jimmymcgoochie

Flying a plane with normal wings in KSP: pull up too quickly, half of the wing bits fall off, but the remaining pieces are just enough to limp back to the ground and salvage a landing you can walk away from. Or at least, enough to keep it airborne while you bail the crew out. It also works better for building things that aren’t planes and for aerial combat, if that’s something you do with KSP (I still don’t really get it but it looks like it could be fun as a multiplayer thing). Flying a plane with procedural wings in KSP: pull up too quickly, the entire wing snaps off, nosedive, boom. All or nothing is fine if you have ‘all’, but not when you have ‘nothing’! If there was any kind of ‘procedural’ element to wings, I would prefer it to be like stock fairings- draw the outline of the shape then change the angles if you want. Or maybe that physics trick of counting groups of parts as one single part could be applied to wings, similar to the ‘merging’ idea others posted earlier, but that also runs the risk of losing a whole wing instead of a single part if you hit something or overstress it. Trying to balance a game with a distinct set of parts is relatively easy; trying to balance a game made of free form parts that can be created in any shape and size you like is far more difficult. Getting a new player to design their own rocket by subtly tweaking the size and shape of each component is only going to confuse them; telling them ‘pod, parachute, rocket, launch’ is faster and more intuitive. Foisting a wilfully complex system onto everyone to appease a small but shouty minority won’t make KSP2 sell more copies or make the majority of players happy, so wait for the procedural mods or just don’t buy the game.

I don’t think you need any gravity assists at all to punt something into solar orbit beyond Eeloo. A cluster of NERVs and some big Mk3 liquid fuel fuselages will give you oodles of delta-V even if the TWR is low. The question I have is- why are you putting relays outside of Eeloo’s orbit? The signal strength will be really low trying to relay from there unless you throw a lot of RA-100 relay dishes (or have the signal strengths turned up really high) and it would make much more sense to put a relay or two in a high polar orbit of each planet instead.

That’s because Gerald is in a different save.

Blegh, something really messed up the font and text sizing when I copied this chapter over to the forums. I'm also not entirely happy with the middle part of this chapter, so while it reads OK right now I might come back and edit it in future. Chapter 10 – Ablaze with stars, part 1 There were forty 'Rising Stars' when they started. The surprise test was sprung on them as soon as they were all present on day 10 (just before lunch) and by the time they all came back from lunch (just before classes ended and just after the sun had gone down) the papers were marked and a mere 12.5% of them were left. Five. Tina, as expected, aced the test with full marks; to her surprise, Megan scored 47 out of a possible 50 and only one of the remaining group got less than 60% in the test. Protests and complaints from the 35 who got unceremoniously kicked out and sent home were given short shrift, angry parents were given the 'reserve the right to change the course structure and/or material at any time' clause in the program's small print and the thirty five who were expelled were stuck on the first available train the next day while the five remaining students were given an extra day off. Tina was surprised when Megan asked her to go to the museum with her. Surprised that she had asked- they had never really spent time together despite sharing a room- but more surprised that there was a museum and she didn't know about it. They walked up to a rather nondescript building that was called the Heritage Centre; Tina was expecting a couple of rooms full of space-related paraphernalia and a few videos of old rockets, probes and such. As soon as they walked into the first exhibition hall, her jaw hit the floor: looming in the centre of the hall was the broken wreck of the Dynamic, the same Dynawing shuttle that had almost squashed her all those years ago. An entire Lindor V lay along one wall in 'exploded' view; not, in this particular case, in the literal sense: the stages were separated out to show off the engines and one side of the service module cut away to reveal all the internal components and how densely packed they were. Capsules and crew pods were suspended from the ceiling or mounted on the walls; the engine nozzle from a Clydesdale solid booster was set up so people could stand inside it and get pictures taken; interactive exhibits were dotted around with more information about the exhibits, little games for kids and a whole corner had been set up to use virtual reality sets. They ran around the exhibits like children half their age who had eaten too much sugar and began quizzing each other on the different displays. Tina quickly realised that Megan's knowledge rivalled her own and felt bad about her previous misjudgement of her room-mate's character. “Look! Over there by the Dynamic, it's The LayKerbonaut!” Megan whispered excitedly. “Why are you whispering? He can't hear you from over-” He turned towards them and waved, prompting a fit of giggles from Megan. “Should we go over and talk to him? Would that be weird? It would be weird, right?” This was totally unlike the Megan that Tina had seen so far- she was acting like an excited schoolgirl, talking too fast and looking flustered. “I didn't think you were one to be star-struck. Come on, he's not that terrifying.” “He's the most famous space-related video maker on the internet, we can't just walk up and- he's coming over, hide!” “SKS is better,” Tina said loud enough to be heard across the hall. “I heard that!” He replied as he closed in on them. “Comparing that pitiful copycat's inane ramblings with my own witty and informative works is like comparing a firework to that Lindor V over there.” “Speaking of fireworks- did I ever tell you about the time this astrophysical genius tried to launch a Firecracker drive from the Boomera launchpad in TSP? It really was BOOM-era that day!” “The thing with the nuclear bombs? I didn't know that was in TSP!” Megan's eyes lit up as she contemplated all the fun ways to use a string of nuclear explosions as a propulsion system. “And the worst part of it all is that he made more than one attempt before accepting that nuking the launch site wasn't going to get him to space!” How many times? Four. “Wait... Tina?” “Yep.” “You know him?” “We're on a TSP server together. If you ask me really nicely, I might have a word with SKS to get him to invite you too.” “Is there anyone remotely related to space that you don't know?” Megan turned a shade greener with envy. “Have you told her the one about how Jeb broke your phone yet?” “I've heard the one about how he broke her rocket, is that the same one?” “Wait- rocket?” TLK was confused. “Sorry, I've forgotten your name and I'm too lazy to keep saying 'The LayKerbonaut'.” Megan was horrified but TLK laughed. “Jim,” said TLK- er, Jim. “And you are..?” He looked at Megan expectantly. “Megan. The better looking, better smelling room-mate.” “Who snores like a chainsaw and sings in the shower, very off key.” Tina countered. “Has she told you the story about how she called our entire class 'brainless Kro-Magnons'?” “You're just jealous because she got her picture in an exhibit.” “What!?” Both girls shouted in unison. They charged round to the main information display in front of Dynamic, and sure enough, right in the middle was the same picture that Tina had framed on her wall: her, with Val's helmet plonked over her head, a huge grin almost splitting her head in half, with the four Kerbonauts flanking her and a huge fireball rising from the very same shuttle that was now on display in front of them. “Jeb took that picture with my phone, right before a big piece of debris bounced off my helmet and cracked it. That's how Jeb owes me a phone.” “How old are you in that picture, five!? And you're already getting selfies with the most famous Kerbonauts ever?” Megan suddenly burst out laughing. “No wonder you think the rest of us are idiots, you've been training for the Space Program practically since birth!” In that moment, Tina knew that her room-mate had no ill-feelings towards her and almost started crying as a wave of remorse hit her like a sledgehammer. “I've been a horrible person and a terrible room-mate. I'm really, really sorry.” Megan responded immediately. “Moving away from home for the first time is always tough- and if you think you were horrible, you should have seen me when I started at college last year. Apology accepted.” “Thanks.” “On one condition.” “Oh?” “Get me an invite to that TSP server.” “I'll have to ask SKS, it's his server.” “Then ask him.” Jim jumped back into the conversation. “Ask him yourself, he's in the simulator room-” Tina and Megan immediately ran for the nearest door, disappeared through it, then came back a few seconds later. “The Sim Room is that way,” said Tina, pointing to the door on the opposite side of the hall. Both of them studiously ignored the amused grin on Jim's face as they walked past. They found the simulator room by simply following the sound of loud explosions, arriving just in time to watch a Dynawing demolish the north wing of the Astronaut Complex. The simulator pod returned to its resting position and a rather disgruntled SKS emerged, spotted his new audience and glowered at Jim. “I thought we agreed no cheating!” “Action replay, coming up.” One of the four others in the room said from behind a table covered in laptops, tablets and other electronic gadgetry. The big display on the opposite wall came back to life and showed the last few seconds of SKS' approach- and the moment the right landing gear clipped a landing light at the very end of the runway, breaking the wheel off and sending the shuttle careering off the runway and straight into the Astronaut Complex. “See? Cheating! Those lights don't have hitboxes!” “They do in version 1.26. It's not my fault if you don't keep your copy of TSP up to date,” countered Jim. “And it's not like we put them on the runway itself- it's outside the white lines, like all the other lights.” “It's outside the white lines,” SKS repeated in a silly voice, clearly unimpressed with the explanation. “What are you two doing exactly?” Tina asked. “Simple really- deorbit the Dynawing, fastest time from entering the atmosphere to stopping on the runway wins. I got 4 minutes 34, poor Scott here can't get below five minutes without crashing or burning up. And by the looks of it, he won't have time for another run.” “Can we have a go?” Megan asked, trying to look cute but ending up going slightly cross-eyed. “Your turn, Mr LayKerbonaut.” Said SKS. “What do you say we let WeeTeeKay have a turn, Scott?” “Scott?” Megan mouthed to Tina. “Wha-?” SKS- er, Scott, finally recognised Tina and grinned at her. “Well if it isn't the fridge rocketeer herself! How's Kerbonaut training going?” “She called our entire class 'brainless Kro-Magnons', and it turns out most of them actually are.” Megan answered “You are never going to let that go, are you?” Tina grumbled. “And how's little Sasha? You haven't stuck a fishbowl on her head and pretended she's a Terrin, have you?” “She's good, thanks, and no I haven't.” Scott raised an eyebrow. “Not yet, anyway. I tried to explain Tsoilkerbsky's rocket equation to her a few weeks ago, but she puked on me then fell asleep.” Scott and Jim both laughed at that. “OK then, let's see what you can do. Fire up the simulator!” Tina climbed into the sim pod, which resembled a big white box that had melted a bit at the front, and climbed into the chair. The pod had a panoramic view of the huge screen and a bank of displays which began to show flight instruments as the simulation loaded up. In a few seconds, she was in the cockpit of a Dynawing in a 100km circular orbit, half way around Kerbin from the Space Centre with barely any fuel left but a healthy reserve of monopropellant. A big countdown appeared on the screen- 3, 2, 1, GO- and the simulator started. Her strategy was fairly simple- wait until she was about a quarter of an orbit away from the KSC then burn retrograde so that her trajectory dropped into the ocean just beyond it, using air drag to slow down the rest of the way and then glide to the runway. The re-entry burn went without a hitch but as she was re-entering she realised that she was losing speed slower than she had anticipated and would soon overshoot the runway entirely. She tried pitching slightly higher to get more drag, but that led to dangerous heating that would have melted the wings so she had to pitch down again. Dropping to under 1km/s she was far too high to attempt a landing, but not high enough to try and turn around and land westbound. An idea came into her head and she pitched the nose down aggressively, deploying the airbrakes to shed as much speed as possible as the shuttle plummeted nearly vertically towards the ground. “What is she doing?” Scott asked. “Is she even aiming for the runway?” Jim suddenly realised what she was doing. “No, she isn't. She's aiming for the VAB helipad.” Everyone stared at him in disbelief. “You can't land a Dynawing on the VAB helipad!” Megan protested. “It would never be able to stop in time!” Tina was thinking the same thing, but she had a cunning plan to solve that problem. She eased the shuttle out of its dive by performing a slight spiral, shedding more speed and getting a bit more horizontal distance between her and the VAB, then pulled up just before hitting the ground and flew straight at the west wall of the VAB, climbing aggressively and losing speed at the same time. She deployed the landing gear and the drogue chutes at the same time, set the wheel brakes to maximum and pulled back on the controls with all she had, even engaging the RCS despite its inefficiency in atmosphere. “Come on...” “Just a little bit further...” “You can do it...” Everyone in the room was watching intently, often forgetting to breathe. The Dynawing cleared the edge of the VAB's roof, clipped the edge of the helipad with the main landing gear enough to bounce the nose down and then landed with all three sets of wheels at once, accompanied by the sound of screeching tyres as they skidded across the helipad. The speed was dropping, but not quite quickly enough and the nose wheel dropped over the edge of the helipad, scraping the belly of the shuttle along the edge before the nose wheel hit the railing around the edge of the VAB roof and just- just!- stayed on. Tina emerged from the pod to be met with a standing ovation from Scott, Jim, Megan, the four technicians and a tour group who had stopped in the corridor outside to watch through the windows provided specifically for that purpose. “We have a time for that run.” The lead technician spoke over the noise and the applause subsided. “Four minutes.” The room fell silent. “Thirty.” Even the cooling fans on the computers seemed to hush in anticipation. If it was lower than five, then Tina had just snatched the win in outrageous style. Three. Everyone started cheering and Tina was suitably embarrassed. “However- HOWEVER- the challenge specifically stated that the Dynawing must be landed on the runway, and while that was undeniably brilliant, it is quite clear that that shuttle” he pointed to the screen, “is not on the runway, so the time is invalid.” “BOO!” Megan shouted, then realised just how loud she had been and cringed in embarrassment as everyone else laughed. “I don't think I can top that,” said Jim, “and I know he can't!” Scott glowered at him. “We need an impartial judge to settle this.” “We have ourselves a nice impartial judging panel over there,” said Scott, pointing to the windows. “Right you lot- everyone who thinks that time should be counted, raise your hand.” The whole tour group and their guides raised their hands, with several cheers and whoops thrown in for good measure. “It looks like they're unanimous. Viewers, the winner of the go-down throwdown showdown is our surprise contender- and future Kerbonaut- Tina “The Fridge Rocketeer” Kerman!” Jim produced a trophy (if calling a cheap plastic model of a Dynawing that looked like it had been sat on then glued back together again (it had!), stuck onto a lump of badly varnished wood with her name written on it with a marker pen, could really be called a 'trophy') and presented it to her like it was the Kerball World Cup, complete with confetti (three party poppers, one of which didn't even pop) and rousing music (some pre-video adverts that nobody had thought to skip) and then Scott and Jim picked Tina up and carried her around the room on their shoulders until they nearly dropped her because they were laughing so much. “Wait a minute!” The lead technician rotated a monitor so they could see what was on it- a replay of Tina flying the approach, changing one of the simulator's displays to show an external 'chase' view of the shuttle. “Uh oh, busted!” Jim said, giving Tina a disappointed scowl. “What? Nobody said I couldn't do that.” Tina protested. “Yes we did!” Scott insisted. “No you didn't,” Megan came to Tina's defence. “Actually, now that I think about it, we didn't.” Jim grinned sheepishly at them. “Ignorance of the rules is no excuse for breaking them,” countered Megan. “Whose side are you on?” Tina turned to her in mock outrage. All the lights suddenly went out, along with the big screen on the wall and most of the monitors. The room was plunged into near darkness with only the dim green glow of emergency exit lights and the backlighting from the laptops and tablets not running on mains power left. “Everyone empty your pockets, we need change for the electric meter!” Jim joked. A few seconds later someone arrived at the door with a torch. “Sorry everyone, we're doing some electrical maintenance and someone pulled the wrong breaker. I need you all to head back to the main exhibition hall until we get the power back on.” Everyone filed out of the room and made their way to the main hall, where an impromptu four way battle began to see who knew the most about the various exhibits. Tina and Megan were clearly outclassed by the two professionals, but they held their own on all but the most obscure facts. They almost forgot to stop for lunch (almost...) before discovering the 'Space Karts': a strange fusion of go-kart and shopping trolley where the front wheels were driven by an electric motor and could be steered in any direction and the rear wheels could be lifted off the ground with a lever, replaced by pivoting castor wheels. Pull the lever and you could go round corners sideways or even backwards and spin around 360 degrees without slowing down. The 'space' part seemed to consist of some bodywork that looked like rockets on the karts and the paintwork on the walls, but that didn't matter in the slightest as the four of them blasted around for lap after lap having the time of their lives until their karts ran out of power. Which was rather fortunate for all concerned as both Tina and Megan were fiercely competitive and were starting to ram each other in the corners to get ahead. By the time they were finished at the museum, tired and aching from the repeated kart collisions and walking a lot further than any of them realised, it was dark outside and Scott and Jim- sorry, SKS and The LayKerbonaut- left them to go back to the on-site hotel (called the Space Hotel, a cruel trick of somebody in the marketing department to make more money from the guests by making them think they were actually staying in a hotel in space, they had concluded) while the girls headed back to their room and collapsed into bed fully clothed. Megan was asleep in seconds and started making noises like someone dragging a heavy wooden desk across the floor, but despite the racket Tina was asleep seconds later. The next morning Tina got up about fifteen minutes before sunrise, changed into her running gear and headed out for her morning run- out of the Astronaut Complex, round the south and west sides of the Administration Building, round the outside of the Spaceplane Hangar and Mission Control, then up the Crawlerway, round the Launchpad, back down the Crawlerway, round the nearest dish in the Tracking Station, through the tunnel in the R&D Department and then back to the Astronaut Complex for a shower and some breakfast- but made it to Mission Control before her body politely but firmly reminded her that she had spent most of the previous day walking and running for many kilometres around a museum, being bounced around on the Space Karts and, worst of all, she had only eaten two meals and one inter-meal snack too, so it wasn't going to let her complete her run that day and she really should eat something before going back to bed for a while. She walked stiffly back to the Astronaut Complex, stumbled into the canteen and grabbed three slices of toast, eating them as she walked back to her room before falling back into bed. Moments later Megan was shaking her awake again. “Wake up, you're going to miss it!” “Whaaat?” She blinked her eyes back into focus. “The launch! Hurry up, it's already at T minus seven minutes.” Tina was immediately wide awake. Both girls sprinted out of the Astronaut Complex and round the side of the VAB just in time to see the final pair of Kopernicus probes being fired skywards with a tremendous roar and a blaze of fire from the twenty seven 'Swivel' rocket engines of the Trident launch rocket. The ground shook underneath them, the air shook around them and it felt like their insides were shaking as well with the raw power being blasted out of the rocket's engines. As they watched, the rocket began to pitch over to the east and began its gravity turn, streaking off towards the ocean at increasing speed as it continued to climb. They watched it climb until the secondary boosters ran dry and were detached, but couldn't follow it any further because the rocket moved too close to the sun, still low in the sky to the east. Those two probes, just like their sibling that Tina, Megan and their classmates had watched in the Tracking Station on their first day, would be docked to their 'mothership' over the next twenty four hours, with the whole mission scheduled to depart for Jool in around five weeks. That was around eight days later than the optimal time to depart, but the difference in delta-V was a small fraction of the overall requirement to reach Jool at all and it meant that there would be minimal overlap with Trailblazer. When classes restarted on Munday, the five remaining Rising Stars found themselves in the same room as the Cadets in the Astronaut Training programme; a temporary solution until their own course was rewritten, but one which gave them valuable experience and a chance to see just how rigorous astronaut training really was. Some of the trainee astronauts were clearly unimpressed with the Rising Stars' presence in their midst, but most of them accepted the newcomers and offered their support. Tina and Megan ended up working in a small group with Derbal and Elon, who were both in the Pilot stream, and Miltrey, who was already a qualified Rank 2 Engineer with three orbital missions on her record and who was volunteering her time to assist with the training. The grading system was much stricter than in Rising Stars, with the pass mark set at 65% and the cut-off for a grade 1 set at 90%. While much of the coursework was similar to what had been covered in the first two weeks of the Rising Stars lectures, the level of detail here was far higher and while Tina and Megan managed to keep up, their three classmates- Jennie, Gerald and Nathanael- were quickly getting overwhelmed. Despite Tina and Megan trying to tutor them, none of the trio managed to score above 40% in the exam at the end of the second week; in stark contrast, both Tina and Megan outscored several of the trainee astronauts and along with Derbal and Elon scored some of the highest marks in the entire class, all in the high eighties and earning them a surprisingly good grade. Two. It was like an undergraduate student being bumped from their second year to their fourth year but still getting second class honours, or a sports team being moved up a division and going on to make the playoffs. Their results had a profound effect on the class as many of those who had achieved lower marks redoubled their efforts for the next block of lessons, pushing the class average even higher; even Gerald, Nathanael and Jennie managed to scrape a pass on that exam, which did wonders for their morale. Astronaut training also included a sizeable physical element to it, with regular exercise sessions and fitness training included in the course. This led to a very amusing incident (for everyone except Jennie and Gerald, that is) where the entire class went to the on-site swimming pools to assess their swimming abilities; anyone going to space had to be a competent swimmer in case they ended up splashing down in the ocean on their return. Someone somewhere had been given a list of names and had split them by gender for the changing rooms, but hadn't looked beyond the names so assigned Gerald and Jennie to the wrong rooms- Gerald to the male changing room and Jennie to the female changing room when it should have been the other way round- and when they both arrived they each went to their assigned room. Tina and Megan arrived seconds after to be met with a chorus of screams and a panicked “sorrysorrysorrysorry” before Gerald and Jennie both ran back out of the changing rooms with their faces burning. They saw the funny side pretty quickly and soon began pretending to be each other when a new lecturer or instructor came to teach the class. (As a matter of fact, they were the pair of late arrivals on the day Tina had first arrived at the Space Centre whose luggage tags got mixed up for the same reason.) The biggest highlight was yet to come, and unsurprisingly it came in the form of two more rocket launches laden with historic importance. These launches carried the remaining crew, including Jeb, Bob and Bill, to Trailblazer inside the DAVE landers. Each was lofted into the sky atop a 'Yellow Flower' launch rocket, its cryogenic engine cluster powering the rocket off the launch pad with the characteristic faint red fire of burning hydrogen. Yellow Flower was the second of a new generation of launch rockets to enter service, sacrificing outright payload capacity and delta-V for the sake of reusability- all the first stage cores and most strap-on boosters could perform powered landings either at Welcome Back Island around thirty kilometres east of the KSC or the newly reopened Island Airfield 100km beyond that, with the additional option of floating barges if the launch profile made those two sites unreachable. In that respect, they were similar to the Trident, but that was where the similarities ended. Unlike the evolutionary steps that had led from Skyseeker to Skyraider, to Skypiercer, to Javelin and finally to Trident, the new generation launchers were completely new designs with upgrades across the board, using almost exclusively hydrogen or methane as their fuels. They were leaner, cleaner and could fly more efficient launch profiles thanks to their improved avionics and flight control systems, which was enough to placate the environmental groups until the big Fox-Wagons emissions scandal blew up and they forgot all about the space industry for a while. The Yellow Flower had more than enough thrust and range to put the DAVE into LKO, which allowed the cryogenic second stage's excess hydrogen fuel to be transferred into Trailblazer's main fuel tank before being deorbited and recovered just off the coast of Welcome Back Island. Under other circumstances the same rocket could have been used for both launches, but even without the drastic reduction in refurbishment capacity caused by the sabotage at Jeb's Junkyard and the knock-on effects for launch operations around the world, two separate and brand new rockets would be used; the Board of Directors still insisted that crewed missions use entirely new rockets until the reliability of using them again for subsequent launches had been proven. They weren't complaining about the cost savings though: each booster was certified for at least five launches and even with the costs of recovering and refurbishing the boosters they were nearly 70% cheaper than a single-use alternative over that deliberately pessimistic lifespan, more environmentally friendly than dumping spent rocket stages into the ocean and- most importantly- they looked really, really awesome when they landed on their target pads especially in groups. Good for finances, good for PR, good for the planet- there really weren't any downsides. (Why was it called 'Yellow Flower'? Megan had asked that question in a lecture and got this answer: “In the old, pre-Unification days, there were a whole load of secret projects going on developing things like weapons and military hardware. Someone had the idea of inventing code words for their projects that had nothing to do with what said project was for, and so the rainbow codes were created. One colour, one noun, no patterns so nobody could guess what the project was doing based on its name. We've taken the concept and applied it in a slightly more logical way, since we're not trying to keep anything a secret and it makes things much simpler- the colour relates to the first stage size and the name simply distinguishes between the different boosters of any given size. Red is for 1.25m first stages, White for 1.875m, Blue for 2.5m, Yellow for 3.75m and Green for 5m. Yellow Flower refers to the configuration of 3.75m first stage, 2.5m second stage regardless of any additional boosters on the first stage. A 3.75m-1.875m booster would have a different name such as Yellow Pepper, and a 3.75m-2.5m booster with more powerful engines and/or more fuel would get the suffix 'Heavy' whereas one with less powerful engines and/or less fuel would get the suffix 'Light'.”) With both launches completed flawlessly, the biggest countdown in the Space Program's history continued until the big display on the side of the VAB ticked down for the last time. One. The eyes of the world turned to the Space Centre. Journalists and camera crews swarmed the site, interviewing everyone and anyone who looked like an employee in the hopes of uncovering the slightest bit of information before anyone else. Huge crowds of onlookers gathered outside the perimeter fences; pretzel and hot dog stands turned up to feed them; three drones were brought down by the anti-drone defences when they strayed into KSC airspace, their owners forced to pay a hefty fine for their machines' return; and finally, it was time. Time for Trailblazer to do what no other vessel in all of Kerbal history had done: carry its intrepid crew of twelve- three pilots, three engineers and six scientists, including three of the Big Four- out of Kerbin's clutches and off into interplanetary space, hurtling around the Sun until it reached the little red speck in the sky called Duna. Powered by huge solar panels and propelled by a gas-core nuclear engine that could heat its radioactive heart hotter than the surface of the Sun, Trailblazer was the biggest and best spaceship ever built: with contra-rotating centrifuge habitations providing a comfortable 0.3g of spin gravity (matching Duna's real gravity); a large greenhouse to both recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen and provide extra food in the form of highly nutritious but emphatically not highly delicious, kale; and an aquaculture module filled with fish tanks. It was an odd thing to include on a spaceship, but there were several good reasons for doing so: the fish tanks held extra water that doubled as radiation shielding and the fish themselves would help crew morale in the cold dark vacuum of space, millions of kilometres from home. They would also make for a convenient emergency food supply, should the need ever arise. Nearly two years in the making, Trailblazer had also been the most expensive project ever undertaken by the Space Program, the most complex logistical operation ever undertaken by anyone who wasn't at war with someone else and it still wasn't clear what would become of the ship when it eventually returned- a second Duna expedition was unlikely, nobody wanted to go anywhere near Eve and its formidable atmosphere, Moho required too much delta-V and the solar panels wouldn't be able to power the ship if it ventured beyond Duna's orbit, ruling out Edna and Dres. But all that was for later. Right now, the time had come for Kerbals to finally break free of their home world. The transfer burn had been calculated and refined countless times; now it was time to execute it. In the dark. While it was necessary to make outbound transfer burns on the night side from a prograde orbit, there was an unspoken consensus that making the burn in the dark was somehow the right and proper thing to do. Maybe there was a metaphor or a clever pop culture reference in it somewhere, but in any case it made the view from the ground far better as Trailblazer would be visible the whole time instead of being obscured by scattered sunlight or the sun itself. “Trailblazer, Control. Three minutes to burn, report reactor status.” “Reactor is at operational temperature and holding steady, thermal control systems at 62% capacity. Priming the fuel pumps now.” “Copy, Trailblazer. Start burn in T minus two minutes, forty seconds, mark.” A bright white dot appeared over the horizon and climbed lazily into the sky, its leisurely progress belying its true speed. Tina raised her binoculars and the dot resolved into an oblong shape that closely resembled the 'female' symbol ♀, travelling point first and with the 'arms' glittering with reflected blue light from Kerbin's surface and atmosphere. As she watched it slipped into the terminator and changed from white, to yellow, to red and finally faded from view. “Trailblazer, Control. Cleared for Dunar transfer burn.” “Trailblazer copies. All systems ready to burn, ignition in T minus 60 seconds.” A minute later the sky gained a new star, a brilliant pink light that raced across the night at ever increasing speed. It was almost too bright to observe it directly but Tina could just see the light reflected on the huge spherical fuel tank and the solar panel 'arms' as liquid hydrogen was pumped through a nuclear reactor running at six thousand Kelvin and blasted out the nozzle at tremendous speed. “Control, Trailblazer, all systems nominal. Maintaining 0.5g acceleration and reactor controls are well within tolerances. Escape velocity in three, two, one, mark.” There was no visual difference from the ground but the significance was tremendous: for the first time in history, Kerbals were now going to leave the gravity well of their home world behind. A huge cheer went up from all the assembled spectators at the Space Centre, loud enough to set off car alarms in the staff car parks. “That's something you don't see every day,” Megan murmured. On the balcony of a suburban house, a single observer stood with her head turned skywards, watching Trailblazer as it hurled itself away from Kerbin. The day's heat was dissipating rapidly and a cool breeze made the watcher shiver but she never moved from her vigil, tracking the interplanetary vessel as it raced towards the horizon. “You're going to freeze out here,” Natalia said as she came out onto the balcony and wrapped a blanket around Val's shoulders; the latter barely even reacted, still watching the bright pink star shooting across the sky. “You'll have your chance, Val.” “I know.” Her voice was barely audible over the sound of leaves rustling gently in the breeze. “Oh, but I was so close...” “You are going to Duna; don't ever doubt it. And I'd bet you all the chocolate on Kerbin you'll be leading the landing party down to Jool-2.” “Ugh... You had to go and ruin the moment, didn't you?” “Throttle back in five, four, three, two, one, mark. Engine thrust and reactor power are decreasing as predicted, null thrust in three, two, one.” The star faded and winked out. “Trailblazer, this is Control. Final burn was within 0.5m/s of target, we have a Duna intercept.” Loud cheers could be heard over the radio link as Mission Control celebrated. “Cleared to safe the reactor and re-deploy the centrifuges.” “Copy that, Control. Trailblazer is Duna-bound and rigging for the long haul.” Both Val and Tina eventually looked down from the sky, unknowingly mirroring each other's actions almost exactly. “Next time.” Val said, quietly but with an edge of steely determination in her voice. She realised that her face was wet. Some of it was from the wind. “Next time, I'm going to be on the ship looking down.” Tina said, quietly but with an edge of steely determination in her voice. “Oh, you think so?” Megan challenged her, but she was smiling. “You think they'd let you on board?” “Oh, I know so. And if you ask very nicely I might even let you tag along. But I would have to put you in my hold luggage, you wouldn't fit in the overhead lockers.” “You think?” “All the time. You should try it.” “Well if that's your attitude...” Megan put on an exaggerated pout and stomped away but stopped abruptly and turned round again. “I just remembered that gigantic bar of chocolate you have stashed under your bed.” “You wouldn't dare...” Tina glowered at her. Megan turned and ran for the stairs, shouting “CHOCOLATE!!!” as she did; Tina took off in hot pursuit shouting “GET BACK HERE!!!” and they disappeared inside the Astronaut Complex. Twenty six hours later, Trailblazer slipped from Kerbin's gravitational clutches and began its long journey to the Red Planet. Chapter 11

Advanced Audacious Aerospace Research Group: The nuclear option! Yes, we said we were going to wait for the transfer window to go to Duna. That was the plan. We actually are doing that. BUT- an intern suddenly burst into the Boardroom yesterday and breathlessly explained his plan to the stunned Board: take the same huge nuclear booster with the 10 metre hydrogen tank, which we already launched to power the crewed mission, and build more of them to power a second set of Duna missions directly to Duna without the near 600 day wait for the transfer window. This meant Rocket! Launches! Now! so the Board were immediately sold on the idea, and commanded that more nuclear interplanetary boosters be made at once and more Duna missions be made to ride said boosters to Duna at once. Some quick planning and construction later, a second Duna mining rover, a second lander for Ike, a second sample return mission for Duna and a scanning satellite for Duna were all prepared and sent into orbit. First to be launched were two nuclear boosters, which naturally got launched on one gigantic launch rocket- Post-Kerbin Mining were slightly concerned by the sheer size of the thing we had created using their 7.5m launcher components, even if its mass was relatively low for its size. The Duna mining rover was then docked to one of them and sent on its way, but then everyone forgot that we had sent two of them and put separate nuclear cruise stages on the scan sat and the sample return mission- the latter of which warrants a special mention due to its unusual design: a fairing inside a fairing, a docking port attached to the decoupler node of an engine plate with a second, smaller docking port on the plate itself and a two stage lander with the single goal of collecting a mystery goo sample from Duna's surface and taking it back to Kerbin. Unfortunately the only thing that wasn't included in the design was a way to get back to Kerbin's surface, so another launch will be required to collect the sample (or the whole return probe) and get it back to the surface. And what about the Ike lander? We made that one absolutely tiny and stuck a small grappler on the front, then got it to grab on to the front of the Duna miner to piggyback the larger craft and its powerful nuclear cruise stage to Duna, where it will be released in Duna orbit to make its way over to Ike and land. Being so utterly tiny, it only required a small quantity of fuel and a small but efficient engine from Luciole Space Systems to be stuck on to a QBE probe to get the job done at a fraction of the mass of a more traditional design. Assuming it has enough fuel to actually reach Ike and land, that is, although once the mining lander is deployed that nuclear booster will have fuel to spare and won't even notice if the lander sneaks in and piggybacks it a little while longer. The strangest part of all this is, all three of the 'fast' Duna missions will have reached Duna almost eight months (or is that munths?) before the first 'slow' Duna mission even leaves Kerbin! Transfers are weird sometimes, especially if you take the nuclear option and force your way from one planet to another! And we managed to get through the entire update without even mentioning the first attempt at launching a pair of nuclear boosters, which was going fine right up until the fairing separated, but not nearly enough, resulting in this happening: Wait a second- were we supposed to not mention that? Oops Full album is here: https://imgur.com/a/rjOYKvr AAARG's space program has been running for 1 year, 72 days, 6 hours and 12 minutes. Three missions are underway to meet the three uncrewed objectives of Phase 4, which if all goes well will allow the crewed mission to depart at the next transfer window or even sooner! There's also a spare nuclear booster parked in LKO and the Board are fiercely debating what to do with it; name calling has begun in earnest; food is now involved; riot police just turned up...

@Misguided_Kerbal Clarification please: If I launch a Duna lander and an Ike lander on separate rockets then dock them together in orbit, fly them out to Duna together then undock them once in Duna orbit and land them both on their respective bodies, does that count for both milestones? If not I'll just stick the Ike lander to another (non-prerequisite/milestone) probe and piggyback on that instead.

A little compilation of screenshots I've produced for @Misguided_Kerbal's JNSQ Space Race.

Advanced Audacious Aerospace Research Group: Duna preparations! The next Duna transfer window opens in about 1 year, 240 days. This is BAD NEWS! Trying to cut the corner and going there anyway will take a silly amount of delta-V and quite possibly take longer than waiting for the next window to open, so we're going to have to just sit and wait this one out. Or if the Board get bored, knock out some more nuclear boosters with ~20km/s of delta-V and just go for it. While we're waiting, there was no reason not to launch all the Phase 4 vessels into Kerbin orbit ready for the transfer: An Ike lander, which is pretty unremarkable in every way; reasonably small, light and with a decent delta-V budget. A Duna rover, outfitted with mining equipment, an ISRU and a self-driving module (courtesy of BonVoyage) to not only fulfil the Duna landing objective but also fill up the sample return craft and, eventually, the crewed lander(s). A sample return probe, complete with mystery goo canisters to actually produce some samples in order to return them. It doesn't have enough fuel to get back to Kerbin without the mining rover so is rather reliant on that one working. And the crewed Duna vessel, powered by a 'Liberator' nuclear engine attached to a whopping great 10m spherical hydrogen tank (the propulsion system was launched separately because it was pretty bulky), with two single-crew landers to actually land on Duna. They should also be capable of landing on Ike and even have a small probe core attached to be operated remotely for impromptu rescue missions. The massive hydrogen tank used some of its fuel to get into orbit, so a rendezvous was performed with the hydrogen tank we launched a while ago for just such an occasion. That old tank was then deorbited using the last of its monopropellant, before the crew section was launched into orbit and docked to the propulsion section. Jeb, Val and Bob went up in the crewed ship, however it will be several years before that one ever goes to Duna so plans are already being made to bring them back. We might leave Val in orbit though, as she seems pretty happy to be there and everyone else is very happy that she's not here- particularly Frodo, who has made nine reports of threatening messages being left on his bedside table in the middle of the night, all matched to Val's handwriting. She really isn't letting that 'first to orbit the Mun' thing go... Maybe getting 'first to land on Duna' will make up for it? Full album is here: https://imgur.com/a/BtCitOg AAARG's space program has been running for 1 year, 69 days, 2 hours and 27 minutes. There are now four Phase 4 vessels in Kerbin orbit waiting for their transfer windows to open- the Ike lander, the Duna lander/miner, the Duna sample returner and the Duna expedition ship (name may be changed!).

Advanced Audacious Aerospace Research Group: Let's do the time warp again! Well, it turns out that the second set of probes we sent out were necessary after all. All three of the first wave burnt up during aerobraking- even at Duna! Although that slowed us down a bit, the second set of probes all arrived safely and inserted into stable orbits, just a bit slower than we would have liked (and probably slower than we could have done, but the delta-V gauges were a bit dodgy due to drop tanks with crossfeed on the decouplers). The Jool probe burning up may have been our fault- it was pretty clear that the tenuous atmosphere high above Jool's "suraface" wasn't providing nearly enough drag to brake into orbit, so the whole rocket was turned sideways on to try and boost drag. Of course, that meant that the whole thing immediately overheated and exploded as we overestimated the heat tolerances of most of the parts; turns out they'll go boom at a mere 2000K and they were exposed to 2400K. Three more objectives completed: Probe in orbit around Eve: Super Probe E, achieved after 166 days, 1 hour and 4 minutes. Probe in orbit around Duna: Super Probe D, achieved after 192 days, 0 hours and 14 minutes. Probe in orbit of Jool: Super Probe J, achieved after 1 year, 68 days, 3 hours and 39 minutes. These times were all calculated by adding one orbital period to the time shown in the images above to calculate the time at which they would have completed one full orbit after ending their orbital insertion burns. Full album is here: https://imgur.com/a/BNcaG4x AAARG's space program has been running for 1 year, 68 days, 3 hours and 40 minutes. All Phase 3 objectives are now complete and the Board are salivating at the thought of commencing Phase 4. Or maybe that's because a big truck just pulled up outside the Boardroom windows and started offloading chocolate, hard to tell. (OOC: And in case you're wondering about the title: I had to time warp for over a year for this one update!)

Step 1- download and install the ‘deflatable heat shield’ patch by Xyphos. It does exactly what the name says. Step 2- deflate the heat shields BEFORE you decouple them, possibly with a Sepratron on one side to push them away from your ship. Step 3- profit!

@Torchster Copy and then open the persistent.sfs file inside KSP/saves/your-save-name-here (the name of your save!) and do a global search for NaN using Ctrl+F (or CMD+F for Mac), then replace each one with the number 1 to assign it a value. Then try loading that into KSP and see if it has resolved the issue.

Common reasons for no control include, but are not limited to, the following: No connection. If the little probe icon beside the signal gauge is orange and there’s no signal strength, that’s probably your issue. No power. Check you actually have electric charge in your rover, because no power = no communications and no control either. If the probe icon is red and there’s no signal bar at all, this is probably your issue UNLESS you set ‘require signal for control’ in the game settings, in which case it could also indicate that you have no signal and the game correctly prevents you from controlling the rover. Probe core in hibernate mode. If you DO have a signal but the probe icon is still orange, that’s probably the issue as the probe must be in active mode to control it. Right click the probe core and toggle ‘hibernate’ to off (active) and that should resolve it. Mod interference. If you have mods installed- and you’re in the modded installs section so I’m guessing you do- then please provide a list of mods and your KSP version as something obvious might show itself. Log files are good too as they may reveal exceptions or errors in the KSP application that may be causing the issue. I’m thinking of RemoteTech or CommNet Constellation which both make a lot of changes to the communications systems, and possibly Near Future Exploration which adds some new mechanics around signal power, but there may be more I don’t know of or haven’t thought of. Lack of signal can be caused by a few things: No connection between rover and relays. Check your rover’s antenna(e) are deployed and not broken, and that you have a line of sight to the relay that isn’t blocked by the ground. You may not have enough range, although this is more of an issue trying to connect back to Kerbin than between two vessels in the same SOI unless your rover is relying on a really weak antenna or even the built-in one from a probe core. No connection between the relays and Kerbin. This can happen if you only have the KSC ground station active and Kerbin is facing the wrong way, or because your relays are blocked by something else, or because they just don’t have the range- the distance between Kerbin and Duna varies considerably as they orbit and you’ll need three or four RA-2 relay dishes (with 100% DSN and antenna power settings) to get a solid connection at all times, or a single RA-15/RA-100. Wrong type of antenna used on the relays. They have to be relay dishes to be able to bounce the signals from other craft to Kerbin and vice versa, a direct antenna will not work. The stock relay dishes are HG-5, RA-2, RA-15 and RA-100, the rest are direct dishes. Every antenna, stock or from mods, will say what type it is in the VAB or SPH editors, so make sure you’re using the right type.

Advanced Audacious Aerospace Research Group: Over to Bobak for another traffic update! Three space stations, two surface bases, 11 Kerbals in space. "Not for long!" declared the Board. "Bring them back here at once! Because, er, reasons..." So a big, ugly rocket was created to visit the Mun and Minmus, collect the Kerbals from orbit and the surface of both and then return with minimal refueling. The only problem was that nobody told the base and station crews about that plan, so they took matters into their own hands and flew Space Stations 3 and 4 back from the Mun and Minmus respectively, Space Base 2 back from Minmus and Space Base 1 into Mun orbit from the surface, to be picked up by the rescue ship. Space Station 2 was also deorbited from LKO and made a surprisingly accurate re-entry over the KSC- good news for Jeb, Bill and Bob who were spared from a really long walk back in the middle of the night, but not so good for the staffers whose cars were peppered with fragments of burnt-up space station in the KSC car park... Space Station 3's return was made a little trickier by Val, who threw a screaming tantrum when she was told they were returning to Kerbin and had to be sedated by her crewmates using sleeping tablets dissolved in her coffee before their return. Upon learning that Frodo had stolen her record for longest time spent in the Mun's SOI, she retreated to a corner of her quarantine cell (the one with the nice padded walls and floor again) and sat flicking her finger over her lips making bibble bibble noises. Nineteen hours later, she still hasn't stopped... All our Kerbals are now back on Kerbin and are having every conceivable medical test (and a variety of other experiments) performed on them to see how they've been affected by their prolonged stays in low or no gravity. (We tried explaining microgravity to the Board, but after three hours we decided to stick with 'no gravity in space' instead of bashing our heads against a brick wall trying to make them understand...) Full album is here: https://imgur.com/a/jH0PGcQ AAARG's space program has been running for 30 days, 4 hours and 13 minutes. Next up- some probes will be arriving at other planets, but that's going to take a while and will require A LOT of confectionery to distract the Board with during the wait.

What would be added to KSP with a SpaceX tie-in? A fancy looking landing leg, a deployable gridded fin and that’s about it. Actually doing reusable boosters like SpaceX do is incredibly difficult within the confines of stock KSP as it requires simultaneous control of the first stage core, extra boosters for the Falcon Heavy and the second stage at the same time. Actively landing and reusing rockets isn’t necessary in KSP and recovering the dropped stages can be done various ways with different mods, so it’s hard to see what the average KSP player would get out of a SpaceX tie-in. I would expect to see more work with NASA, ESA, JAXA, ROSCOSMOS etc. as there are a huge range of real space missions that could be replicated (I’d like to see some improved rover parts based on Curiosity etc.) instead. And life support is definitely out as a stock feature- it’s better to have it as an opt-in system, using a mod of whatever complexity you want to use, from the simple Snacks! to full-blown life support simulation, instead of adding something that will be too complex for some players but too simplistic for others and which the mod makers will then have to overwrite or work around. Space station supply missions have been going on since long before SpaceX ever came on the scene and they're far from the only ones doing it now.

I think this is essentially guaranteed in KSP2 with the whole colonies thing that’s getting such a big emphasis there. I don’t see it happening in stock KSP though, there wouldn’t be anything for them to do.

If there’s a repeat, it should be done in science or career mode. There’s nothing in sandbox to stop you building a ten thousand ton monstrosity to land on the Mun inside an hour, but the other modes require a more gradual approach as the good parts are kept further down the tech tree, and career also adds limits on cost and facility upgrades too. Going to the Mun is easy; going to the Mun with all level 1 buildings is far more challenging! I’m open to different planet packs, haven’t tried Beyond Home but it looks really good.

Advanced Audacious Aerospace Research Group: Our probes are bigger than yours! It appears that the Board has enthusiastically embraced the 'bigger is better' philosophy of rocket design, because our latest vessel is absolutely gigantic! Well, it needed to be, because the last set of probes we launched might not have the fuel to make orbit and it's better to be safe than sorry. With 13 'Etna' cryo engines on the first stage, three 'Liberator' hydrogen-powered nuclear engines (and a lot of drop tanks) on the second stage and two 'Ulysses' cryo engines on the third stage, this rocket packs almost 20km/s of vacuum delta-V on the launch pad and had at least 600m/s of delta-V left in the first stage when it made orbit. Well, it did every time it made orbit- one of them had a really bad launch profile, pitched over too far too soon and ended up burning up in the lower atmosphere and disintegrating as soon as the fairing overheated. The Board were livid- 2.4 million funds down the drain, they screamed furiously at anyone they clapped eyes on, although nobody but the Board knows what a 'fund' is, never mind two and a half million of them. After the first probe struggled for power due to the high energy demands of the tank cooling systems, the next two were given even more solar panels (ironically, first one is going to Jool and would have the greatest need for the extra power) and unlike the last time we used the 'Liberator' engine, these three probes had no issues with overheating- no doubt due to the use of liquid hydrogen as their propellant. All three probes have been dispatched and will arrive at their target planets with enough delta-V to brake into orbit without the need for aerobraking. As is customary, it was only after all three were underway that we realised that the fuel tank hiding under the heat shield on all three probes was incorrectly filled with liquid fuel and oxidiser, rather than liquid methane and oxidiser, but it also appears that decoupling the heat shield will make this tank explode and give us a bit more delta-V, should the need ever arise. This does pose a small problem for the first generation of probes, though, as they used the same design for the probe itself and so the nose fuel tank will need to be emptied before decoupling the heat shield. Full album is here: https://imgur.com/a/fgj34kT AAARG's space program has been running for 20 days, 5 hours and 24 minutes. We now have two probes each going towards Eve, Duna and Jool, and while the second set will take a bit longer to get there, they also have a far better chance of making orbit as they won't be relying on aerobraking to do so. With that out of the way, our next missions will most likely be to recover all our Kerbals scattered around Kerbin's SOI; they're needed on the cleaning rota as all the janitors have mysteriously disappeared...

@Boyster I wasn’t aiming that comment at you specifically. I just don’t see why or how an underground dwelling race would ever be able to create a space program and I think the main reason for the underground theory is because the game itself doesn’t contain any above surface settlements besides the space program facilities, and that’s because they would require more development than it was worth and would adversely affect game performance; even the KSC causes a noticeable frame rate drop compared to flying the same plane or rocket somewhere else, including the other launch sites which have less buildings in them (especially Woomerang).

Unless you want to try a hacky save file edit (and I don't recommend it, save files are best left alone unless you know what you’re doing) the contract is gone and you can't get it back.

I completely disagree with the “Kerbals live underground” thing- I just see the lack of artificial structures beyond the launch sites, tracking dishes and such as unimplemented features that would have taken too long to add in any detail, would add to processing and graphics loads and weren’t too important for a space game. If Kerbals lived underground then why are the KSC facilities above the ground, when they’d be more at home- and safer from stray rocket debris- with those facilities under the ground and with the launchpad being more like an underground silo? I’m referring specifically to the Astronaut Complex, R&D and Admin Building, although pretty much everything could be underground except the dishes of the Tracking Station and the runway itself; an aircraft elevator at the end of the runway would get the planes to the surface from the underground hangars. I always think of Kerbal society as broadly analogous to our own, only without the wars that spurred the development of aerospace technology in the 20th century so while Kerbals have many of the same modern systems as we do like the internet, smartphones etc., in some areas they have gone down different paths (extensive rail travel rather than airlines, for example) and things like jet engines and rockets are novelties that are only just becoming viable and so begin to appear in the lower nodes of the tech tree. This also makes progress through the tech tree more like a real scientific exercise as more data gets gathered which can be used to design the next technologies; how exactly measuring the temperature and air pressure all around Kerbin can result in the development of some solar panels and reaction wheels, I have no idea, but that’s the inherent limitation of a generic ‘science’ resource to unlock things. I also have some more detailed ideas about Kerbal society, technology and such but these will be forming part of my KSP fanfic story (link in my signature #shamelessplug ) and aren’t directly relevant to stock Kerbin in stock KSP. And since Restock’s mystery goo cans have purple goo in them, I always think of mystery goo as purple even though the stock goo can and the science definitions don’t give any clues about its colour- only that it sometimes changes colour around certain planets.

Reusability is entirely feasible with stock parts, but is simultaneously niche enough that many players won’t care and yet is already covered by a range of mods that can make rockets either recoverable (get the funds back for them) or outright reusable (actually refuelling the rocket, adding new payload and launching it again). Leaving aside all the arguing about satellite spam, it’s hard to see how KSP would benefit from any kind of SpaceX tie-in when there are so many missions that could be added from NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, JAXA and more. I would much rather have some additional rover parts or surface outpost components as stock.

Maybe a link would help?

Just finished reading through this excellent story after stumbling across it accidentally late last week. Keep it coming! I did notice that in one of the earlier chapters they were told to keep their speed below 200 kilometres per second- yikes!

@Kraken that doesn't exist you seem to be climbing for a long time before starting your turn, then turning very aggressively and adding more drag than you need to with that high angle of attack. Try turning earlier, at about 100m/s, to an angle of 10 degrees and then holding prograde from there, you may find you get into orbit with more delta-V remaining and a shorter circularisation burn at apoapsis.

Advanced Audacious Aerospace Research Group: Over to Bobak for a traffic update! A quick update here with a few small but significant events. Minmus Orbiter arrived back at Kerbin and re-entered flawlessly, splashing down into the ocean and ending Natagard's nearly 20 day mission. A couple of hours later, Space Station 4 braked into Minmus orbit, and a few hours after that Minmus Lander re-entered and splashed down, with Hilsey snatching Natagard's record by mere minutes. There was one moment of alarm in Mission Control as Hilsey's parachute opened much slower than expected, resulting in excessive velocity right down to the last 10 metres or so above the water where it slowed down just enough to stay intact on splashdown. All future missions will be sticking to the default 1km full opening altitude instead of reducing it in a bid to shave a few seconds off the descent time; it just isn't worth the risk. One more milestone falls in Phase 3: Space station in orbit of Minmus: Jennie, Nathanael and Buzz Kerman in Space Station 4, achieved after 19 days, 11 hours and 29 minutes. In other news- three new Kerbals have been press-ganged into voluntarily joined our space program: say hello to Mirsy, Dildan and Luing! Full album is here: https://imgur.com/a/FP9iT7m AAARG's space program has been running for 20 days, 0 hours and 17 minutes. All Phase 3 Milestones are now complete and only the probe prerequisites remain. While the probes continue their journeys (and new probes may be launched with MOAR FUEL to ensure that stable orbits are achieved around all target bodies), additional missions are being planned to recover all the crews from the stations and bases to return them to Kerbin. We're getting a bit worried about Val trying to land on the Mun with just her EVA jetpack, so this may happen sooner rather than later!