jimmymcgoochie

@Stamp20 I believe this fulfils the criteria for the Ultimate Challenge- with the caveat that it's in the Snarkiverse, a rearranged stock Kerbol system, but also uses Kerbalism on hard mode (but minus the broken solar storms):

Time to end this. Stand by for capture burn in *nyooooom* three hours ago, thanks auto-warp-to-node button . Mun intercept plotted. And since I accidentally gave Meg 9 landings and Gerdorf only 4, Gerdorf gets to do the final one. Getting back to equatorial orbit of Kerbin when the Mun orbits at over 60 degrees inclination isn't easy, unless you do a wonky departure burn that leaves from the top of the Mun's SOI and ends up practically equatorial. Rendezvousing with the return vessel was a much more challenging problem: even with the engines on maximum thrust mode it was still a very long intercept burn which meant that several more burns were needed to not "rendezvous" at a distance of about 90km. Gerdorf and Meg went over on EVA- Gerdorf to fix all the failed parts and Meg bringing the big box of surface samples (and one cool rock from Pol). They waved goodbye to their trusty ship Temerity and headed for the surface. And since the return craft was overbuilt with a big excess of fuel, they managed to do a precision landing almost directly on top of the KSC! Mission accomplished, the crew returned on Y10, D311. Screenshots of all the flags are included in the Imgur album linked below, the Eeloo flag decided to turn itself into a base for some reason but it's definitely a flag. Flag count: 15 (out of 14?) and done! Temerity was more than a match for the Snarkiverse, finishing the trip with enough delta-V to revisit most (if not all) of the planets again, if I was willing to put up with the glacially slow acceleration of full efficiency VASIMR thrust. It could probably handle a system with more planets and moons to visit, but I'm not about to do another one of these as I like my KSP sans slideshow FPS thankyouverymuch.

Before I get too far behind, here's post number fifty! Each of the Green Nectarine relays executed its circularisation burn without any trouble and only using a small fraction of its fuel; turns out they were pretty overbuilt for this, but better safe than sorry. With their orbital periods all synchronised to one thousandth of a second per orbit, they won't be moving out of formation any time soon. I haven't set up their four S-band dishes to point at anything yet, mostly because I can't remember if they're supposed to point at each other or the Green Mango imaging satellites and I haven't actually launched any Green Mangos yet. Speaking of which: A successful launch, the satellite reached its target orbit and deployed all its science equipment while the dishes were targeted at the four Green Nectarine relays. Onwards to Mercury and the Purple Circle Mercury 1 probe which is going to try and capture into orbit. MechJeb says it's about 300m/s short of capturing into orbit and there's not much I can do to change that- ...or is there? See, each of those stages has an RCS system on it, which means it has propellants that are dead weight to the stage's delta-V, unless I set the RCS to fire prograde with the main throttle and get some useful extra thrust while reducing the "dry" mass of each stage. After almost TWENTY MINUTES of braking burns... And using up so much of the probe's fuel that the generic thrusters hit their residual limits and left just two 45N RCS thrusters to do all the work... And having to dig the periapsis out of the ground because the braking burn was so long... MERCURY ORBIT ON THE FIRST TRY!!! With almost nothing left in the tank, Purple Circle 1 manages the impossible and captures into Mercury orbit. It's not a great orbit, very eccentric and only just staying inside its SOI, but an orbit is an orbit and the contract completes while the science rolls in. And in a total coincidence, less than a day after Purple Circle 1's arrival at Mercury, Green Banana Mercury shows up for its second flyby. It gathers very little data on its way past, but just doing a double flyby when it was only ever designed for one is still pretty good going. With that done, the final scores are in: Coming soon: A lot of simulations as I experiment with launch vehicles, and the first real flight of my "new" supersonic jet.

Developing a new super-heavy launch rocket with several competing goals: Launch 150t to low Earth orbit; Weigh less than 3000 tons total; Use pre-tooled parts as much as possible to save money over tooling up large and expensive new parts. After several failed attempts and realising that I wouldn't get close to that 150t goal, I eventually created this monstrosity that can manage 140t per launch: It has it all: asparagus-staged boosters with ugly carbuncles on the side to hold even more fuel for the six mighty F-1 engines, a core stage that air-lights like the Titan rockets with the big SRBs but which uses Soviet hypergolic upper stage engines and a hydrolox second stage to complete the propellant bingo. The good news is that almost all the parts used have already been tooled, with the exception of one fuel tank that's pretty cheap to tool and the new 3000-ton avionics which is decidedly not cheap to tool; the bad news is that it can only just make it to orbit with that 140 ton payload and with a launch mass of over 2990 tons there's virtually no scope for improvements.

If you hover the cursor at the top middle of the screen, just above the altimeter, you should get a drop-down menu with the options "recover vessel" and "space centre". You can also recover a vessel from the Tracking Station by selecting it and then the crane-like icon beside the delete button.

If you just need more Kerbals, try this: activate the debug menu (alt+f12) then open the Kerbals tab, go to Create and make some new ones; you can choose all their stats and even their names and they'll automatically be added to your roster of active Kerbals, you can deduct some funds in the cheats tab if you like. As for the root cause, this exception in the logs is probably relevant, but it's also pretty weird because KerbalRenamer isn't on your mod list: NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object at KerbalRenamer.VeteranRenamer.Start () [0x00061] in <c0228513e9ce49ab8d3eca95c04c6e55>:0 Steam breaks modded KSP a lot, the best way to avoid this is to make a copy of KSP that's outside the Steam folders and put your mods in that copy: 1. Right click KSP in Steam library > browse local files. 2. Copy KSP/saves/<your save name> and paste that on the desktop. 3. If you used CKAN to install your mods (and you should!), click File > export modpack and save that to your desktop too. Screenshot your GameData folder with mods installed (even if you use CKAN) so you can check that you’ve reinstalled them all later. 4. Uninstall all mods from KSP. 5. Right click KSP in Steam library > properties, disable Steam cloud. 6. Completely uninstall KSP through Steam. 7. Reinstall KSP through Steam, right click > Properties > local files > verify integrity of game files. If you want to play a version other than the current release (1.12.3), pick that version in the Betas tab and verify the files once Steam has installed that version. 8. Run KSP and make sure it loads properly without mods. 9. Browse local files again, then go up one level (to Steam/steamapps/common) and copy the Kerbal Space Program directory, then paste it where you want to keep it- make sure it’s outside Steam’s folders so it can’t meddle with it in future. 10. Rename the KSP folder so you know what mods you’re using in it (e.g. 1.10.1 RO/RP-1, 1.12.3 JNSQ), then add this new copy to CKAN and use the modpack created in step 3 to reinstall all your mods; or reinstall them by hand if you don’t use CKAN. Double-check that all files and folders you had in GameData before uninstalling/reinstalling everything are there again, if not then you’re probably missing some mods. 11. Move your saves from your desktop into your new KSP copy’s saves folder, run KSP, load save. A warning about vessels having missing parts is usually because a mod is missing or wasn’t installed correctly. If there's still an issue, try (re)installing Kerbal Renamer?

There are three parts to each node: Prograde or retrograde which will directly change your orbital velocity- burning prograde makes you speed up, retrograde makes you slow down. Use these to increase or decrease your orbit’s apoapsis or periapsis e.g. to fly from Kerbin to the Mun. Prograde will increase your altitude 180 degrees around your orbit from where you are while retrograde will decrease it. Radial in or out which will change the shape of your orbit, but since they’re perpendicular (at 90 degree angles) to prograde and retrograde your orbital velocity will be unchanged. Think of them as “up” and “down” relative to your current orbit- burning radial in will decrease your altitude 90 degrees ahead on your current orbit but raise it 90 degrees behind, while radial out will raise your orbit ahead and lower it behind. Use these to move your apoapsis and periapsis around a bit e.g. if you’re getting a bit too close to the Mun at your closest approach, a bit of radial out will lift that periapsis away from the big scary mountains. Normal and anti-normal which will change your orbit’s inclination- think of them as “left” and “right” when facing prograde. Burning towards normal will increase your orbital inclination towards 180 while anti-normal will decrease it towards -180, but there’s a catch: orbital inclination is measured from the point where your orbit crosses the equator, so to change your inclination to a specific value you need to do your (anti/)normal burn at the ascending or descending node, when you’re crossing the equator. When you’re trying to burn radial or normal, you’ll need to add a bit of pro- or retrograde to it to prevent your orbit from getting higher or lower- this is because adding some extra momentum in any direction will change your overall velocity; prograde is the direction you’re travelling in, so if you add a lot of normal you’ll start dragging prograde to the left and increasing orbital velocity. The in-game tutorials might be of some help to you, but as with a lot of things in KSP experience is the best teacher. A mistake is only a failure if you don’t learn from it!

Bonus! Video of Pol moving across the sky from Duna. https://imgur.com/U6V4GZX (This is in real time!)

Just watching the moons go by...

Sizeable update incoming due to three landings and a perhaps excessive number of "screenshots that look cool". First off, Meg does some, uh, "EVA construction" with the Tylo lander in preparation for the Duna landing. Once clear of Temerity and the awful FPS the trusty Nuclear Space Tug threw the lander at Duna's atmosphere and Meg heads out again to configure her lander properly. Yes, the "landing legs" aren't actually touching the rest of the craft. Deal with it. Everything went to plan, the hilly terrain was avoided and the parachutes slowed the lander down to about 20m/s, more than slow enough for the engine to cushion the final touchdown. At which point I noticed what was going on in the background... Pol at periapsis races over Duna, its SOI coming within a couple of kilometres of Duna's atmosphere, and by complete coincidence this landing took place while that was happening and with Bop in the background too. Those screenshots were taken over a period of maybe 10 in-game minutes at most. Sightseeing over, Meg headed back to orbit to link up with the NST. A bit of space littering later... ...and she was back, ready to head to Temerity- Oi, Meg! Where are you going with that lander!? What do you mean, "you just felt like going to Pol"!? See, you came in too fast and flew straight through Pol's SOI and out the other side. Nice work. *sigh* Point at Pol and fire those Hall effect thrusters a bit more, you'll get there eventually. The NST has well over 20km/s delta-V left with its current payload, but the lander itself maybe 500m/s at most. Pol's orbital velocity is really low, barely 100m/s, but there's no way I can do Bop and Pol in one go now. Might as well get it over with Meg, but when you get back to Kerbin .... Pol's surface appears to be made of cheese, or possibly cheap vanilla ice cream that's been left in the freezer for too long. Also, Meg found a nice rock and decided it was coming back with her. Because that'll really help with the "lander low on delta-V" situation. Getting back from Pol wasn't easy due to Temerity's polar orbit, but with delta-V to burn in the NST it didn't take too much effort to force a rendezvous. Meg had only just docked the lander and NST to Temerity when Gerdorf turfed her out and took her place, topping up all the fuel and life support tanks on both vessels before undocking them, joining them back together and heading off towards Bop. Bop's orbital velocity is less than I thought, only about 170m/s, but it spins very rapidly (less than 2 hours per rotation) so surface and orbital velocities can be wildly different and picking out a landing spot in a polar orbit that's practically mirroring the terminator, isn't easy. The combination of higher gravity and full rather than empty fuel tank means that the lander can't quite hover on RCS alone over Bop, whereas it could on Pol. Not to be outdone by Meg, Ger went and found an even bigger rock on Bop- so big, in fact, that he couldn't bring it back with him. A brief pause to admire the view and wait for the NST to be orbiting overhead... ...and it's back to the NST to plot a return course to Temerity. Two auto-dockings later and everything is set for the trip back to Kerbin, where the Mun awaits! And also the little pod that took Meg and Ger out to Temerity and will take them back to the surface again, but after nearly 9 years in LKO all the solar panels have failed and it's dead in the water. At least some of the broken parts are fixable, so it should be as simple as getting over to it, fixing it up and heading for the surface- with all those precious samples, of course! (and a random rock from Pol) Flag count so far: 13! Next time: The finish line beckons with just one flag to go, but the Mun's eccentric and inclined orbit may yet pose a challenge, especially when the ride home is in low equatorial orbit of Kerbin and can't move.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” - @seyMonstersafter realising the top tank on the DOG3 is wrong. If only someone had said mentioned it…

Why are you doing all this? Put the fuel in the craft with all the engines and no extraneous mass (*cough* hitchhiker module *cough*) and send that one home while the other one does the Laythe “landing”nursing RCS to deorbit.

Rescue missions aren't easy: they require either a probe core or a multi-crew vessel to get out to the stranded Kerbal, enough delta-V to get there and back again, precision flying to rendezvous and get close enough, EVA flying to get the rescuee over to their ride home and more. You're better off sending science missions to the Mun and/or Minmus, whether that's a crewed orbital mission or an uncrewed lander is up to you. I thought there was a way to generate a specific contract in the cheats menu, but maybe it's a mod thing as it doesn't seem to be there in stock KSP from the check I just did. You could just repeatedly hit the regenerate contracts button under contracts > tools in the cheats menu until one turned up?

That's the shortest Player.log I've ever seen, KSP never really gets going before it stops. Check your antivirus isn't blocking KSP from running? Your file path is a bit weird, is this a copy you've made? Where did you get KSP from?

Installing mods in the Steam copy of KSP is A Bad Idea because stuff like this happens. Try this: 1. Right click KSP in Steam library > browse local files. 2. Copy KSP/saves/<your save name> and paste that on the desktop. 3. If you used CKAN to install your mods (and you should!), click File > export modpack and save that to your desktop too. Screenshot your GameData folder with mods installed (even if you use CKAN) so you can check that you’ve reinstalled them all later. 4. Uninstall all mods from KSP. 5. Right click KSP in Steam library > properties, disable Steam cloud. 6. Completely uninstall KSP through Steam. 7. Reinstall KSP through Steam, right click > Properties > local files > verify integrity of game files. If you want to play a version other than the current release (1.12.3), pick that version in the Betas tab and verify the files once Steam has installed that version. 8. Run KSP and make sure it loads properly without mods. 9. Browse local files again, then go up one level (to Steam/steamapps/common) and copy the Kerbal Space Program directory, then paste it where you want to keep it- make sure it’s outside Steam’s folders so it can’t meddle with it in future. 10. Rename the KSP folder so you know what mods you’re using in it (e.g. 1.10.1 RO/RP-1, 1.12.3 JNSQ), then add this new copy to CKAN and use the modpack created in step 3 to reinstall all your mods; or reinstall them by hand if you don’t use CKAN. Double-check that all files and folders you had in GameData before uninstalling/reinstalling everything are there again, if not then you’re probably missing some mods. 11. Move your saves from your desktop into your new KSP copy’s saves folder, run KSP, load save. A warning about vessels having missing parts is usually because a mod is missing or wasn’t installed correctly. You can make as many copies of KSP as you want, have several copies on different versions and with different sets of mods in each- CKAN makes this much easier to keep track of, but it’s still possible to do it all yourself.

Click the RP-1 icon. Click the "courses" tab. Click "X-1 Proficiency". Click all your available astronauts. Click, uh, "start training"? I can't remember the exact wording of that button and it'd take about 20 minutes to fire up my RP-1 game to find out. Wait for training to complete- there's a button that sets a KCT alarm for it. Repeat steps 1-6 but for "X-1 Mission". Fly plane with trained crew. In a rather abstract way, proficiency training is learning what all the buttons do and when to press them, which takes a long time but only needs to be done once, while mission training is all about the specific tasks being done on that mission, which takes less time but needs to be done for each mission e.g. landing on the Moon or going to a space station to run experiments. You can turn mission training off in the settings so the crew only need proficiency training, but that's an easier option and less realistic.

Today I learnt that a mebibyte (MiB) is actually larger than a megabyte (MB)- I always thought a megabyte was 10242B and a mebibyte was 10002B but it turns out it's the other way around. Kilo/mega/giga/terabytes use base 1000, kibi/mebi/gibi/tebibytes use base 1024.

Care to share how you fixed it, in case someone else has the same problem in future and could use the same fix?

I think this is a stock feature, direct connections to the ground are preferred over relayed connections even if the relay gives a stronger signal. I could be completely wrong about that, but I believe I've seen others saying something similar before. As for solving it- CommNet Constellations might be a good bet, it allows you to put different antennae on different frequencies so you could set all your long-range missions to use the same frequency as the big relays and use a different frequency to connect the relays to the ground station(s). I've used it to create planet-specific networks so that I only need a few powerful relays and everything else can use short-range communications systems to save weight, cost, power etc.

Forgot to post and now I'm a whole imgur album behind and I've forgotten everything! What did I do-? checks screenshots Oh. That. If you've read my last RP-1 career report, you'll know I have a habit of accepting hugely valuable contracts before I have the tech nodes unlocked to actually complete them. Well, this time I've outdone myself: In my defence, it gives me TWENTY YEARS to fulfil this contract as opposed to the ten years for the flyby and orbit contracts for Mars (and Venus) which should be more than enough time to get it done, plus 5.4 million funds up front. Put that together with the funds I already have and it's enough to buy a brand new launchpad with no weight or size limits, several hundred KCT points and pay for the entire fleet of orbital imaging satellites and the relays needed to stream their data back down to the DSN, among other things. After a bit of thinking, I've come to the conclusion that I'm doing this "crewed Moon rover" thing all wrong- why bother with a self-controlled rover when you can literally strap four wheels and a chair to a plank and call it a day? Despite how comical this thing looks, it actually works. With RCS for attitude control and solar panels to give it a modicum of power generation, it's capable of carrying one Kerbal around without too many issues. Besides the top-heavy centre of gravity, of course, but that's where the RCS comes in. A test sim with the baby rover strapped to the side of a crewed Moon lander went mostly according to plan, showing that it wouldn't adversely affect the lander's ability to complete a landing and return to orbit. Probably. But it doesn't like going fast, and especially doesn't like slowing down again. Having about a centimetre of ground clearance will do that. With that design now ready for a proper test, Yellow Marimba 2 is on the build queue to complete numerous contracts. It'll also be the first crewed vessel launched with the newly researched vacuum scrubbers, forever removing the need to carry around lithium hydroxide. One less thing to add to each crewed mission is always good. And then an alarm popped up for Green Banana Mercury, the first flyby probe to visit the innermost planet. Why? Turns out past me had set up a burn that would enable a second Mercury flyby, which will take place about a day after Purple Circle 1 Mercury arrives to try and orbit, or more likely do a really slow flyby as the delta-V required to capture is about 300m/s more than the probe has left. Moving on to the first launch of this update, Green Nectarine is a set of four high-bandwidth relays launching to high Earth orbit to give the upcoming Green Mango orbital imaging satellites the data transfer speeds they need to operate properly. Uh, MechJeb? Why are you pitching over so steeply? 30 degrees pitch at under 20km is not a good idea! (It turned out that the PVG settings got reset by a MechJeb update and the pitch rate was set to 1 degree per second instead of the 0.7 I usually use; one revert later and it worked fine.) The relays were launched to a very high (150Mm) apoapsis at a high inclination, then boosted into a 3/4 resonant orbit so the relays could be evenly spaced to improve coverage. Each relay will do a circularisation burn every five and a bit days and I'll sync their orbital periods as closely as possible so that they don't drift. Final scores: Coming soon: Double Mercury encounters and playing around with some of the many parts I spent several million funds unlocking just because I could...

Arriving at Mercury, I'm about 300m/s short of capturing into orbit- not a nice orbit, just an orbit; a periapsis-scraping-the-ground, apoapsis-scraping-the-SOI-edge kind of orbit. Unless... Unless I use the remaining RCS propellants in each stage to fire forwards, adding extra thrust and removing extra weight at the same time. 20 minutes of constant burning later and somehow- somehow!- the probe made it into orbit with nothing but fumes left in the tank, using the RCS because the main engines (using the same propellants) couldn't slurp the dregs and gave up.

I've just tried this (admittedly on a brand new sandbox save, not an existing one) in stock KSP 1.12.3 and toggling the "enable extra groundstations" option in the difficulty settings and accepting that, then clicking apply in the settings menu, works every time both for turning them off and on. Click apply after turning them off and see what happens?

Yes, please do send logs. It's next to impossible to diagnose issues like this without them- specifically the Kopernicus logs which are separate from the usual game logs, the error message will probably tell you where those are. You can get a list of installed mods from CKAN by clicking File > save installed mod list and then saving the text file it generates. This might help:

I think if you leave it running in the background, it'll do that automatically. Worth a try at least, if it doesn't work you can always load an earlier save.

Snarkiverse Duna > stock Duna.