an efficient, but single ignition, Soviet kerolox upper stage, the Grey Cuboid has a total of 16km/s of delta-V, more than enough to attempt a Moon landing. A pair of small SRBs were added to the first stage to give it a punt off the launchpad as swapping LR79s to LR89s for improved efficiency also resulted in reduced thrust off the launchpad. The first stage core can make it to a very low orbit (145x145km) with a little fuel to spare, leaving the second stage to perform the TLI burn before all the liquid oxygen boils off. A modified version, shorn of the landing engines and SRBs, will do nicely as an interplanetary probe to go to Venus: There's more fuel margin in the first stage so it could go to a higher orbit, and probably should since it's going interplanetary. Much like the Grey Cuboid, that second stage has a generous fuel margin, but unlike the Grey Cuboid I might need that margin- depending on when I launch it, it may take more than the 3600m/s or so for the 'ideal' transfer as I can't afford to just leave it in orbit while the liquid oxygen boils off. An upgrade to the rather rubbish Green Falcon, the Green Eagle has more than enough solar power to last the whole 200 days and return that orbital imaging sample for maximum value. I'll be doing a few of these soon. And now for the main event: Grey Cuboid 1 launches in August 1957, destination: Moon. When it was 5 minutes to impact, I started the "simulations"; well, if KRASH won't let me do quicksave/load then I have to do it on a real mission! But eventually... A successful landing on the Moon, in August 1957, so I'm STILL ahead of the point where Sputnik 1 made orbit of Earth. I'll probably fall behind at some point due to having the R&D department run out of research on two separate occasions now. Gratuitous picture of Earth as seen from the Moon's surface, just because I actually got to the Moon's surface. Even with a pared-back payload of experiments, the science returns were pretty huge: ~130 science, seven free KCT points from that science, and no less than four new tech nodes added to the queue- better avionics, another orbital rocketry node, the first RTG node and a node which adds bigger RCS parts as well as some teeny tiny reaction wheels which might be useful for interplanetary probes. After accepting a second Moon lander contract I went on a spending spree, adding upgrades to both Mission Control and the Tracking Station to ensure that the Venus missions can actually transmit their data back. I also bought both the Mercury and Vostok capsules and their associated parts, just to keep my options open in future. The rocket build queue is getting pretty long again- a second Grey Cuboid, two Grey Spheres, another Green Eagle, a Green Hawk (radar altimetry SCAN satellite with some big solar panels to power it) and finally the two Yellow Cookie crewed rockets, which might be built by the time the crews are trained to fly them. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/Q1qWmxW Coming up next time: After successfully throwing a small probe at the Moon, can I throw small probes at other planets?

Periapsis kicks aka breaking up a looong burn into a series of shorter ones, all on the periapsis to maximise efficiency (hence the name), is a pretty standard procedure when you have limited TWR and unlimited (or close enough) engine ignitions- because in real life most rockets can only be lit once rather than flipped on and off like a switch as for KSP. There’s even a mod to do just that- Maneuver Node Splitter, which can split the node by burn duration, orbital period or maximum apoapsis. Just be glad that you’re not using real ion thrusters, which have thrust measured in milliNewtons not kiloNewtons and which take months to do their burns...

A full mod list would definitely help, as would knowing what KSP version you’re on. At a guess I’d say it could be due to CommNet Constellation, as IIRC the newest version(s?) of that make you build and upgrade the ground stations separately to the KSC tracking station,