jimmymcgoochie

Jeb sat alone, looking up at the stars. Around him, dark grey to the horizon; above him, utter darkness punctuated by millions of billions of lights, from tiny specks like pinpricks in the night sky to the bright streak of the Milky Way to the purple-hued dot called Eve, lurking low to the horizon where the sun had just set. He was on the Mun. All the naysayers and doom-mongers were silent now. They had done it- not just him, but all the thousands of people working tirelessly together to make the dream of one day walking on the Mun a reality. It was difficult, it was expensive, it was probably unsustainable, but just for a little while kermanity had a foothold on more than one planetary body. It had taken years of work to get this far, from the early days of strapping rudimentary pods directly to solid rocket motors and yeeting the occupant into the sky, to strapping slightly less rudimentary pods to larger rockets and yeeting the occupant into orbit, and finally to strapping rather advanced pods to humongous rockets and yeeting the occupants all the way to the Mun. And back, in all cases- even the time where Jeb himself had had to get out and push his pod out of orbit with the EVA jetpack on Moho 1 because the retro-pack misfired. Something plink-ed off his helmet. “Kerbin to Jeb?” A voice came over the radio. Val. Part of him still smarted over the fact that she’d been promoted instead of him, but the rest of him knew that she was the best pick for the job, able to keep the team going long after other teams would have given up- plink “C’mon, Jeb, or we’ll miss taco night.” Sighing, he stood, dusted off his suit and trudged back to the MERRI- Munar Exploration and Reconnaissance Rover, nobody really knew when or why the I had been added- to join Val in the airlock. A quick ultrasonic blast followed by a burst of compressed air cleaned off their suits before the inner door opened and they could take them off, stashing them in their respective lockers. Val keyed the intercom. “All aboard, Gus. Let’s go home.” “Rolling.” The rover began to move, picking out a path with its powerful headlights to avoid the myriad obstacles scattered across the surface, shrouded by the pervasive grey dust that did strange things to perspective. “One of these days you’re going to be daydreaming again and we’ll leave you behind.” Val said, half-serious. “Nah, you like me too much for that. Geofdos, on the other hand-” “Hey, what’d I do?” Geofdos piped up over the ‘com. “Let me guess- you were on the Mun again.” Jeb smiled sadly. “Got it in one. I don’t even have to try any more, Kerbin’s looking more and more like it every day.” A jolt came through the rover’s wheels, followed moments later by a dull thud through the air and then by a chorus of frightened yelps from the passengers in the lab module, now hastily refitted into a makeshift barracks where the fortunate few the MERRI crew found could rest up before being assigned permanent spaces in the bunkers beneath the Space Centre. “Just a rogue loner, scopes are clear.” Bob reported from the cupola. MERRI continued on through the gloom, wheels scrunching over the thick coating of ash that covered what had until recently been a small town. The Great Crater supervolcano, the one everyone said was extinct, had erupted mere days before that historic Mun landing flight had been due to launch, spewing ash into the air and hurling fireballs halfway around the world to ignite catastrophic fires wherever they landed. In mere days Kerbin was engulfed in thick clouds of ash, the sky increasingly blocked out by volcanic fallout and the world economy in freefall. MERRI trundled on for another half an hour until the hills gave way to flat ground as they approached the Space Centre. Acapello 4 still stood on the launchpad, dirtied by ash-clogged rain and listing to one side where the launchpad had buckled under its weight during an earthquake, a symbol of everything that could have been- but would now never be. By the time MERRI rolled into the Spaceplane Hangar it was down to just two wheel drive out of six, the motors clogging with ash and either shorting out or just overheating until some critical components melted. No planes or helicopters could fly now and now even the most rugged vehicle on Kerbin, built to handle a relentlessly hostile alien environment, was failing. Bill was waiting to meet them, his face etched with concern: he knew all too well the damage that was being done to MERRI’s critical parts and how few spares were left. As the gaggle of rescuees climbed out one by one, clutching the few possessions they had managed to save- if any- he hurried over to the driving compartment, then stopped when he saw the look on Gus’ face. If even Gus, endlessly resourceful and renowned for his ability to fix nearly anything, thought it was too much to repair, there was no hope left. MERRI was dead, and soon it would be stripped down for parts and spares to keep the other systems running for what was rapidly becoming a full-blown underground town. One of the wheels suddenly caught fire, sparking a panic until it was doused by fire extinguishers. “I guess that’s that,” Val said. “I guess so,” replied Jeb. They both turned to look at the tilted rocket on the pad, lost in thought. “If this had happened a few days later, after we had launched, do you think we’d have made it?” Val asked. “To the Mun? Sure. Back home, probably, but there wouldn’t be anyone there to find us and I don’t fancy trying to paddle the whole capsule back to shore.” A heavy bulldozer rolled into the hangar towing a truck with a broken wheel. The occupants of the truck quickly began unloading what looked like hundreds of glass cylinders, and as they passed Jeb and Val saw what they were. “Seed bank specimens. I guess being buried inside a mountain wasn’t safe enough for them,” said Val. “Everyone, your attention please.” Gene’s voice came through the tannoys across the Space Centre. “Another eruption has just started and this one looks like the biggest one yet. The Emergency Council has voted unanimously to seal the outer doors at midnight tonight. If you’re not busy, I suggest you head outside and take a good look at the night sky, because it’s the last time you’re going to see it in a long time- maybe ever.” The unloading restarted with greater urgency as volunteers joined the effort. A team of welders approached the main hangar doors, checked outside to make sure no other vehicles were coming, then began to close the doors to then weld them shut. Jeb and Val watched as their view of Acapello 4 narrowed to a slit, then vanished. “I’m not crying, you’re crying.” Jeb said and Val chuckled through her own tears. “We’ll get another chance. Or if we don’t, our children will.” They shared an awkward look before she hurriedly continued: “Or theirs, or twenty generations from now.” “Val, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” Jeb shuffled from foot to foot, uncharacteristically nervous. “Yeah?” Val seemed very close all of a sudden. “Before the Moho 1 flight, I put laxatives in your drink so you couldn’t fly and I’d get the flight instead.” He was expecting her to be surprised, even angry; instead she just laughed. “I already know that.” “Wha- how?” “I saw you doing it, Jeb. You’re many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.” “But- but- why’d you drink it then!? You were about to be the first Kerbal ever to reach orbit!” “Exactly! It was absolutely terrifying just thinking about all the things that could go wrong- that DID go wrong- but if I had tried to back out they’d probably never give me another mission so I was stuck with it. Until you inadvertently did us both a favour.” “So I’ve been feeling bad about that for years and you don’t even care?” Jeb asked incredulously. “I was saving it for something special in the future, but what with the end of the world and all…” Val’s eyes suddenly gleamed mischievously. “I just had a crazy idea.” She told him. “You’re right- that’s crazy.” “So, are you in?” “Definitely!” *** At one minute to midnight, the Space Centre appeared deserted. On closer inspection, however, all the entrances to the underground structures beneath were crammed with people all getting their last glimpse of the outside world, the sky, the stars, the Mun and even Minmus. “Attention everyone.” Gene’s voice came through the tannoys, echoing strangely through the buildings. “All personnel are accounted for, we are about to seal-” “FIFTEEN SECONDS TO LAUNCH.” A much louder voice drowned him out, a computerised warning triggered automatically by the computer systems in Mission Control. “What’s going on?” “TEN.” “NINE.” “EIGHT.” “SEVEN.” “SIX.” “JEB!!!” “IGNITION.” “FOUR.” “THREE.” “What did you do!?” “TWO.” “ONE.” A deafening roar shook the air and ground alike, followed by a wall of dust and ash blasted away by the full force of five Mastodon engines at full thrust. Night became day as the rocket lumbered off the pad, drifting sideways until the gimbals corrected its trajectory, dodging the launch tower by millimetres as it rose on five columns of fire. Gene pushed his way through the crowd to where Jeb and Val were standing. “I know that was you, Jeb. What were you thinking?!” “It was her idea!” Jeb protested. “What else could we do with it, Gene? Leave it there to rust and leak rocket propellants everywhere? Let it fall over and explode?” “That’s not the point, Val…” Gene’s heart wasn’t in it and soon he was craning his head skywards to track the rocket’s progress as it climbed towards orbit. They all watched as the first stage cut off, its tanks drained, only for the second stage to pick up where it left off and continue the ascent. Once it had disappeared over the horizon the doors were closed and sealed; for how long, nobody knew. “What were you going to say if you were first to land on the Mun?” Val asked Jeb. “Oh, probably something spontaneous like ‘Look, Ma, I’m on the Mun!’. You?” “I wrote a whole little speech at one point, but I boiled it down to stepping off the ladder and saying: ‘This is a small step for a Kerbal, but a giant leap for Kerbalkind.’” *** Unseen, unheard, the third stage performed flawlessly, running on the automated scripts uploaded to the flight computers. The command module was released, rotated and towed the lander away from the spent rocket stage before performing the braking burn into munar orbit the next day. The lander undocked, deorbited and finally landed within fifty metres of its target, finding a clear spot in a boulder field. It deployed its solar panels, antennae and cameras, ready for its occupants to take that small-step-that-was-also-a-giant-leap off the end of the ladder. But it didn't happen. Not yet.

Go to the main menu settings, re-bind the wheel controls to the arrows not WASD so they don’t clash with attitude control, then enable advanced tweakables. Set traction control to zero, friction control override on and friction to maximum, check all motors are enabled and control from the lander can facing forwards. And check that the brakes are off before driving, I’ve made that mistake before.

Try recovering the cursed plane from the Tracking Station first?

You can disable the camera shake in the settings, accessed from the main menu.

A short update: plans for a new, more powerful launch rocket are progressing slowly because none of the upper stages available in the next node (1956-7 OR) are any good. AJ-10 is unreliable and a bit feeble, pump-Scud is a bit meh, Gamma-201 has terrible ISP but at least it comes with all-axis control and lots of HTP for RCS use (with extra helium, sold separately). 70kg payload to LEO is barely better than the Jeroboam can manage. But then I had an idea. An idea that led to me sending a pull request to RO (which was subsequently merged) and then spending a couple of hours restarting KSP to check if my custom Waterfall configs were working (nope ). See, the RD-108 is hands-down the best first stage engine of the 1950s. No contest. It's more powerful and considerably more efficient than any American counterpart thanks to staged combustion, it has four verniers that give full pitch/yaw/roll control and its reliability isn't too bad either. There's also a separate part for the verniers thanks to Making History. 35kN, the same high ISP in vacuum (about 315s, streets ahead of anything else) as the RD-108 but in a neat little package. The engine was previously misconfigured and weighed as much as the whole RD-108, hence the pull request to fix it to a more sensible mass and remove a dubious rescale to make it a similar size to the real verniers. The RD-108 is ground-lit only, but the vernier doesn't have this limitation- or TestFlight configs, for that matter, though I might try to add those later to make it a bit less blatantly cheesy. Four engines are needed because they only gimbal on one axis and using two just didn't work; I might try three at some point soon. It's going to be expensive to make this thing, but the test sims showed it could carry a full ton to LEO which should be adequate for lunar impactors and possibly even orbiters. It's comfortably under 60 tons, though the upper stage is only just under the 10 ton limit of its avionics so future upgrades will need new avionics too. Next time: Actually launching stuff?

Or just a generic “fusion fuel” and “fission pellets” that can be made of whatever they need to be made of at that given moment- liquid fuel, oxidiser, solid fuel and monopropellant aren’t specified, hence the debate on whether LF/Ox is kerolox, methane-peroxide or even high-performance hypergolics (and the apparent weirdness of the NERV getting liquid hydrogen-level ISP while using kerosene or methane as propellant), so why should more exotic substances be specified when a more generic term would offer greater flexibility? I don’t care what combination of deuterium, tritium and/or helium-3 you’re throwing into that fusion reactor, only that reactor go brrrr and rocket go fast.

I think you need to check the burn time on both of those METAL probes- the smaller one is using an engine that might not last the full duration, while the larger one has a burn time of 40 minutes which just won’t work for Mercury, cosine losses will eat the delta-V. You should also check the power production down at Mercury and adjust your solar panels accordingly, you don’t need nearly as much panel area that close to the Sun and every gram counts when going to Mercury. A well-insulated kerolox stage using something like the RD-58 might be a better choice for a Mercury capture stage as it’s significantly more efficient than any hypergolic stage and doesn’t need the heavier HP tanks so will be lighter too; it’s possible to use hydrolox for Mercury capture as I’ve done it a couple of times, but that requires much MLI and radiators.

KSP/saves/your-save-name-here/ships/subassemblies I believe?

Probably TUFX, there are plenty of configs out there so try some and see which you like best.

The KSP launcher is a textbook example of “worse than useless”: A redundant UI with a redundant button to start the game, which we already had; Zero in-game utility; Uses processor and memory; Crashes a lot; Can be removed from the game with zero in-game impact. But management gets what management wants…

Tried to build a reusable spaceplane to be used as the upper stage of a rocket. Those streaks of fire in the background? Those are (or rather, were) the rear half of the plane...

I believe it’s Magpie Mods that makes Restock/+ parts shiny, along with a variety of other mods’ parts, and I think it uses TUFX to do so so you’ll need both.

TUFX and KS3P might do what you want- both are post-processing mods that change how the game looks, which could include the background blurring in that loading screen. If you also want the additional KSC buildings featured in the loading screen, you’ll need KSC Extended- this has been updated since that loading screen was made so it doesn’t look exactly the same, the diagonal road coming off the crawlerway isn’t there any more. It also adds some extra launchpads which are functional (you can launch rockets off them!) and replicate some of the real launchpads at Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Centre.

Turn the science gains down to 10% in the difficulty settings, it's a totally different game that way.

You’re hauling ORE to orbit!? Why, when you can build a mining rig and just leave it on the surface, hauling fuel up to the station via a dedicated fuel tanker instead?

You definitely shouldn’t be moving files around inside mods. If downloading from SpaceDock, CurseForge or GitHub you need to unzip the downloaded folder and then check what’s inside- if the mod contains a GameData folder, drag that into the root KSP directory so it merged with the existing GameData folder (or copy the contents of mod/GameData into KSP/GameData); if not, copy the mod folder into KSP/GameData. Make sure you also include any dependencies such as Module Manager, some mods come with those but others don’t.

A lot can depend on the difficulty settings, you’ll progress a lot slower at 10% science gains than 100%. Most of the facilities and buildings in the KSC are their own biomes- and some of them change as buildings upgrade- so there’s A LOT of science to be had right there, not to mention the Island Airfield not so far away; a little jet-powered science rover to trundle around the KSC can rake in science points for minimal effort. While it can seem like a good idea to send every science experiment you have on every mission, the heavier experiments (materials bay mostly) can really cut down on your delta-V. It can be better to send a group of small, lightweight probes with only the small, lightweight experiments on them and drop those across several biomes, something that works particularly well for Minmus due to the low gravity and thus low delta-V requirements per lander. Try sending a scientist Kerbal on a free-return trip around the Mun and have them transmit all the data they can and collect the rest and store it in their pod to be returned later, this will maximise the science gained per mission. Free returns can take a bit of work to get right, but also cut down on the fuel you need to carry and so lighten the entire vessel.

Are fuel tanks going to be that procedural in KSP2? I thought it was going to be a set of fixed diameter tanks with a variety of fixed lengths that you can switch between to give the equivalent of e.g. the various FL-Tx00 tanks in a single part for convenience, much like structural tubes and engine plates in KSP. While I've come around to the use of procedural parts in RO/RP-1, I don't like them for stock KSP as it's too much faff and to my knowledge that sort of millimetric-accurate part tweakery isn't coming to KSP2.

Started working on a new and improved space station design that I plan to use as the hub for lunar operations in the future, with docking spaces for landers, visiting crew capsules and refuel/resupply missions. I’ve made the core module with docking ports, storage tanks and all the ancillary systems to make it functional in its own right, plus a lab module that will be launched separately; still to do, a habitation module for visiting crews so they can sleep in proper beds and not the seats in their capsules and possibly a dedicated propulsion system for orbit adjustments. I may even add a docking port so the existing station can be connected up to the new one, no sense letting it go to waste since it’s already out there.

I think RO/RP-1 has added the RD-254, the vacuum-optimised version of the RD-253. It’s about three times as powerful as the RD-0210 and a bit more efficient too plus very high reliability. If not it’s in CH4/ROEngines Extended. TestFlight engine failures are permanent- if it fails, it’s dead (unless you cheat and reload a save afterwards ); TestLite allows you to restart engines if they fail in some circumstances, TestFlight does not. I think the station problems might be due to some parts being designed for nitrogen pressurisation at 1atm (101kPa, the larger station modules) and others for oxygen pressurisation at 0.3atm (30.3kPa or so, the D-2 capsules and smaller station modules) and since it was only oxygen pressurisation that was running things got weird. Don’t EVA from a large part as it vents the whole thing, and don’t turn habitats off as it wastes a lot of O2 trying to depressurise it later. Probably best to destroy it and build something new without those ugly, heavy docking ports in the middle.

It uses the letters of the bases, not an actual DNA sequence that means anything. No idea, they’re very different.

Gattaca, a film about a future where humans are genetically modified, has a title that uses only the four letters of the base codons in DNA: ACGT.

Many launches to come today! First up is the first Green Amethyst GEO contract sat, replacing the old Green Cucumber with more than double the payload capacity- I should have known reliability would be a problem- the upgraded NK-33 config starts out at about 93% ignition chance, compared to >99.99% chance for the RD-107/108, though it will improve in time. The rocket was rolled back, engine replaced and rolled out for a second attempt. Meanwhile, I came up with an idea- use the first stage of this rocket, with some minor tweaks, to launch a Gemini capsule into orbit. It turned into an SSTO for some reason and things didn't go too well... Excessive G-forces at the end of the burn (over 10G despite throttling the engines down to minimum thrust), plus the fact that it's heavier and more expensive than the existing launch rocket and the upcoming move away from Gemini to D-2, means this is one design I won't be taking forward. Back to the Green Amethyst for the second launch attempt: A significant increase in contract value- at least 30k funds- for a mere 2000 more funds to build the rocket? That's a win in my book. Now on to the interplanetary missions! Venus and Jupiter windows are both open so there's a lot of them. Green Radish 1, Venus rover: Its identical twin rover will be launching in about a month to see if the more favourable "flyby" window is better or worse than the "orbit" window. Purple Cube Jupiter 1: Should have ample fuel to capture into Jupiter orbit and do repeated flybys of the Galilean moons, with the potential to try and orbit one of them if the opportunity arises. Purple Cube Jupiter 2: Also sent on its way without incident. Purple Sphere Venus 1: Back down to Earth (sort of) for another Yellow Gong LEO Gemini mission, carrying Pat and Tony for what might be their first missions. It's the first time I've launched two engineers on the same mission, but that's mostly because everyone else is doing training right now, either for the D-2 or X-15. A quick visit to the Yellow Timpani space station... And a few days at higher altitude, during which I noticed that the fuel cells weren't producing enough power to run all the systems for some reason: And then back home with some scatterer-related weirdness (strange sky colours, bouncy ocean) because CKAN decided I needed to reinstall every single mod because CKAN itself had done an update. Looking back, I think Antony had a flight before which would explain the reduced retirement delay compared to Patricia who definitely hasn't. Green Satsuma 1, asteroid chaser: Following a course correction a few days later, the closest approach is down to a few kilometres- but critically outside of physics range. RSS asteroids are stupidly large and can sometimes be larger than physics range but this one seems to be approachable; still, best to do so slowly rather than crashing into the multi-gigaton space potato. I took a look at what other transfer windows were coming up and found a Neptune window that's just about usable if I build a probe RIGHT NOW. Ironic, since the journey will take over thirty-four years and so would last until mid-2003. I'll probably send a later mission with much more delta-V and arrive before this one and I'm not sure this probe would actually be able to capture into a useful orbit, so I might not go ahead with this one. That Neptune probe also uses a new launch rocket design, broadly similar to the Purple Shape but with a single 7.5m diameter first stage core instead of the Proton-style design with 3m side tanks and a 5m core. It's a bit heavier, but can carry an enlarged second stage giving greater total delta-V. Working title is Purple Geometry and the probe has been named Purple Tangent. I also designed a new Moon rover which should be better equipped to handle those long lunar nights, since the old Green Huckleberry rovers seem to be perpetually low on power and still have a lot of science (mostly mass spectrometry 4) to do. Using the new 350t launch vehicle I designed for the new GEO sat launcher so these rovers are named Green Basalt. Coming soon: A few rover launches and "landing" on an asteroid.

The Years Start Coming: Reach Year 100. And They Don’t Stop Coming: Reach Year 500. Fed To The Rules: Fail a tutorial. And I Hit The Ground Running: Send a Kerbal to space in the first launch of a save. It Didn’t Make Sense Not To Live For Fun: Go 100 years without launching any rockets from the KSC. Your Brain Gets Smart: Unlock every part. But Your Head Gets Dumb: Activate and decouple an engine in the same stage. So Much To Do: Have 10 active logistics routes. So Much To See: Visit three new star systems. So What’s Wrong With Taking The Backstreets?: Use the cheat menu to reach orbit with a craft that has no engines. You’ll Never Know If You Don’t Go: Go below sea level on Jool. You’ll Never Shine If You Don’t Glow: Have 5 nuclear reactors in a colony. And on a slightly less frivolous note… Rock Star: Build a colony on Gilly. Purple Rain: Build a colony on Eve. Red Giant: Have 1000 Kerbals in a colony on or orbiting Duna. Why Didn’t That Work?: Build a wind turbine on a body with no atmosphere. Whoops…: Destroy a KSC building. Return To Sender: Reach space and then land the vessel on top of the VAB.

Every body in the game should be a destination in its own right, not just something you fly past without stopping because there's nothing there bar a convenient gravity assist. Stars without planets might be common in reality but they'd add nothing to KSP2 and could be detrimental if you can only see planets around other stars at close range- what use is building a huge and expensive interstellar ship only to find out there's nothing there when it arrives decades/centuries later?