jimmymcgoochie

Don't quote the (7 and a bit year old) original post when you're replying in this thread, it isn't necessary and doesn't add any context.

Here are a few in-game tools that might help you: Astrogator. Tells you the time to the next transfer window, delta-V required and can plot nodes to get there, but you may have to adjust them a bit. Works for the stock solar system, OPM and MPE, JNSQ, RSS (I think) and will give you transfers to other stars if you have additional solar systems installed. A useful tool that can be used in flight as long as you’re in a stable orbit. MechJeb’s maneuver planner. In advanced transfer mode it gives you a porkchop graph showing the delta-V needed at various times and with various transfer speeds- sometimes waiting a little while gives you a shorter and more efficient transfer. It can plot pretty much any kind of maneuver you like and execute them too, works for virtually any system at any scale (but longer burns are less accurate so larger systems will need more corrections) and is automatically included in any command part- crew pods or probe cores. Different features are tied to nodes on the tech tree but you can disable that feature if you like. Where Can I Go. Particularly useful when building your rockets, it tells you where you can go and if you can get back again, using average values- it doesn’t give you transfer times or nodes, but it’s a useful tool for planning missions. It gives you values for all the stock bodies (planets and moons) and will also give values for planets and stars from modded planet packs including upscaled systems like JNSQ or RSS. Works in editors and in Kerbin orbit but from what I remember not anywhere else. I use all three regularly and they make interplanetary flight so much easier compared to just eyeballing it.

Are your wheels broken? Broken wheels can sink into the terrain and behave weirdly, although in my experience they tend to have more friction, not less. Send a 3+ star engineer out, stand them beside the gear and right-click it; if there’s an option to repair the wheels, that’s your problem- repair away and you should be OK. If that doesn’t solve it, you might just have a bad planet mod which isn’t working correctly; try reinstalling those fresh.

Three solar storms in one day of playing KSP (plus one each at Dres and Moho) and I decided that that particular feature of Kerbalism was getting turned down to minimum frequency to stop irradiating my Kerbals around Minmus. The crew of my Minmus station got evacuated after the third storm when they began showing signs of radiation sickness. Built a space plane. Flew it towards space. Missed... Unlocked NERV engines. Attached to said space plane. Flew towards space again. Missed again... Panthers and ramp intakes fizzle out at just over 800m/s which is too slow to make orbit even with NERVs, although I reached 2km/s in the end. Began construction of a huge wheeled lab with an equally huge skycrane to land on the Mun and do much science over many years. Due to its high mass (over 70 tons) it’s being built over time using KSTS’ in-orbit construction system by a crew of engineers aboard Space Lab Two in LKO, before being fully fuelled and supplied (and crewed!) to send it to the Mun. And after waiting nearly a (game) year to find out what happened to those Duna probes, landers and rovers they sent out there with no communications back to Kerbin (due to a lack of powerful comms dishes at the time they were launched and a level 2 tracking station), Mission Control were thrilled when a convenient alignment of Kerbin, Eve and Duna allowed signals to be relayed via an Eve relay and the first trickles of data from Duna and Ike were received. A while later Kerbin and Duna moved close enough that the super-powerful relays in high Kerbin orbit- each with eighteen RA-15 dishes- could reach the relays around Duna directly and even more data began to arrive.

I just edit the lab’s part.cfg file and turn the science per data point value down considerably, this along with a 10-20% science gains setting makes the lab vastly less OP. You can still collect duplicate data and process it in multiple labs on the same vessel to get the full gain from each, but the easiest way to fix that is not to do it . With such low gains, scraping all the science from Kerbin’s SOI still won’t complete the tech tree; this does make the early phases of a career game take a while though.

Forget a GPU- 4GB RAM is right at the lower end of what you can get away with to run stock KSP, let alone with mods. Upgrade to 8GB and you should see a marked improvement, plus RAM is pretty cheap these days. Dial the graphics back a little bit and the integrated graphics system should be able to handle it.

I always complete those missions using the same klaw-equipped vessel that I use to recover parts. An oversized heat shield and some ballast (a 1.875-0.625 fuel tank with feed disabled) make it pretty stable during re-entry even when grappled to some fairly heavy objects, the Kerbals are recovered safely and you get the funds from their pods too. From top to bottom, it looks a bit like this: mini klaw (from Restock+, however 1.10 added a stock version of this and the regular klaw would probably work just as well); probe core HECS with 3x RCS thrusters, 3x mini RCS fuel tanks (I think those are from Making History, one of the non-DLC small tanks would do the same job) and 3x radial parachutes (important!); small reaction wheel with 3x solar panels and 3x Z-100 batteries; FL-A151S fuel tank (1.875m to 0.625m, MH DLC required- a flat Rockomax adapter might do here along with some heavy parts like fuel or ore tanks for ballast) with 3x RCS thrusters; 2.5m heat shield; decoupler followed by deorbiting engine. Low cost, relatively low on the tech tree and most of the cost gets recovered (if you land near the KSC of course) and so far I’ve recovered payloads in excess of 10 tons without any trouble; I recommend MOAR parachutes if you want to bring down heavier payloads though. Or you could do it the boring, mainstream way and stick a klaw on top of a Mk1 pod to let you transfer the crew that way

This was originally in Chapter 11 but I split it out as a) it wasn't finished but the first bit was, and b) it was over 14 thousand words long at that point. Hence the rather awkward 'part 3' in the chapter title; it's really 'part 2.1'. If the formatting turns out weird, let me know; it was really bad when I pasted it into the forums and I had to reformat quite a bit of it before posting. (Edit: Why did I think this was chapter 14!? ) Chapter 12 – Ablaze with stars, part 3 Twenty minutes earlier... “Alpha Four Delta Papa contacting ground control, requesting taxi to runway 09 Left, over.” “A-4DP, cleared to taxi via taxiway Alpha Echo, hold short runway 09 Left.” “Alpha Echo to hold short 9 Left, A-4DP acknowledged.” Tina nudged the throttle lever forwards and the little Aeris 4D trainer jet began rolling out of the hangar, followed moments later by a loud bang and a sound like someone had thrown a box of cutlery into a washing machine on a spin cycle. She shut the engine down and reapplied the parking brakes, sighing internally; her first flight at the Space Centre and she hadn't even made it beyond the hangar doors! “That sounded pretty terminal,” Natalia's voice came from behind her and through the headset with a slight delay, creating a disorienting echo. “Nothing you did wrong, these old crates can be a bit cantankerous sometimes.” “A-4BP, your aircraft is on fire. Recommend immediate evacuation.” “I'll shut everything down, you go on and get out of here.” Tina wasn't about to argue with that, so she left her instructor to deal with the smouldering plane and beat a hasty retreat to an observation platform where Megan was waiting for her with a big grin on her face. “Shut up.” Tina tried to stay serious, but when Megan started laughing she lasted all of two seconds before joining in. “I can't believe we stayed behind while everyone else went down to the harbour, for this. How many milliseconds were you actually moving before it went on fire?” “Maybe, hmm, four? It felt like I just touched the throttle lever and it self-destructed.” Natalia came over to join them. “Well, as you can probably guess, that's that plane out of commission for a while. We don't have a spare on site, so you're free for the rest of the morning and if I can't get hold of a new plane by lunchtime then you'll be going back with the rest of your classmates this afternoon.” She looked up and frowned. “Wow, that's one ugly plane.” Both girls turned round to see for themselves, and sure enough a decidedly ugly-looking plane was flying a downwind approach leg to the north of the Space Centre. Even from a long way away, the plane's engine looked comically large compared to the rest of it, protruding from the rear of the fuselage far more than normal. “OK, enough sightseeing. Let's get back over the runways before that thing tries to land on us.” The trio boarded one of the ubiquitous yellow transport trucks that moved almost literally everything- rocket and plane parts, personnel, food- around the Space Centre and quickly crossed back over to the south side of the runways, stopping outside the Spaceplane Hangar. They could still see the plume of white smoke rising from their plane and leaking out of the air vents in the roof of the hangar it was still partially parked inside. “Thanks, Pam,” Natalia shouted to their driver as she drove off, getting a quick wave in return. She looked back up at the sky. “What is that?” “Looks like a shuttle got rear-ended by a giant hairdryer.” Tina added her expert opinion. “I think it’s coming back round to land.” Megan squinted towards the mysterious plane. “I can barely even see it any more.” “Too many hours staring at screens right in front of your face.” Tina teased. “You’re probably right, actually. So, phphthththphth.” That last ‘word’ was accompanied by a stuck out tongue and a light misting of spit. (Isn’t it strange how some sounds can be written down easily but others look like you’ve picked up the keyboard and mashed it against your face?) “You said that like it’s something to be proud of. So, phththphththphth to you too.” Tina retorted with quite a bit more spit spraying. The plane landed before any more salivary sharing could happen and as it taxied towards the hangar they noticed the big trefoils on the sides of the enormous engine- it was so big it had a small retractable wheel on the bottom of it to avoid tail strikes on takeoff and landing. A pair of NERV-like engines were mounted to either side, their reactor sections and nozzles noticeably longer than the normal NERV, and a number of square things were dotted around on the wings, tail and fuselage which they correctly deduced were retractable RCS thrusters. "Mark 3 fuselage, Big-S wings and tail fins, the biggest engine I’ve ever seen and two NERV-y engines to boot. What is this thing?” Tina wondered. “Name plate on the front says ‘Firebird’,” Megan answered. “Sounds pretty suitable for a nuclear SSTO. But surely it couldn’t make it to orbit, it wouldn’t have nearly enough fuel for that colossal main engine.” “That's the Firebird?” Natalia was incredulous. “If this is the best answer K.V. Roe have to the MX-33, they're toast.” A set of stairs on wheels was towed up to the plane’s door and the pilot descended, closely followed by three others. Tina recognised two of them immediately and managed to duck through the growing crowd towards them. “Desdas! Thombert! Over here!” Desdas looked over, had a very visible lightbulb moment and headed over towards her. “Hello again! I wasn’t expecting to find you here so soon!” “You’d be surprised how far you can get by falling through the VAB ceiling in a fridge bolted to a rocket.” “You did what!?” Thombert joined them. “You’re completely nuts.” “Says the guy flying around in a nuclear plane.” “A plane which you had a significant part in making, too.” Desdas said. “We’ve got six different air-breathers of varying designs in the works and all of them are using variations on your design.” “So this is a Project Elon?” Tina deliberately mispronounced it and Desdas rolled his eyes. “Not on this occasion. There are still a few teething problems with the fuel switching system that need ironed out, but the pure air-breathing system is working as well as we could have wanted so we split that out to make this- the Fireflash.” “So that thing is a nuclear reactor that produces propulsion from thin air?” Megan asked, having fought her way through the crowd as well. “No, it’s a nuclear reactor that produces propulsion from thick air. It really struggles above 20km because the air’s too thin, but we’ve wrung 1600kN out of it at almost sea level doing Mach 4.” “You’re totally mad.” Megan looked a bit pale just imagining hurtling at many times the speed of sound just over the waves being propelled by a big nuclear reactor with air blasting through it. “How did you ever get permission to fly this thing?” Natalia asked as she too made it through the throng of onlookers. “Launching the Liberators into orbit caused enough trouble with all the conspiracy nuts, but if people found out you were flying along with a barely shielded nuclear reactor leaving a trail of irradiated air behind you...” “As opposed to flying along burning ex-dinosaurs and spewing a trail of pollutants into the upper atmosphere where they can wreck the ozone layer and warm the planet?” Desdas had clearly had this argument before and Tina had a moment of deja-vu, remembering a nearly identical conversation with him on the flight home from Darude- wow, was that really this year? “We ran this very engine in a sealed test chamber for two munths at full power and three independent assessors all measured the radiation inside afterwards as only slightly above background levels and nowhere near high enough to pose a health risk.” “Try explaining that to the tinfoil hat brigade. As far as they’re concerned, nuclear = evil death rays trying to control their brains.” Megan replied. “Which is precisely why, despite the obvious benefits to completely decarbonising the aviation industry, we’re restricted to operating this thing over the ocean. And why we had to build in a safety system that can jettison the engine if there’s a problem during flight or on re-entry and make the engine safely descend to the surface using parachutes.” “So this thing can actually make it to orbit?” Tina asked sceptically. “It can take a 5 ton payload into orbit and return at the moment, but when we get a Project Eeloo working we could probably push that up by a factor of five or even eight.” “And right into the MX-33's ballpark with it,” Natalia added. “I've already flown in one of those, and I have to be totally honest: I don't see how you can possibly complete with it.” “Two things: first, we're using mostly existing components- the wings, fuselage and landing gear are all already in use so it's a lot easier to get the whole design certified than with a totally brand new system like the MX-33, even though we're using nuclear engines which are a regulatory headache like you wouldn't believe. Secondly, ours will be cheaper. We’ll be running on liquid hydrogen, which is lightweight and low cost, and the local atmosphere, which is completely free, so we’ll be able to offer a lower price per ton than the MX-33 can even if they get it running on hydrolox, and the per flight cost will be lower too since we can operate from most conventional runways rather than needing a dedicated launchpad infrastructure.” “Alright, but what about payload sizes? Unless you're going to stretch this thing out to nearly twice its length, MX-33 will trounce your payload bay volume.” Natalia wasn't letting them get away that easily. “If we ever get the Mk4 space-certified, we’ll have two or even three times the payload capacity of the MX-33 per flight and be able to handle larger payload sizes too.” “If you ever manage to make a Mk4 that isn’t heavier than an ocean liner and can actually fly,” Thombert grumbled. “That last thing you sent me up in was a death trap and I still have no idea how I got it back down in as few pieces as I did.” “So why are you here?” Tina asked before Natalia could continue her interrogation. “KSC is usually off-limits to private aerospace companies because of anti-bias rules and such.” “The Space Program is offering contracts for passenger and crew transport to LKO. We're in the running for some of the larger passenger runs and depending on our performance for those- and getting Project Eeloo working properly- we'll have a good chance of grabbing some cargo runs after the first year reviews.” “What kind of passenger capacity are you aiming for?” Desdas smiled mischievously. “We're going for a capacity of between 80 and 160 per flight-” Tina and Megan gawped at him in disbelief and even Natalia was impressed- “but how we're going to do it is a trade secret.” “Oi, blabbermouth!” One of the other K.V. Roe representatives shouted over from beside another yellow transport truck, where the rest of the delegation were waiting. “You planning to spend the rest of the day spilling company secrets to nosy kids?” It was clear from her tone that she knew who Tina was. “Well, it's been great to see you again, Tina. If you're still around later, I have a few design improvements to show you for your next DAGGER.” “Improvements!? My design was perfect the way it was.” Tina pretended to be offended. “'Perfect' for a teenager in her shed and 'perfect' for a multi-billion aerospace company are two rather different things.” Desdas replied with his customary grin. “I'll find you after we're done with the presentation.” Desdas walked over to the truck and climbed in before it drove off towards one of the new buildings on the other side of the R&D complex. “You're not going with them?” Megan asked Thombert. “Nah, they figured bringing a grumpy old man like me into the meeting would be bad for business. Besides, someone has to stay here and make sure nosey kids don't sneak on board and start poking around inside.” He paused for a moment before adding: “But now that I think about it, nobody ever told me I shouldn't let anyone on board, and since they're not here to ask...” “Are we allowed?” Tina responded in a conspiratorial whisper. “I don't see why not, it's not like we're going anywhere and the inside is almost entirely standard Mk3 cockpit. A bit pointier than the usual one, but all the interior stuff is pretty much the same.” Megan looked around in a conspicuously inconspicuous manner to check that nobody was looking (apart from the forty or so technicians in and around the Spaceplane Hangar and around the same number of other onlookers nearby) and Natalia responded by wandering off, conspicuously not looking back at them, before the two Cadets and Thombert boarded the Firebird. The interior of the cockpit was, as promised, almost identical to the standard Mk3 shuttle cockpit, with the only obvious differences being the more steeply angled windows and a prominent panel in the middle of the centre console with data from the main engine and the pair of nuclear rockets, which Thombert immediately turned off. It was almost exactly the same as the simulator over in the Heritage Centre and despite the fact that this version was attached to a real spaceplane that had gone into real space, it was a bit disappointing. Megan went to open the airlock at the back of the cockpit which would lead to the cargo bay, but Thombert stopped her. “We're carrying a payload for another company to do some re-entry tests with it; even I'm not allowed to go into it.” With that avenue of exploration closed off, Megan quickly got bored and left in search of food. “But you just had breakfast an hour ago!” Tina shouted after her. “Exactly!” Megan responded from half way down the stairs. “One whole hour!” “So did you really stick a fridge on top of that DAGGER of yours and crash it into the VAB?” Thombert asked her. “I didn't crash it on purpose! Flight controls didn't work, I was just a passenger until it ran out of fuel.” “And is it also true that Jeb tried to fly it but crashed while trying to go under the R&D bridge?” Tina nodded. “Serves him right: Jeb's a great pilot, sure, but he knows that he's a great pilot and he's far too keen to show off as a result. Did you know that back when the Space Program was just getting off the ground eighteen years ago, Jeb flew right through the VAB in a trainer plane? The worst part of that was that it was a two seater, and I was his instructor!” “You were an instructor here?” “Not for a long time, but yes. I did a lot of the pilot assessments for the initial Kerbonaut selections, back when the usual suspects were a bunch of baby-faced teenagers barely out of school. Jeb was always one to throw his planes around the sky, all brute force and running right on the limits- or beyond- but then Val turned up and she was the total opposite, so smooth and so gentle with the controls that you didn't realise just how fast she was going until the G-forces made your eyes water. Everyone thought they were going to have a massive showdown one day, but-” He was interrupted by a loud klaxon that began blaring from all over the Space Centre accompanied by red strobe lights, followed by an announcement: “Attention all personnel. We are now under condition red, repeat, condition red. All personnel report to your nearest muster point and await further instructions.” “What's that about?” Thombert grabbed a headset from the pilot's seat and contacted the control tower. “KSC tower, this is Firebird on the tarmac, do we need to evacuate?” “Uh, negative, Firebird. Remain in place and await further instructions.” “Well, that really cleared things up.” Thombert turned and put his feet up on the top edge of the instrument panel. “Feel free to grab something out the fridge, we might be here a while.” He pointed towards a storage locker marked 'Snacks' set into the floor of the cockpit, within easy reach of the two rear seats. Tina opened it and found a veritable treasure trove of sugary goodness, grabbed a Duna chocolate bar and settled in for what could be a long wait. *** “With our new passenger cabins, we're looking at a capacity of 80 passengers using the current design, rising to 120 when Project Eeloo is completed, with options for size 1 or 2 docking ports and-” “Sorry, can you hold on a minute? Mission Control is pinging me.” Gene interrupted Desdas' presentation. Most of the Space Program's department heads were in the room to hear the presentation: Flight Director Gene; Mortimer, the head of accounting; Dr Wernher, head of R&D; Walt, head of PR; and Jayson, the highest-ranking Kerbonaut still on Kerbin and who was acting as head of the Astronaut Corps as Jeb, Bob and Bill were on Intrepid and Val was on Dauntless. “Huh, they're pinging me too,” said Jayson. “And me,” added Wernher. Gene tapped some commands into his tablet and the room's conference system booted up and connected to the situation room over in Mission Control. The call connected and Bobak appeared on the screen; as soon as they saw his face, everyone knew something very serious had happened. “Gene, we...” Bobak was visibly struggling to keep his emotions in check. “We lost Dauntless.” Even the air conditioning fell silent at the news. Gene tapped some more commands into his tablet and was connected to Gus, the head of ground operations. “Gus, set condition red.” “Understood.” Klaxons began sounding across the Space Centre and in every building, accompanied by red strobe lights and followed by an announcement: “Attention all personnel. We are now under condition red, repeat, condition red. All personnel report to your nearest muster point and await further instructions.” “What happened?” Gene asked Bobak as soon as he had turned off the alarm in the room. “Massive debris field came at them retrograde, they got hit at least fifty times. Dauntless and KST are both gone; Billy-Bobny, Miltrey and Gerzer are all confirmed KIA.” He waited for the tsunami of profanities to abate before continuing. “Val's alive, but her EVA systems are badly damaged and she's sub-orbital and passing through the upper atmosphere right now. On her current trajectory, she'll drop too low on the next orbit and if the heating doesn't kill her it'll destroy what's left of her life support.” A deafening silence filled the room after Bobak stopped talking. “What about a rescue?” Jayson asked eventually. “If we time it right we could get a rocket right beside her before she re-enters or even just grab her with one of those debris de-orbiters and use its heat shields to protect her.” “That won't work,” Wernher countered. “Plasma re-radiation would kill just as quickly as re-entering with no heat shielding at all.” “A command pod on a Trident core would be able to reach her, then we would just need to jump out and grab her.” Jayson suggested. “G-forces would be too high during re-entry and when the parachutes deployed, plus we would need to fuel the Trident up, get the pod ready and assemble it all before wheeling it out to a launch pad. It would take at least two hours before we could launch, and by then it would be too late.” Bobak answered. “What happened to the rapid response rocket we always have on standby to launch a rescue mission?” Gene asked. “If ever there was a time for it, this is it!” “Budget got cut to fund Trailblazer, like everything else lately. I tried to argue against it, but politics came first and I was overruled.” Mortimer replied dejectedly. “What about other launch sites?” “Yeager is in the completely wrong position, Woomerang-2 is still under construction, Darude is offline because of a huge sandstorm, Musgrave don't do crewed launches so they have no crew pods and McAuliffe is too far east.” “You're telling me that we can send our Kerbonauts to Duna, but we can't rescue one from below low orbit? Surely someone has-” Gene cut himself off mid-sentence, realising who else was in the room. He turned to the K.V. Roe delegation. “You said your plane can make low orbit?” “On a full fuel load, yes, but we're running at about a three quarters load right now.” Desdas replied. “We don't have any hydrogen refuelling infrastructure on the tarmac, Gene, only the launchpads.” Wernher pointed out. “Actually, we can take a bit of plain old liquid fuel in the wing tanks and use that for the engines; they won't like it, but it'll give us a little bit more range. If you can fill those up and top off the monopropellant reserves too, Thombert could get close.” “Close is one thing; actually making a sub-orbital rendezvous, though... Could he do it?” “It's... possible. But even if he did, it wouldn't help- Thombert is a test pilot, not an astronaut. Unless you want him to try and scoop her up into the cargo hold and come down with her playing pinball in there, I don't see what good it would do.” “Unless...” All eyes turned to Bobak. “Unless what?” “Unless we send someone else up with him to perform an EVA rescue.” “Who? Most of our active Kerbonauts are either hurtling towards Duna or were on that shuttle.” Gene pulled up the roster and scrolled through it. “Edgas broke his leg three weeks ago and won't be flying again any time soon; Steve's wife had a baby yesterday so he's out on paternity leave; Burbary is half way to North Station One with a team of engineers to repair the tracking dish; Natalia can't do it; Mardard and Sidzer are off-site doing an outreach tour; Jayson, you're already above the maximum radiation limits for this year; and if you think I'm letting Neilvin do a solo EVA again, you're mad.” “I think a little radiation is a small price to pay to save Val; she'd do the same for any of us without hesitating.” “You're saying that now, but in twenty years' time when you're on your deathbed, body riddled with metastatic cancer, will you feel the same way then? Will your next of kin?” Jayson had no response to that. “What's wrong with Neilvin?” Desdas asked. “The last time he did a solo EVA, he panicked and tried to deorbit himself with his jetpack; we only just managed to grab him before he re-entered and he's been grounded ever since.” Gene explained. “Oh, that Neilvin... OK, so why not Natalia?” “Yes, why not me?” Everyone turned towards the new voice as Natalia entered the room. “First Dauntless reports micrometeors, then the feed gets cut, then condition red? I'm not an idiot, Gene, I know something's up. If the shuttle is damaged then whatever you're planning, I'm in.” “Nate, sit down.” She heard the tone of Gene's voice, read the others' expressions and all the colour drained out of her face. “No...” She took a step backwards without realising it. “No no no no no...” “Nate,” Gene stood up and started walking towards her, “you know why we can't send you up there.” “I can't just sit here and do nothing while she...” She abruptly turned and ran out of the room; Jayson went to follow her but Gene stopped him. “Even if we ignored Directive 1.3 we still couldn't send Natalia up there; we can't risk the radiation exposure.” “But Nate hasn't flown an orbital mission this year!” protested Jayson. “She can't be over the limits- unless...” His eyes widened. “Oh.” Then flicked to the door and widened even more. “Oh...” “Is someone going to explain any of that?” Asked Patlin, one of the K.V. Roe representatives. “What is Directive 1.3?” “Directive 1 is 'reasons to not go to space'; 1.3 is 'emotional impairment' and that's all the explanation you're getting.” Gene replied, surprising everyone (including himself) with his bluntness. Seeking to redirect the conversation back to the current crisis, he pitched his next question to Desdas and Wernher. “How do we get Firebird up there to make a rendezvous, given the orbital parameters we have to work with?” “We'd need to start from as far west as we can, otherwise we won't have enough time before re-entering the atmosphere.” Desdas answered. “I'm thinking we send it up flying westbound, turn around just past Musgrave and then punch it at full speed to intercept somewhere between the Island Airfield and McAuliffe, then descend towards Yeager and land.” “Can it do that?” Wernher asked. “The margins are going to be razor-thin on this, a few seconds too early or too late-” “I'm well aware of the margins, thank you!” Desdas snapped back. He and Wernher glared at each other across the table for a moment before both dropped their gazes and Desdas continued in a much less confrontational tone. “I designed this thing and ran countless simulations on it, and Thombert is the best pilot we've got; if I say we can do it, we can do it.” “That still doesn't answer the original question- who else can we send up with him? All our trained Kerbonauts are unavailable and all the Cadets are down at the harbour today; by the time we get one of them up here, it'll be too late.” “Actually, that's not entirely true,” came a voice from the doorway. Natalia re-entered the room having regained most of her composure, although her eyes were red. “We've got two Cadets on-site as of twenty minutes ago: Megan and Tina. I was meant to be taking them up in a trainer plane this morning, but we had an engine failure before we even cleared the hangar. Last I saw of them, they were going up into the cockpit with your pilot, so there's a good chance at least one of them is still nearby.” “You're kidding!” Walt protested. “A couple of untrained teenagers without a shred of experience between them, and you want to send them up for the most difficult EVA mission we've ever attempted? This is-” “The only chance we have!” Natalia shouted, making Walt shrink back into his chair. “You all know Val wouldn't hesitate to do the same for any of you!” Gene intervened to restore a semblance of order- and urgency. “Alright, let's vote on it. All in favour?” Everyone raised their hands except Walt. “If anything goes even slightly wrong, we'll be finished.” He sighed deeply. “But, if it's the only viable option we have, then it's better than nothing at all.” Reluctantly he raised his hand. “That settles it then.” Gene looked towards the video link. “Bobak, clear the airspace from Musgrave to McAuliffe and get a team ready to run this mission from the ground.” “Got it.” Gene switched the connection and Gus' face reappeared. “Gus, get a tanker loaded with liquid fuel and monopropellant then fuel up the Firebird as much as we can; timing is critical so we need it done in five minutes.” “We just pulled the fuel out of A-4BP so we've got a fuelled-up tanker already on the tarmac; it shouldn't take too long to get some monoprop in there too.” “And someone track down those Cadets. Now!” * “Firebird, this is Mission Control, stand by to receive fuel.” “What are they up to now?” Thombert wondered aloud. “Control, this is Firebird, say again?” “Firebird, this is Mission Control. Under Section 7, paragraphs 2-3 of the Space Program Charter we are requesting the use of your aircraft for a priority mission. Stand by to receive LF and MP refuel.” “Wha-? They're commandeering the plane?” As far as Tina knew, this was only the second time that part of the Charter had ever been invoked. “Firebird copies. ” Thombert stopped transmitting but kept talking. “Something's rotten with this whole setup, Tina- first that alert, then this? If they're filling us up with monopropellant and putting liquid fuel in the tanks that says they're looking for some kind of low orbit or high suborbital trajectory, which says either the KSS or the Dauntless is in trouble and they need Firebird to go and bring them back home. It's going to really mess with the engines, though, those Neptunes are really finicky when they're run on liquid fuel before hydrogen and even worse when it's the other way round.” “By 'finicky' are you referring to the phrase 'interestingly non-linear thermal feedback'? Thombert snorted in amusement. “That's one way of putting it! Hmm, I like that phrase, I might just have to steal it.” “I already stole it from someone else, so help yourself.” Tina replied with a grin. Someone came running up the external stairs, stuck their head through the door and immediately turned and ran back down the stairs again while shouting something into a walkie-talkie, their words lost in the wind. “Firebird, this is Mission Control. Uploading details of target, your mission is to rendezvous with the target and recover it. Target is unresponsive and status is currently unknown.” A target indicator appeared on the central display, its orbit noticeably eccentric and dipping deep into the upper atmosphere at periapsis. “Control, Firebird. What exactly is going on here?” “Firebird, switch to channel 7.” “Oh boy, we're really up to our necks in it now...” Thombert muttered off radio. Tina agreed- channel 7 was only used in dire emergencies and the transcripts of the conversations would be kept secret for years or even decades afterwards. Channel 7 had previously been used when Acapello 9's second stage exploded in the upper atmosphere; when a resupply vessel approaching the Kerbin Space Station had been deliberately rammed into the station by a ground controller; after a midair collision between a KSC sub-orbital research plane and a civilian light aircraft that brought the jet down perilously close to a crowded city during rush hour; and during the Woomerang disaster that had caused dozens of fatalities as a failing booster crashed down onto the ground facilities and turned the whole complex into a raging inferno. “Control, this is Firebird on channel 7.” “Firebird, this is Control. We've lost the Dauntless.” Thombert let out an exclamation so profoundly profane that one of the controllers listening in fainted on the spot. “Your current target is Commander Valentina. She was on EVA when the Dauntless was hit, condition currently unknown but our data suggests she's drifting without control and may be injured. One more pass through the upper atmosphere will most likely be terminal, so you have 31 minutes and 44 seconds, mark. Your mission is simple: rendezvous, EVA, retrieve Commander Valentina and return to the surface. Good luck, Control out.” “Firebird copies all. Val, if you can hear us, help is on the way at maximum possible speed.” Thombert looked over to Tina who was staring blankly at the flight displays, her face shockingly pale. “Tina. Hey, Tina!” She looked round and had to blink a few times to focus. “You better scram before someone finds you in here; I don't think they'll take too kindly to you joyriding into space with me, especially not today.” She nodded silently and was half way to the door when the same kerbal showed up again with a colleague, carrying an EVA suit between them which they stowed in the main airlock. “Pilot's got a suit already, batteries charged and tanks are,” he checked the gauges, “97% capacity. All good here.” It suddenly dawned on her who the second suit was for, and with that realisation came gut-wrenching fear. “Wait- I'm not going up there!” She spluttered in terror. Another face appeared at the door, and to Tina's amazement it was Director Gene. “Tina, I'm sorry to have to put you in this situation, but we have no other options; Thombert, we're all counting on you. Bring her home.” Tina tried to speak, but no words would come. “Copy that, Gene. Firebird is ready to roll.” Thombert turned to Tina. “Sit back and buckle up, kid, this could get rough.” She did as he asked, fumbling with the seat harness because her hands were shaking. The outer door was closed and locked and the stairs wheeled away before Thombert began taxiing out to the end of runway 27L. As soon as he was lined up with the centre line, he gave the engine full throttle. Nothing happened for a whole two seconds before the engine spooled up and began powering them down the runway- Much slower than Tina was expecting. Whatever else was said about the Fireflash engine, it wasn't particularly potent at low speed. Once airborne they flew slightly north of due west, gaining some altitude and speed to avoid leaving a trail of shattered windows and eardrums in their wake when they went supersonic, before breaching the sound barrier and turning in a long leftwards loop that brought them directly underneath Val's trajectory, and almost directly over the S. Musgrave launch complex. “Hold on to your hat, kiddo, you're going to feel this one.” Thombert said before he gave the engine full throttle again and the plane powered forwards. The little part of Tina's brain that wasn't curled in a ball sobbing in terror noted the increasing surge of acceleration as the aircraft gained speed, pushing forwards with two and then three Gs as the huge engine gulped in air and turned it into thrust. She looked out the window to her right and saw the Space Centre for a moment before it disappeared behind them. They hit 1500m/s before Thombert pulled up into a 30 degree climb, powering into the sky with wisps of superheated air trailing off every surface. The Fireflash engine began to struggle as they passed through 20km before running out of air at 25km, and Thombert engaged the two Neptune rockets which took over propulsion duty as the Fireflash shut down. The Neptunes were efficient, but rather underpowered for an aircraft the size of Firebird and they barely managed to hold their speed as they continued upwards into the upper atmosphere. “Just a little further,” Thombert murmured as if he was trying to talk the plane into climbing slightly faster. An alarm began sounding and he throttled back the left engine slightly to keep its core temperature under control. Once they passed 35km altitude their speed began to rise noticeably as increased engine efficiency, reduced atmospheric drag and Oberth effect combined to boost their acceleration. They passed through the Kérmán line without any fanfare and the Neptunes exhausted their hydrogen fuel supply a few seconds later. Within seconds of switching over to the liquid fuel reserve, the same alarm began sounding again and Thombert fought a losing battle to keep the left engine's core from overheating, eventually shutting it down completely and limping upwards on one engine until the last of the fuel was exhausted. A small part of Tina's brain noticed that her arms were now floating at shoulder height, but the rest was desperately trying not to splatter her breakfast across the front windows so she stayed silent. They were below and behind Val's beacon, about 3km short of a rendezvous, so Thombert used the RCS thrusters to close the gap down to a couple of hundred metres and set up their orbit so they would cross over Val's orbit ahead, pass around the outside and then drop back again behind her while staying as close as possible for as long as possible. That effort used up nearly all of their monopropellant reserves as well, but their closing velocity was still far higher than would normally be considered safe, or even sane. “Alright, kid, suit up.” “Whaaaaa-?” “Get suited up, you're going out there to grab her.” “But-but-but-but-” “We have a few minutes before we're in range and 95 seconds to make this rescue before we'll drop out of range again. We only have one shot at this and Val is depending on us to get it right. Suit up; I'll keep an eye on you from here and guide you in.” “I-I-I-I've never done an EVA before! I'll stay in here and-” “If you don't do this, Val is going to die!” Thombert shouted at her, making her jump and float out of her seat. He grabbed her arm and half pushed, half threw her towards the airlock. “Get that suit on and get ready.” Tina flailed helplessly as she floated to the back of the cockpit before grabbing hold of a handle at the back wall, but when she tried to turn around to go back to her seat she found Thombert bearing down on her and he propelled her at the airlock and the waiting EVA suit within. Too scared to argue, she stuck her legs into the bottom half of the suit before Thombert lowered the top half into place and attached the neck ring and helmet as she locked the gloves into place. He checked each section was properly locked together before checking the suit's oxygen supply tubes and power cables and the thruster systems. “Good to go. Tap your heels together to toggle the boot magnets and take it easy on the thrusters, that propellant won't last forever.” He grabbed the sides of her helmet and looked her straight in the eye. “You can do this.” And with that he closed the inner airlock door and began depressurising it. Her brain had just enough time to process two thoughts- first, she was actually IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!, and secondly, she was about to jump out of a spacecraft, with no tether, try to meet up with a moving target, grab hold of it and then tow it back to that spacecraft which would by that point be in a completely different place relative to when she left it, and she had no training whatsoever besides a couple of videos from The LayKerbonaut to do it all with- before the outer airlock door opened directly above her head and she was confronted with the gaping maw of hard vacuum for the first time in her life. She immediately and comprehensively soiled herself. “Target position should be showing on your helmet display,” Thombert's voice came through a speaker beside her head. “Take a moment when you're out there to get your orientation right before heading over there and be careful in case there's debris around.” “I can't do this I can't do this I can't aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” Someone in Mission Control had taken remote control of her EVA pack and given her thrusters a quick spurt, sending her out of the airlock and into space. She would probably have profoundly soiled herself, but she had already done that and weirdly that made her feel slightly less afraid. She grabbed the controls from behind her and gave them a few experimental nudges to get a feel for them before orienting herself and setting out towards the blinking dot on her display. “Control, this is Firebird, rescue is in progress.” Thombert radioed down to Kerbin which was spread out below her, taking up one 'wall' of the sky but the other three walls were empty black nothing as was the ceiling and so was the floor and she was falling she was falling SHE WAS FALLING!- A piece of debris suddenly loomed ahead of her and she jammed all the controls down to avoid it, sending her spinning away uncontrollably before she recovered and stopped the spin, her pulse setting a new personal best without her knowing. She had lost the marker but followed the arrow at one edge of the display to aim towards it again, trying to ignore the unpleasant wet sensations in the lower half of her body. “You're doing good, Tina.” Thombert reassured her. “Just take it easy with the thrusters and you'll be fine.” She wanted to take a minute to get her breathing back under control, but there wasn't a single second to spare. She looked ahead and spotted the distinctive shape of an EVA suit. “I think I can see her now. Lights are flashing but she's tumbling.” Please don't throw up in the helmet, please please please don't throw up in the helmet... “You're thirty metres out. Grab her, clip your tether on then tow her back here as fast as you can, we don't have much longer before we move out of range again.” She closed the remaining distance and fired her thrusters to stop just in front of Val. It was clear that Val's EVA pack was badly damaged, the indicator lights all into the red. She spun her around and attached the tether, then looked up at her face. It was bad. Very, very bad. The inside of the helmet had a thin coating of red frost on it and behind that Val's face was covered in bruises. Her breath rattled and wheezed through the radio link and there was something fundamentally wrong with the shape of her spacesuit from her chest down. “I've got her! Coming back to you now.” “Great work. Be careful, but be quick too. I'm sending you a vector to intercept me.” A new marker appeared on her helmet HUD, a series of triangles leading into the distance along with an arrow pointing to Firebird which was too close to the Sun to look at directly. She began following the marked path, accelerating gradually to avoid jolting Val too much but still eliciting a few groans as the tether snapped taut and pulled her. “One hundred metres.” She was fighting an oscillation in two dimensions as Val's greater mass created a pendulum motion that made it hard to keep going the right way. Her propellant reserves were dwindling fast, barely a quarter left in the tank now and something streaked past her in a flash of silver. “Uh, what was that?” “What was what?” “Something just came right past me going really fast.” Whoosh. “There's another one!” “FOD radar isn't showing anything, I'll try a shorter wavelength.” There was silence for a few seconds then Thombert came back with a note of alarm in his voice. “Firebird to Control. We have a whole lot of FOD incoming, orbiting retrograde and spread from 130 to 175 kilometres in altitude and about as spread out laterally too. Tina, get over here as fast as you can and let's get out of here before that stuff arrives. Forty metres out.” Firebird dropped below her altitude and changed from a patch of shadow with a white outline on one side to a dazzling white shape and briefly blinding her with the glare. She fumbled with the helmet visor then realised she was coming in too fast and blasted the thrusters in reverse only to have Val come flying past and a desperate struggle ensued between her thrusters and Val's inertia. In the end, Firebird arrived and ended the battle as both of them crashed into it at a relatively benign 6 metres per second; in a similar way that running into a brick wall at 6 metres per second is 'benign', anyway. “Ow, my shin!” Tina yelped as she banged her leg against the forward canard and flipped around to hit the fuselage backwards, knocking the air out of her lungs with an audible 'whumph'. With the last dregs of the EVA pack she made it to the airlock and pulled in the tether to haul Val in behind her, wincing every time she felt her bounce off something as she did. “We're inside, outer door is locked.” “Pressurising the airlock. Don't take your suit off just yet in case something hits us and we depressurise.” “What about you?” “I've got my own suit, remember? Click on your boot magnets and hang on to something, we're about to start moving in strange directions.” Firebird plunged into the debris field, Thombert doing his best to avoid the larger pieces with the diminishing monopropellant reserves and Tina just clinging on to prevent both herself and Val flying around the cramped airlock. Without any external reference, the spinning and dodging was utterly disorienting and Tina felt motion sick for the first time in her life. Please don't throw up in your helmet, she thought to herself over and over again, and somehow she didn't. She heard a piece of debris clip the plane with an ominous plink and Thombert put all of his many years of experience to use flying through the constantly shifting cloud of debris, managing to avoid taking any hits beyond one small lump that hit at such a shallow angle that it bounced off without doing any damage. After around thirty seconds that felt more like thirty minutes to Tina, the cloud of debris abated. It looks like we're clear,” said Thombert. BANG *** “Control, this is Firebird, we've got good news and bad news.” The nervous chatter in Mission Control fell silent. “The good news is, we've recovered Commander Valentina and she's still alive. The bad news is, whatever debris field took out your shuttle seems to have stuck around- we just got showered with a very large but diffuse cloud of FOD travelling retrograde, and we've taken damage.” “How serious is the damage?” “We've lost the left wing.” A collective gasp rippled through the control room. “How much is missing? Can you still return to the surface?” “The whole delta is gone, both elevons, airbrakes, landing gear- everything. We're coming down no matter what, but there's no way we're coming down in one piece, not with a wing torn off.” “Control copies, Firebird.” “So that's it? We just sit here until we burn up and die!?” Tina was panicking again, but Thombert was almost unnaturally calm. “I didn't say that, Tina; we still have a trick up our sleeve. Remember that secret payload I told you about?” Tina nodded. “It's a prototype mini shuttle. We were supposed to be testing its re-entry profile today; looks like we'll be doing it for real. Open the hatch up and let's get Val strapped in safely before we hit the atmosphere.” Tina struggled backwards, trying to tow Val with the tether without bumping her into anything. The rear airlock hatch opened and she wriggled through into a small module with a single seat and a ceiling that was angled down from the end with the hatch in it, before carefully moving Val through as well; the hatch seemed to be built to match a half-size docking port and the module itself was barely big enough to fit them both. She strapped Val into the rear seat, trying be as gentle as possible as she pulled the harness tight, then headed forwards through an equally narrow tube towards the front of the shuttle, passing a junction with a second docking port in the middle. As soon as she reached the front, she realised that there was something very wrong. “There are only two seats in this thing, Thombert.” Clunk. Tina knew that sound- the hatch in the crew cabin had just been closed and locked. It became horribly clear what was happening, and she turned and raced back towards the other end of the shuttle to be met with a sealed port. She began pounding on the port and shouted through the suit comms. “Thombert, open up! What are you doing!?” “Sorry, kid, but the hatch is locked. You're going home without me.” “Why!? There's room for three on this thing, you don't have to do this!” She was struggling to see through the tears in her eyes, already floating around inside her helmet and splashing against the glass. “We're already kissing the atmosphere, and if I don't hold this thing steady you'll never clear the bay. Undock now.” Thombert's voice was incredibly calm. “I can't just leave you-!” “If you stay here, we all burn up. You still have a long and beautiful life ahead of you, Tina; don't throw it away on some pointless heroics, especially not for me.” “Mission Control concurs.” Tina recognised Gene's voice over the radio. “As hard as this will be to hear, Tina, there's nothing more you can do.” They were right. She hated it, and she hated herself for admitting it, but there was nothing she could do. She closed the inner docking port hatch and locked it, then pulled her helmet off so she could see a little better before heading forwards and strapping herself into the front seat. The controls were very simple- no engines, just RCS and aero controls and the basic flight instruments, with some obvious gaps where displays or switches were still missing. There were two covered toggles for the decoupler on the rear module and the docking port, and she flipped the cover off the rear decoupler's switch, hesitated for a moment, then flipped the switch. A muffled clunk came from behind her and the opposite end of the cargo bay began creeping closer. The bay doors opened overhead, their edges immediately starting to glow with plasma as Firebird re-entered the atmosphere. A few short bursts from the RCS thrusters and they were out of the hold, then swung around to point nose-first. The little shuttle was already vibrating as it hurtled through the upper fringes of the atmosphere. “I'm seeing you clear of the cargo bay,” Thombert said, the signal already beginning to hiss with static. “The re-entry program should keep everything under control, just watch your angle doesn't stray above 60 degrees or below 45- too high and you'll black out or rip the wings off, too low and you'll overheat. And be careful to keep the wings level or it might end up rolling inverted and you'll pop every blood vessel in your brain with the negative Gs. Take it easy though, Val's in bad shape as it is.” “I'm sorry, Thombert. You would be in here if it wasn't for me.” Her voice cracked and she barely stifled a sob. “If you weren't here, Val would still be floating in space. It took both of us to save her, Tina; never forget that.” The shuttle was losing speed more rapidly than the Firebird and dropping lower as well; Tina could see Firebird directly ahead as the shuttle's nose rose to its programmed pitch. “Firebird to control, emergency protocol 1 initiated.” The trio of nuclear engines suddenly detached as a single module. An inflatable heatshield inflated and the increased drag made the engines drop away rapidly behind them with wisps of plasma flickering over the edges of the shield. “Roger that, Firebird, we have a track on the engine module and a recovery team is standing by to launch once we have its predicted landing site.” Tina heard Thombert chuckle. “Never thought I'd be using that protocol for real, I always figured it w- just... -ing par...” The radio dissolved into static, then silence. Tina's cockpit was glowing orange from the plasma racing past the window; the little temperature gauge on the flight display was climbing rapidly towards three thousand Kelvin, and the static from the radio was being drowned out by the increasing roar as the shuttle dropped at hypersonic speed deeper into the atmosphere. Deceleration forces pushed her into her seat and put an increasing strain on her neck, the headrest no use to her as it was positioned for a spacesuit helmet and she didn't dare try to adjust it for fear of making it collapse and breaking her neck. It suddenly occurred to her that this was her first re-entry, and if something went wrong it would also be her last. *** Jeltrey Kerman couldn't sleep. She had tried to sleep, clamping her eyes shut until they hurt, but it didn't work. Now she was bored, thirsty and not the slightest bit sleepy, so she decided to wake her parents up to get a nice mug of warm milk for her. She liked milk, especially milk warmed up in the little oven in the kitchen- not the big oven, that would just be silly, just the little buzzing one in the corner- and she clambered out of bed and stuck her feet into her favourite fluffy pink slippers. She saw something strange on the floor, an odd orange glow that was moving slowly. She looked around to see where it was coming from and then looked out the big window set into the ceiling of her room and the roof of the house to see a bright orange shooting star racing across the sky. “Mamma Dadda wake up! Wake up!” She shouted as she ran through and began jumping on her parents' bed, causing them both to wake up in a mild panic. “What is it, Jeltrey?” said Mamma, blinking her half-closed eyes to try and focus. “Shooting star out my window! Come see!” She grabbed both parents by a hand each and tried to drag them out of bed, which they reluctantly did just to try and keep her quiet and not wake everyone else up. To no avail- Tengas and Milsey were both already awake and came out of their room to see what was happening. They congregated in Jeltrey's room and looked out of the window, and sure enough a bright orange shooting star was just visible as it passed almost directly overhead. They switched rooms to the master bedroom and looked out the identical window on the other side of the house to see the same shooting star racing across the night sky. “See?” Jeltrey said happily as her family tried to blink their blurred eyes back into service. “I think there was a Dynawing shuttle mission launched last night,” said Tengas through a barely stifled yawn. “That must be it coming back down, but I thought they said it was a five day-” The shooting star suddenly flared brighter, then split in two, then three, then a whole shower as the central star broke apart in a blaze of light. Jeltrey squealed with excitement at the spectacle, oblivious to the rest of her family who were now watching in horror at the trails of fire spreading across the sky. *** Altitude- 61,000 metres, speed- 3517m/s, 1.1g. The vibrations were horrendous, shaking the entire shuttle and eliciting a chorus of moans from both it and Val in the back seat. Tina tried to push the nose down a bit more to reduce the deceleration force but the skin temperature was already dangerously high and she was worried about overloading the shuttle's wings if she pushed too far or even causing it to flip out and tear itself apart in the airflow. 52,000 metres, 3127m/s, 2.3g. A bright red light and a loud warning klaxon are never welcome in an aircraft cockpit, much less during atmospheric re-entry. The autopilot had failed and SAS defaulted to neutral, causing the nose to rise dangerously high. Just as Thombert had warned, the unstable configuration caused the shuttle to roll inverted and now the full force of the re-entry heating was coming straight in the front windows. 40,000 metres, 2618m/s, -3.9g. Tina's head felt like it was going to explode. Her vision was bathed in red and her legs weren't working properly. With immense effort she engaged the reaction control thrusters and pushed both aero and RCS controls to roll the shuttle's wings back to the correct attitude. The heat was building rapidly and she could feel a burning sensation across any area of exposed skin as radiated heat from the plasma shockwave blasted through the windows and started quite literally cooking her alive. 37,000 metres, 2278m/s, -4.1g. Tina rocked the wings left, then right, oscillating the roll angle until finally the shuttle rolled upright again- and stayed there. She could smell burnt hair but as far as she could tell her hair wasn't actually on fire, and she needed both hands on the controls anyway. 35,000 metres, 2012m/s, 4.6g. Deceleration was getting even faster as the air got thicker. She was sure the meter clicked up to 5.0g at one point before it began to decline. 31,000 metres, 1655m/s, 4.1g. They seemed to be through the worst of it now, but Val was making some very worrying sounds through the helmet radio. Tina tried to reassure her but her voice came out as a croak due in part to the stifling heat in the cabin. 27,000 metres, 1312m/s, 2.5g. The plasma had completely subsided, but there was nothing on the radio. They must be in a black spot where the ground stations couldn't reach, or else the re-entry heat had cooked the radio receiver. 21,000 metres, 952m/s, 1.6g. The terrain was three dimensional now, mountains and valleys appearing where before they had been one continuous surface. They seemed to be flying around the mountains though which was a relief, and Tina let the nose drop a little more to see what was directly ahead. 13,000 metres, 768m/s, 1.3g. They dropped through a thin layer of high altitude cloud, producing a slight shudder of turbulence. Still no communications and she didn't know what button to press to try and transmit. 7,000 metres, 624m/s, 1.2g. The shuttle didn't glide particularly well, shedding speed faster than she had expected. There was still a bit of altitude left but with no engines she was going to have to watch her speed very carefully to avoid stalling or crashing. 4,000 metres, 329m/s, 1.1g. The shuttle shuddered as it went subsonic, the ground was definitely getting closer and the previously flat area she had been aiming for was revealed to be covered in small hills and valleys without any flat areas in between, and carpeted in forest to boot. She looked around for a better landing site, but with altitude dwindling fast there wasn't much she could do. 2,000 metres, 175m/s, 1.0g. They were running out of land now, the sea was directly ahead and approaching fast. No time to try and turn around now, they didn't have the speed or the altitude to make anything more than a minor correction turn and the shuttle was handling very sluggishly as it was. The thought of attempting a water landing in a totally unfamiliar aircraft made Tina feel queasy, but it was looking more and more likely. 1,000 metres, 117m/s, 1.0g. The glide profile was getting a lot worse as they lost more speed and the controls were barely responding at all. They were going to come down either in the sea or close to it, neither of which were particularly good news. Tina pulled the lever to deploy the landing gear, but the three indicator lights stayed red. Not good. 500 metres, 88m/s, 0.9g. They weren't flying any more, they were in a barely controlled dive towards the sea. She tried firing the RCS thrusters to eke out a bit more speed but they were almost useless at this altitude. She could see a small flotilla of boats near the shore, ranging from speedboats to sailing yachts, and hoped that she didn't crash into any of them. 100 metres, 77m/s, 0.9g. Ninety, eighty, seventy, sixty, fifty, forty, thirty, level the nose, twenty, ten FLARE!!! ten, eight, speed 50m/s and dropping, five, three- 0 metres, 0m/s, 1.0g. Splashdown. Tina hit her forehead against the top of the instrument panel as the speed dropped to zero in a fraction of a second, leaving her dazed and dizzy. The shuttle settled at a noticeable nose-up angle, shrouded in steam produced by residual re-entry heat. As soon as her head stopped spinning, Tina rushed back to check on Val. She didn't look good at all- unconscious and with a little trickle of blood from one corner of her mouth. Water lapped at the tiny window above the rear hatch; no way out there. Fighting against gravity and the tilted floor, she struggled to lift Val's suited body and had to drag her using the tether, moving feet-first up the extremely narrow tube towards the forward docking port. She turned the spinning handle, pulled the lever and pushed to open the hatch, but it only opened half way and the ocean flooded in, blinding her with stinging salt water. The nose-up angle became much more pronounced and the effort of holding herself and Val with just her arms, head still pointing towards the rear of the shuttle, was almost unbearable. An ominous clunk followed by a hiss heralded a leak, spraying a small but high pressure fountain of water through a joint in the docking tube, followed rapidly by two even larger trickles and then a flood from the partly open docking hatch. The cabin filled up in seconds, leaving Tina barely enough time to gulp in air before she was submerged and the shuttle itself began sinking even lower in the water. The water initially helped as it made them both float, but Val's spacesuit quickly filled up and began sinking to the rear of the cabin. The nose was now almost vertical but the air trapped in the cockpit was just enough to keep it floating on the surface. Tina faced a terrible choice: with the pressure equalised, the docking hatch should now open and let them out, but the effort to drag Val's flooded suit was almost certainly too much for her to manage with one breath; but if she let go and went up to breathe, she would have to then swim down and carry Val back up from the very back of the cabin, adding even more effort. She could already feel her lungs burning even worse than her arms and knew it would only get worse. She hauled on the tether and dragged Val's limp body up towards her, muscles screaming in protest. Her feet went into the tube towards the hatch and kicked it to open it further, but she couldn't see if it had worked. Her arms worked in a rhythm- pull with one hand, grab the tether with the other, pull with that hand, grab the tether again- until Val's head came into view. Another problem presented itself: the tube was only just big enough to fit through with arms and legs tucked in tightly and a bit of wriggling; Val could do neither. Tina managed to get almost entirely outside the hatch and plant her feet against the sides of the port for extra leverage, pulling on the tether in the desperate hope that Val would slip through. She needed air, just a tiny little gulp would do- NO! Too late she realised that she had just tried to breathe water, but now her lungs were full of it and instinctively her body gasped, trying to expel it and get air instead but finding only more water. She couldn't stop it and began gasping uncontrollably, feet slipping off the side of the shuttle and arms losing their grip on the tether. No no no... Her body wasn't responding to inputs, arms and legs going dead, vision darkening at the edges until only a bright spot remained directly ahead of her. Please, no... She felt like she was floating up towards it, tried to resist but couldn't, the brightness was getting closer and bigger and she saw an image of her parents and little Sasha all smiling at her and felt an incredible sense of peace as the brightness engulfed her and she floated away... Chapter 13

Just select it on the map in the tracking station then track it. Requires level 3 tracking station (only applies in career mode) but you can then rename it and see its orbit to rendezvous.

You could do it the Kerbal way, and put all your passengers on external seats inside a cargo bay. Mission going south? Just arm their chutes, turn their ejection force up and fire then out of their seats to parachute safely down- just remember to open the bay doors first! You might even be able to set up an action group to eject them all at once.

Mk1 cockpits aren’t really intended to be used for spaceplanes so it’s hardly surprising they don’t cope well with re-entry speeds. There is a mod for an air brake coated in ablator called ablative air brake, but nothing that I know of to add ablator to wings or other parts. It should be a fairly simple module manager patch to add ablator to whatever parts you want, but they won’t look any different unless you want to start changing the models to add heat shield texturing on one side of the wings; however this could cause weirdness with part mirroring.

Uninstall/reinstall? Your download may have been corrupted in some way, so save your save games somewhere outside the KSP directory then uninstall and reinstall the game from scratch.

A few suggestions to make it more stable: Add a ton- or more likely, several tons- of ore to the bottom; radial ore tanks attached directly to the heat shield or the part(s) it connects to will add a load of ballast to the base of the rocket, making it more stable. You should probably get the ore from Gilly rather than hauling it all the way out from Kerbin! Switch the airbrakes for the biggest elevons you've got, airbrakes have really low heat tolerance when deployed so they can burn up pretty quickly but some Big-S elevons are more heat resistant. If you have Breaking Ground, put some big heat shields onto alligator hinges instead as these will provide drag and be really heat resistant, then set them to open up to somewhere between 60 and 75 degrees- this will provide more drag on the side that's tipping and will help your passive stability. Add FL-A151S fuel tanks (or some other 1.875m-1.25m adapter) between the 1.875m fuel tanks and the reaction wheels. That sharp step in size will cause more drag at the base of the rocket making it more prone to flipping; yes, it should be shielded by the heat shield, but you'd be surprised how that sort of thing can affect your rocket, and it might help for the ascent too. MOAR RCS! Vernor engines near the top to brute-force push the rocket back into line; by the time they lose efficiency you should be slow enough that they're no longer needed. Hope this helps!

Comets are almost always larger than asteroids, in most cases substantially larger (class G-I versus A-E for comets), and they're more likely to appear in highly elliptical or even hyperbolic trajectories, travelling really far from the Sun or escaping from the solar system entirely. Either way, they'll appear just like comets in the tracking station until you track them, but if you find a comet it will probably have a distinctive name like Dooley-Hartgen-Milsner* rather than Ast. D-6442 as asteroids do and probably a much higher mass too. If you can see its tail in flight, it's a comet and should be really conspicuous on the map as the tails still show up in map view and in the tracking station (I think, but might be wrong- haven't done much in 1.10 so I can't say for sure). *name invented for illustrative purposes only, I haven't played a lot with 1.10 so can't provide an example of one I actually got.

If you have CommNet switched on, look in the top left of the screen- if there’s no signal and the little probe icon is yellow or red, you don’t have enough/any control over the craft and so can’t delete nodes. If it’s yellow then you should still be able to use SAS modes and all or nothing throttle control, but if it’s red then you’ve got no control at all- this only happens if you run out of power or have ‘require signal for control’ turned on and no signal back to Kerbin (or the home planet of planet packs that replace the stock system). I think you can make or delete nodes with any Kerbal aboard, but I might be wrong and it might only be pilots who can do that rather than scientists or engineers.

I don’t see the point in having inline splitters like that- the part would end up being too wide especially with 4 1.25m stacks in a line plus some wiggle room so the attached parts don’t end up inside each other, the symmetry would be really weird (although there are ways of making different sets of nodes work on different symmetry patterns, but that does have some odd quirks) and I don’t see what the use case is. What do you need this part for? What would this part offer that, say, a radial stack attachment point (it attaches radially but has stack nodes top and bottom), using cubic struts with an offset or just side attaching a nosecone type B or a fuel tank, doesn’t already? Bigger versions of the existing stack splitter/multi-couplers e.g. going from 3.75m to 5x or 7x 1.25m or to 2-4x 2.5m, I could see several uses for that as an engine adapter or for mounting bigger payloads, but again they’d be clustered, not linear.

I’m not saying it’s a copy of what I wrote, but he even did the main gear bounce on the edge of the roof just as I described! BUT- it’s got jet engines, and jet engines are cheating...

Anyone got a way to decouple rotating crew modules’ rotation from inflation/extension? Both the Kerbalism supplied centrifuge module and those in SSPXr will only inflate/extend and rotate at the same time, but I want to be able to have the modules deployed but not spinning to provide extra internal space without burning a noticeable quantity of power when there’s nobody inside them (most commonly due to a total lack of radiation shielding). This is possible using SSPXr without Kerbalism as the centrifuge modules there can be deployed without spinning them up so it’s something in Kerbalism that makes the two things happen at once.

Personally, I prefer Spectra over AVP as I think it looks better and has a bit less performance impact too, however if you’re using OPM then go for AVP as Spectra only works with the stock system.

Just watched the whole series of Away and a few things really bothered me: Real time communication. Three weeks out from the Moon en route to Mars, but their video calls are still in real time despite the light seconds of distance between the ship and Earth. This is particularly conspicuous because later they say the crew can’t do video calls any more because the delay is too long. Also mobile phones in space!? Why use one spaceship for everything- first flying to the Moon to load fuel and water (instead of carrying the fuel and water up from the Moon to the spaceship in orbit), then land the whole thing on Mars when even a minor mishap will strand them there permanently? Where’s the dedicated lander? More importantly, building a spaceship with a deployable centrifuge and then aerobraking it in Mars’ atmosphere sounds like a very dangerous thing to do even with the centrifuge retracted. The ship needs 3 solar panels to operate at Mars, and has 3 solar panels total. One of them malfunctions really early in the series and has to be fixed or the mission is doomed- why are there only 3!? Where’s the redundancy? What happens when they’re landed on Mars and it’s night? Nobody bothered to bring any RCS jet packs for use during EVAs even though those would be an eminently sensible thing to include for a 3 year mission in space. At least two incidents occur where astronauts have to untether and float around near the spaceship, and where those jet packs would have made everything trivially easy. There are only 2 water recyclers, one breaks and the spare doesn’t have the capacity to supply the mission at full output; yup, the spare goes kaput as well with gradually decreasing output. Who designed this thing exactly? And their plan to solve the water problem- poke a hole in the hull to get the water from the radiation shielding- fails when they miss and poke a hole in the hull, but nobody tried to plug the leak and instead they abandon their crew quarters. There are TWO centrifuge modules, but they decided to poke a hole in their bedrooms instead of the other one... They use the InSight lander’s seismometer to listen for the robotic supply droneship’s sonic boom as it arrives on Mars ahead of them, but nobody thinks to scroll forwards a few minutes to listen for a) a big boom or b) a sustained rumble from the super-sensitive seismometer on the geologically inactive planet, to check if the drone ship actually landed in one piece. And apparently none of the satellites around Mars could look at the intended landing site to see if there were any new craters, scorch marks etc. or any visible signs at all of the drone ship on the surface. The spaceship has three landing legs. For something that tall and heavy, three legs seems inadequate and prone to falling over, especially as two of them take the full force of re-entry heating. Their landing site is perilously close to some substantial rock formations as well. It’s also unclear how the ship manages to hold enough fuel (looks like kerolox to me from the few instances where the engines fire) to get from the surface of the Moon all the way to the surface of Mars and back again, especially with a fully powered landing as the ship has no parachutes. The only other possible source of fuel would be the drone ship, but hauling many tons of rocket fuel a quarter of a mile over the surface of Mars sounds like an accident waiting to happen The second supply ship is scheduled to arrive after the crewed ship gets there. Besides the bizarre transfer window involved in that scenario, it’s also reckless to send only one supply ship before the crew arrives because so many landings on Mars fail and it’s literally a matter of life and death. They brought a greenhouse and grew some plants in it, but then the water supplies go kaput so they let all the plants shrivel and die. Those super sturdy, drought tolerant plants that are going to be grown on Mars, wilt and die in a couple of weeks without water... OK, so there were more than a few things... And anything that suggests that the Soviets could have landed a man on the moon, ever, is utterly unbelievable for the simple reason that the N1 rocket would never have worked- over 40 engines on the first stage and every time (twice) they tried to launch one it had multiple engine failures resulting in the rockets exploding.

Try using type B nosecones as radial attachment points and if necessary the slanted C7 fuel adapter to attach larger engines like Poodles. I think Restock+ and/or RLA reborn also have radial attachment parts.

As far as I’m aware, the two can co-exist together. Try IR first as it’s free, and if you don’t like it then try the DLC- which also adds more features to scan for science, new spacesuits and a few other things besides, but which also costs money.

@Gfurst I think the reason you’re having those issues is because you’re using the time to APO start and end times incorrectly- if the end time is greater than the start time then your rocket will continuously fight to push its apoapsis further away which results in an inefficient nose high attitude later in the climb and wastes fuel. Your start time should be higher than your end time which will result in a steeper climb at low altitude but a more horizontal attitude later on and a smaller circularisation burn at the end.

I had a plane with weird wheel behaviour- sinking into terrain, bouncing when deployed or retracted, weird friction- and it turned out that the wheels were ‘broken’ due to a rough landing. I sent an engineer out to repair them and then all was fine again. Check in the PAW that the wheel status isn’t broken and if it is, deploy a 3+ star engineer to fix them.

Set your desktop resolution to be the same as KSP (or vice versa), or download and use the AnyRes mod which lets you change the screen resolution anywhere in the game.