jimmymcgoochie

The reason it keeps skipping ahead of nodes when you click the ‘warp to node’ button is because KAC is overriding the time warp for its node alarm, which is coming too late for the longer interplanetary transfer burns. ”After crew on Mars”? Let’s start with crew near the Moon first, hmm?

I once had a weird glitch involving an EVA pack disappearing when moved from storage to an EVA Kerbal- they clearly had it on when outside, but it was nowhere to be found when they boarded again, through several repeats of EVAing and boarding. By “get rid of” I assume you mean “ram into Gilly for seismic science”?

Brief update: I tried to make the avionics on the RoveMate probe core toggleable to make the two Green Huckleberry lunar rovers able to function properly, since even with the sun directly overhead the solar panels can barely charge the batteries at all due to the avionics constantly running and using a lot of power. Long story short, it took two days and reinstalling a lot of mods to undo the damage and make the RoveMate reappear in the parts list. Probably should've tried this in a different copy of KSP than the one I'm doing this save in...

Today's top tip: always strut your boosters. Or else this happens:

Time to send up some fuel for Temerity's empty tanks. And by 'some' I mean about 700 tons, most of it xenon. The rocket used before isn't powerful enough to handle the fuel tankers, so I added some boosters to the sides, surely nothing could possibly go wrong- Top Tip 1: autostrut your boosters! Much better! Aside from the boosters, this rocket has had its second stage upgraded- the three Rhinos have been swapped for six NFLV Lynx engines which offer a bit more thrust and a marginally better ISP to better handle the heavier payload. Unfortunately, the Lynx engines are only rated for a single ignition and began failing with each successive burn to rendezvous with Tenacity. All six engines failed eventually, forcing the tanker to dip into its own fuel reserves to complete the rendezvous and dock. Docking complete, a significant quantity of xenon is transferred into Temerity's tanks along with nearly all the LF/Ox and as much monopropellant as the ship's tanks could hold. With that done, the tanker undocked and, being the responsible citizen that I am, I disposed of the space litter- by turning it into ground litter instead! The next fuel tanker carried a lot less xenon and a lot more LF/Ox, and was light enough that the boosters weren't needed (booooriiiing ). The second stage had a Wolfhound engine added to avoid the engine failures that caused trouble for the last one, which worked rather well. This also allowed the second stage to be deorbited to land on a completely random part of Kerbin's surface, but the chances of hitting something were assessed as "meh, probably fine, it's not like there's much down there to hit anyway" and that's good enough for me! Temerity's xenon tanks are almost full now, but there's a lot more LF/Ox required to fill up those tanks before the mission can really begin. The tanker was deorbited after undocking, this time hitting the water and probably terrifying some fish that never saw it coming despite the massive trail of fire across the sky. But hey, if Kerbals have decided to send a single ship mission to land on every (solid) planet and moon in the entire Kerbol system and come back again, powered by massive nuclear reactors and RTGs and using massive, single-use rockets to get it into space, I doubt they're particularly concerned by the environmental impacts. Next time: There are some important vessels missing- the Eve Ascender and the Laythe SSTO- so something should probably be done about that.

Let's try that again, shall we? A slightly altered fairing shape was needed as I've moved one of the ion-powered space tugs to clear the docking port needed for the Laythe plane; but that's for later. Right now I have more pressing concerns, like 'will the fairing separate without causing another RUD?' Yes, yes it would. Clamshell deploy plus cranking the separation force to maximum did the trick. The rest of the launch was pretty straightforward and Temerity was parked in a 100km equatorial orbit of Kerbin. Solar panels and communications systems were deployed and the VASIMR thrusters were briefly fired up to get clear of the discarded second stage. Even with a minimal load of xenon, the ship has over 14km/s of delta-V with the VASIMRs set to 50% - 0% is maximum thrust, 100% is maximum ISP and this setting can be changed at any time to shorten a long burn or to save fuel. Next time: Carrying up several hundred tons of xenon, liquid fuel, oxidiser, probably a little bit of monopropellant too.

According to the KSP wiki, the Mk3 (shuttle) cockpit has existed since version 0.15, which was released 10 years ago earlier this month. Thus, not only is there already a shuttle in stock KSP, there has been a shuttle in stock KSP for a whole decade.

It's taking (much) longer than expected to get the next chapter finished, but in the meantime here's a little something to keep you going. Chapter 18 - The beginning of the end “Today’s top headline: At least twenty are dead and over a hundred others injured after an armed mob breached the perimeter of Yeager Space Complex and opened fire, provoking a deadly response from the base’s military personnel; at least four soldiers are believed to have been injured, however the military is remaining tight-lipped about any casualties and communications in and out of Estovus are currently limited as Hurricane Camwise continues to batter the equatorial regions, disrupting power supplies and potentially severing undersea data cables. In a related development, reports have confirmed that the Azimuth flying hospital, which left Yeager SC after taking fire and in defiance of the no-fly zone declared by Estovus Vice-Governor Marcus MacKerman, has arrived back at the Kerbin Space Centre with multiple Space Program personnel aboard, including Director Gene Kerman and astronaut Valentina Kerman, whose condition is still unknown following the destruction of the shuttle Dauntless in orbit and the dramatic events involving the late Governor Dilgas Kerman at Northill Hospital earlier today. In other news, PayPass has joined the growing list of payment providers to block all transactions in ByteCoin following the wild fluctuations in the cryptocurrency’s value over the last week, thought to have been driven by the hacktivist group NullReferenceException-” The TV abruptly went off, along with all the lights and the little heater above the door. Muttering darkly to himself, Desford left the cosy security hut and trudged towards the fuse box, pulling his flimsy jacket tighter against the cold wind. Just as he thought, the breaker had tripped- again. It took both hands to force the lever back into the ON position and he briefly entertained the idea of duct-taping it in place before reluctantly concluding that his continued employment was more important. On his way back to his nice warm hut, Desford stopped and looked at the ship anchored at the next berth along. Something about it looked wrong somehow, but he couldn’t quite figure out what. A sound from behind him made him spin around in alarm, but there was nothing there but shadows and a loose plastic bag blowing listlessly along the ground. “You’re getting too old for this…” he muttered to himself, trudging back the way he had come moments earlier. From a vantage point on top of a nearby warehouse building, Zero breathed a sigh of relief. The guard had been an unexpected complication, but no harm had been done. As soon as the guard turned a corner and disappeared from view, Beta emerged from the shadows and completed his exfiltration, disappearing into the night as Gamma and Delta had done moments earlier. Over the next twenty minutes, Zero watched as the immense bulk carrier Zebulan Kerman sank ever lower into the water until water began pouring over the decks and into its cavernous holds, already almost full with over fifty thousand tons of coal. It hadn’t taken much to make it sink- opening the ballast valves and adding a few well-placed holes below the waterline had done the job- but it would take weeks to try and empty the ship so that it could be refloated and even longer to try and repair it; if it wasn’t just scrapped instead. Zero remained in position as the mooring ropes that held the ship in place were strained to breaking point; some ropes broke, while others tore the mooring bitts out of the concrete. The sounds drew attention and soon the dock was swarming with people who could only watch helplessly as the huge ship came to rest on the harbour floor, only the top few levels of its superstructure remaining above the water. The ship’s crew were discovered inside a nearby shipping container on the dockside, many complaining of headaches and with prominent bumps on the backs of their heads but otherwise unharmed. Zero was still there when the Children of Kaia released their latest video, claiming responsibility for the ship’s sinking and warning that more would follow until fossil fuels followed their ancient origins into the history books. It barely even made the news. Those networks that covered the story tended to tack it onto the end of whatever they were saying about the ongoing Dauntless saga, an afterthought of little consequence rather than the headline news that the destruction of the world’s second-largest coal carrier should have been. Any lingering doubts Zero had had were brushed away at that point. The old game, that Zero had been so adept at playing, was over; this was something new, with far higher stakes and far more dangerous. And deep down, Zero knew it was a game the Children were going to lose. Next chapter: Chapter 19

As a former molecular biologist, Laythe having photosynthetic life just doesn’t add up for me, let alone complex plants. There are just too many problems to overcome, the most obvious being light, or lack thereof? Laythe (and all of Jool system by extension) has a maximum insolation of just 4% of Kerbin, meaning that any given area perpendicular to the sun receives only 4% of the solar energy at Jool compared to Kerbin. Assuming that Kerbin is the same as Earth in this respect (and I believe it is), average illumination is around 1360 watts per square metre; the atmosphere absorbs the majority of this though, so the ground only receives about 340 watts. Assuming Laythe’s atmosphere behaves the same, average illumination on Laythe’s surface would be about 15-20 watts per square metre- far too dim for all but the most heavily optimised low-light plants to survive, let alone grow. This is just once facet of plant survival though- while light is vital for photosynthesis, it’s not the only problem a hypothetical plant (or photosynthetic algae) would face: Temperatures on Laythe range from relatively cool to well below freezing, with significant ice caps at each pole. Lower temperatures lead to slower biological processes, plus the risk of an aquatic organism getting swept up to the poles by ocean currents where it would freeze and die. The Laythean organisms would therefore need to be very cold-adapted and able to survive freezing conditions for potentially long periods. Volcanic activity generates a lot of sulphur and carbon dioxides, leading to ocean acidification. A moon as volcanic as Laythe with many geysers and subsurface hydrothermal vents would be pretty inhospitable to marine organisms, with acid rain posing a serious problem for land-based ones. It would also make the air pretty noxious and could explain how Laythe manages to hold enough heat to keep its oceans liquid- a runaway greenhouse effect caused by volcanic CO2 trapping what little heat comes in from the sun. This Laythean organism needs to be highly acid-tolerant and capable of dealing with very high levels of carbon and sulphur oxides, which are toxic in high doses. Volcanoes also tend to emit lots of heavy metals which can be harmful to life, so the Laythean life form needs to be very good at either not absorbing them at all, or getting rid of them. Plants on Earth have a variety of ways of doing this, mostly involving dumping the metals into specialised storage areas in their leaves or roots, but such organisms are relatively rare and highly specialised to grow in these contaminated soils. Being so close to Jool also presents an even bigger hazard- radiation. Deep inside Jool’s magnetic fields, Laythe would be constantly bombarded by ionising radiation that can destroy DNA and while its atmosphere could block some of that out, the surface is still going to be far more radioactive than almost anywhere on Earth or Kerbin. Again, organisms exist that can cope with high radiation levels using a variety of systems to protect and repair their DNA, but again they’re specialised to do so. Laythe’s atmosphere is relatively oxygen-poor too (at least, according to the numbers I’ve seen) and despite producing oxygen via photosynthesis plants and algae still need some oxygen to live off of while the sun isn’t shining. Regular eclipses on the Joolward side just add to the oxygen stress by reducing the time they have to generate oxygen. Perhaps a method of storing oxygen for later use would be necessary, or else some very efficient gas exchange systems to extract as much oxygen as possible from the air along with low-oxygen adaptations. Here’s the problem though: each specialisation requires precious resources to be put into it, reducing the growth rate. A single organism that can survive low temperatures, low light intensity, high radiation, high metal concentrations, high levels of CO2 and sulphur oxides, low levels of oxygen and high acidity is just too far-fetched for me. Life on hydrothermal vents, on the other hand, makes a lot of sense- almost immune to radiation deep under the water, using the minerals and heat from the vents to survive, unconcerned by oxygen due to anaerobic metabolism and using the metals for cell walls or shells, thriving communities could well exist deep within Layrhe’s oceans.

Have some fun with the object thrower, just be careful not to wipe out the stuff you want to keep!

We can’t see files on your hard drive (if we could, you’d have far bigger problems to worry about!), to post them here you need to upload them to a sharing site and post links here- for images use a site like Imgur and for log files use something like Dropbox or Google Docs; preferably something that isn’t full of aggressive pop-ups or malicious trackers. You can also embed images into your posts using the “insert image from URL” button in the bottom right of the typing area. This requires a link for the image itself, which requires a little bit of URL surgery to turn e.g. http://imgur.com/qwerty into http://i.imgur.com/qwerty.png so it can be displayed like this:

Back up to date Maybe there’s an Article 25 that provides the means to remove certain senior officials from their posts; or failing that, half a dozen anti-emitter air to ground missiles…

I consider the designing and execution of a mission to be fun, not the routine launching into orbit that has to occur before you go anywhere interesting. Besides, flying it by hand sounds too much like hard work to me .

Time for an exercise in making the best of a bad situation- Blue Violin 3 is approaching the Moon. A successful capture burn later, the lander has around 4km/s of fuel left. Orbital velocity is a smidge over 1600m/s, so on paper it's possible to land and return, but paper doesn't have to deal with gravity losses from the low TWR. While waiting for the far side to rotate into daylight, I tried to launch another tundra-orbit contract sat, only for a strange issue to rear its head: As soon as the boosters separated, the core stage's RD-108 engine exploded. I have no idea why this happens as this is the same design that's launched many times before without incident, so I blame mod updates. The design (and others like it) were modified so the boosters are slightly further out from the core, which seems to have solved the issue. Blue Violin 3 then made its landing attempt. A successful one, yes, but using far more fuel than anticipated. Returning to orbit clearly isn't feasible, and worse, it's landed in a biome that's all scienced out already. However... there's a lot of fuel still in the tanks and a different biome off to the south-west. One biome hop later and some science is coming in; alas, this biome has also been visited before by a lander or rover as some of the science is done already, but there's still plenty left to get. There's a very tasty contract sitting in Mission Control that wants a space station in LEO and has a 2 million fund advance payment. Coincidentally, I've just unlocked the first space station parts node. You can probably see where this is going... Tacking an entire Yellow Gong on top of the station gives it a bit more habitation space, more supplies and a viable escape option if something goes wrong. The station will be fuel cell powered as solar panels aren't advanced enough yet to run this thing effectively, but there are a number of crew experiments in the small science module and a little lab to process samples, so this station might actually be useful for more than just contract cheese. It was only after the simulated launch had reached orbit that I realised the Gemini's avionics can only handle 15 tons, whereas this station is close to 20. There are also no docking ports. And a few other minor issues to sort out as well. But that's what simulations are for! A few days later, Green Banana Vesta is approaching its destination. A course correction was required due to orbital drift, but then I noticed the closest approach on the next orbit was really close to Vesta. A bit of node fiddling later... A burn to set up a flyby of Vesta, happening during a flyby of Vesta! A completely coincidental 1:1 orbital resonance which will allow more than one flyby from the same mission and hopefully a lot more science too! This is fine. Encounter number 2 is set up before the first one is finished, with the potential for even more flybys in the future if the small fuel reserves can be stretched that far. I've never seen anything like this before, it wasn't planned at all and the course correction that I did after loading the vessel could probably have been tweaked to make this second flyby even cheaper. Coming soon: Crewed lunar orbit?

Yes, it's me again, embarking on another perhaps foolish attempt at Grand Tour-ing the Kerbol system with Kerbalism on hard mode. This time is different though- instead of the normal stock Kerbol system, I'm using the Snarkiverse mod which rearranges all the stock bodies in new and interesting ways: Gilly orbits Moho, Ike orbits Eve, Dres pseudo-orbits Kerbin, Minmus orbits Dres, Eeloo orbits Jool and the Mun ends up in a highly inclined and elliptical orbit of Kerbin, swooping past the KSC every other day. In some respects, doing a Grand Tour should be easier- Jool orbits where Dres used to be, Dres is right beside Kerbin all the time and Eeloo orbits Jool so there's no need to go nearly as far out from the sun- but on the other hand, Moho's orbit is now significantly lower to the sun, making it considerably harder to reach than usual and making the radiation levels there rather terrifying. Good news: I already have a ship designed that can do a full Grand Tour with fuel to spare. Bad news: it took a not-insignificant amount of mod cheatery to get it into space last time, so I'm going to do this one properly. Of the ship's ~1100 tons, over 800 of them are just Xenon for the quartet of VASIMR thrusters or fuel and oxidiser for the chemical rockets on the various landers, which makes launching the ship significantly easier unfuelled but will require several tanker trips into orbit to get it ready to launch. The Eve lander is also a bit of a headache due to its size and weight, so that'll be getting launched last. Mod list as required by the rules of the Ultimate Challenge: Key mods: Kerbalism (set to hard difficulty, but with solar storms disabled as they're broken); Near Future Propulsion for the VASIMR engines; Near Future Electrical for nuclear reactors to power the VASIMR engines; Near Future Launch Vehicles for the cargo bays to store the nuclear reactors to power the VASIMR thrusters, and also for rocket parts big enough to launch an entire spaceship in one go. Launch attempt number 1, the Temerity itself. A 7.5m fairing from Near Future Launch Vehicles was needed to fit the ship and all the attached landers in, so I built the entire launch rocket out of 7.5m NFLV parts. The first stage uses eighteen Ocelot(?) engines, while the second stage uses a trio of Rhinos. That's no Mun... Except, it is the Mun. With a periapsis so low it crosses Kerbin's outer radiation belt on every orbit and a 62.5 degree inclination, the Mun isn't nearly as straight-forward to get to as it is in the stock Kerbol system. The launch was going well... ...until it wasn't. Fairing panels took out several parts, wrecking one of the landers and then destroying most of the second stage. Oh well, it's not like this is twelve million funds' worth of spaceship and several tons of enriched uranium about to be scattered like confetti across Kerbin's surface. Next time: Proper fairing separation, probably with clamshell deploy to stop all those loose fragments from causing trouble. And by trouble I mean 'large explosions and RUD of the launch rocket'.

My normal launch procedure consists of: Activate PVG; Leave it running while I do something else; Come back and hope it’s in the right orbit, not the sea or a big fireball in the sky. (Usually, it is!) Flying launches by hand is an unnecessary complication, you won’t do it better than the computer and there’s a much higher chance of failure due to pilot error. And as for that “relay”… Get rid of the RTGs! Solar panels are vastly cheaper and will do the job well enough, plus RTGs increase the cost of the entire craft as well. The avionics was untooled, which slows things down drastically and is usually a no-brainier as the tooling cost is the same as what you save (although the most recent version of RP-1 changed that to make avionics tooling more expensive), plus changing tank types made it even worse; and then there was the massive battery that you didn’t need at all considering the power generation on the probe, which only added unnecessary weight. The main dish was very overpowered for a lunar relay while the omni antenna was a bit underpowered, and could have been set to TL2 to save power as it has much lower idle draw.

I’ll try to go through these in order. In most cases you can find these mods on CKAN, which I recommend you use to avoid a whole lot of pain as it very rarely makes mistakes, usually gets all dependencies and also allows you to update mods when they’re available. This is neither an exhaustive list nor a list of “mods you must use”, I’m just giving you some options to take a look at and see if you like the looks of them. More mission types (I assume you mean in-game contracts from Mission Control?): Contract Configurator is a requirement for most contract packs, you’ll probably need that; A variety of contract packs exist, each with a different focus- launching relays, building and using stations and bases, replicating real-life missions- so look for some that fit your goals. Strategia- completely replaces the Administration strategies to offer a variety of options- focus on crewed or probe missions, to different planets or moons, boost a particular Kerbonaut type or trade one in-game resource (funds, fame, science) for another. New, balanced parts: Restock+, fills some holes in the stock part lineup (e.g. 0.625m tanks, 3.75m Poodle-esque vacuum engine, hemispherical tanks in all sizes and it also includes 1.875m and some 5m parts that replicate most of the Making History parts) and adds a few novelties like a forwards-facing rover wheel. Not everyone likes the part retextures that Restock itself adds, but many other mods I’ll be mentioning have a similar style as they’re made by the same modder (Nertea) who’s subsequently been hired by the KSP2 team, no coincidence there. Near Future mods- each specialises in a different area, so NF Propulsion adds fancy PIT and VASIMR thrusters while NF Exploration includes a lot of probe-oriented parts, they can be used independently or together. There’s also Cryo Engines, Kerbal Atomics and Stockalile Station Parts Expansion Redux (SSPXR for short) which adds a lot of really nice parts for stations, large spaceships and surface bases. The only mod I know of to include a part with actual moving fish inside it. SSR MicroSat- a dinky little probe with all the necessary parts to kit it out as a cheap but effective probe or relay, useful for early exploration. Anything from Wild Blue Industries by Angel125, I’ve only had a chance to use a few of them but they’re all well-made and have a wide range, from airships to rovers to warp drives. X-20 “Moroz”, a versatile little shuttle with a range of possible uses, can cram a lot of Kerbals into a small space. Honourable mention for Luciole as while the parts can be a bit overpowered in some cases, they also look great and expand the options for small-scale rockets that few other mods touch. Utilities and career helpers: Stage Recovery- can catch and recover dropped boosters and stages, either using parachutes or by simulating a powered landing. Very tweakable to increase or decrease the rewards from recovered stages and can make a big difference when you’re struggling for funds early in a career. Bon Voyage- it’s a rover autopilot that can drive around a planet or moon in the background instead of spending hours tediously driving it by hand. SCANsat- adds a variety of parts that can create different maps of planets and moons from orbit over time and can also detect surface anomalies, resources for mining and help you track down every biome to maximise science gains. Kerbal Environmental Institute (KEI)- automates the science gathering around the KSC. If you didn’t know, there are over 20 “biomes” in and around the KSC buildings that all give their own science data, which you could visit by rolling a pod around, or just use KEI to do it all in one click. Can be a bit overpowered if you’re playing on high science multipliers, especially if you invest the science into getting more experiments, but it’s possible to do the same thing yourself so not cheating. MechJeb- some love it, some hate it, but once you’ve done your hundredth launch, rendezvous or transfer burn you’ll want something that can do it all for you with minimal input and MechJeb can automate almost everything, from launches to plotting nodes, rover driving to plane flying and docking to landing. Kerbal Space Transportation System (KSTS)- allows you to record a flight using any rocket or spaceplane, then re-use the recorded flight profile to launch payloads up to the mass and altitude of the recording, for the price of the vessel and fuel used. It can also be used for on-orbit construction using space stations, drop payloads near existing vessels for instant rendezvousing and ties in with Stage Recovery (and another recovery mod called FMRS) to subtract the cost of recovered boosters from the total, so once you’re tired of launching everything yourself you can just select what you want launched, what orbit you want it in, pay the cost of the craft and launch and then sit back and wait for it to be dropped off in the desired orbit. Orbital construction can lead to Kraken-induced vessel destruction on occasion, so be warned. Extraplanetary Launchpads- taking ISRU to the next level by mining resources, turning them into parts and then creating new vessels- anywhere, any time. Your latest creation too huge and heavy to be launched from Kerbin? Just build it on Minmus instead! Soundtrack Editor- this one isn’t on CKAN as it needs to be installed different to most other mods. It allows you to add your own music to the in-game music player, so if you want to start blasting the music from Interstellar while doing a tricky docking or some smooth jazz in the VAB, go for it! There are plenty of websites that offer royalty-free music to download, including by Kevin MacLeod who wrote much of KSP’s soundtrack, while the mod Astronomer’s Visual Pack also has an optional extra full of music (and links to get more) that’s worth looking at. Visuals and stuff- most of these will put a lot more strain on your PC, dedicated graphics cards only for most of them. Environmental Visual Enhancements (EVE)- allows the addition of clouds and other effects, requires configs to do anything. Required for all planetary visual mods that I know of. Scatterer- atmospheric and water effects as well as sunflares, also required for many planetary visual mods but can be used alone. Spectra and Astronomer’s Visual Pack (AVP)- both contain configs for EVE and scatterer to make the planets look pretty. Other options are also available, search on CKAN or the forums. Waterfall- no GPU needed for this one, I’ve run it on integrated graphics without issue. Adds more realistic rocket plumes that change depending on external pressure and throttle setting, requires a config to work properly for stock parts (with or without Restock) but some mods (e.g. Near Future) have the configs built in. There’s also a mod to add Waterfall effects to SRBs so they don’t feel left out. Distant Object Enhancement (DOE)- makes planets and moons visible at a distance, as well as vessels at closer range. You can see Venus, Mars, and Jupiter from the surface of Earth with just your eyes; DOE does the same thing in KSP. There are literally thousands of mods out there to choose from, the best way to find out what works for you is to try them. Just don’t go over the top and add ALL THE MODS!!1! all at once or you’ll quickly get buried under a bewildering wall of new parts and features that you don’t know how to use.

Re-reading this since I’ve forgotten everything. @adsii1970 in 2017: The new normal… is far from normal (chapter 50). Me in 2022: you have no idea…

Performed a course correction burn during a flyby of Vesta, to set up a flyby of Vesta on the next orbit. Through sheer coincidence I stumbled across a near-perfect resonance that allowed a second flyby within the relatively small fuel budget on the probe. Patched conics aren't very easy to work with for multiple encounters of the same body, but it might just be possible to set up a third flyby after the second one, considering the probe must be in a 1:1 resonance with Vesta with only the tiny nudge that its gravity will provide with each flyby to contend with. I've never seen this before and certainly didn't plan for it- in fact when I loaded this craft a couple of days before the encounter I had to do a significant course correction to get a close flyby after the orbit drifted considerably.

No, there's no such thing as a solar gravity assist. To get a gravity assist, you need to fly past another object that's orbiting the same parent body- so if you're in a solar orbit you need to aim for a planet, or if orbiting a planet like Jool then aim for a moon. A gravity assist from Jupiter will fling you right out of the solar system, as it did for the Voyager spacecraft, while gravity assists from the moons of Jool are a great way of capturing into, or escaping from, Jool orbit without needing to use your engines. Gravity assists work by changing your relative velocity: you enter and leave the planet/moon's gravity well at exactly the same speed thanks to conservation of momentum, but the direction relative to the parent body (i.e. the sun for a planetary gravity assist) is altered. I could try to explain it, but I think I'll let someone who knows what they're talking about do it instead:

Kerbal rescue contracts are the same as rover or satellite repair contracts- the crafts are yours to do whatever you like with afterwards. Keep them, bin them, recover them on Kerbin, it’s up to you. I tend to do all those rescue missions by grabbing the pod and returning the whole thing to the surface- more funds returned, less faff trying to bring the Kerbal over to a pod by EVA and I can bulk-launch the grabber probes to do part recovery contracts too.

With very few precious parts to spare, a plan was hatched to create a minimalistic electric plane to be built on the surface of Lua and then explore. Exactly how said plane was going to fly in such a puny atmosphere, especially when the mining rovers were in the middle of a mountain range where the air is even thinner, wasn't discussed in any great detail. Nicknamed the Lua Glider for its unusually large wingspan, built to catch as much of the air as it could for maximum lift, the prototype was wheeled out onto the KSC runway and Val took the controls in Mission Control for the test flight. The results were... Far better than anyone had anticipated, actually. Flying at over 200m/s just from the power of two little motors was a lot faster than anyone expected, while the plane handled well and could remain airborne at under 30m/s thanks to its wide wings and deployable flaps, though those also made it pitch down a bit and one test landing ended up breaking some of the propeller blades as a result. With the design shown to be functional, it was sent up to the Sandcaster printing arm aboard Mining Rover 3 to begin construction on the surface of Lua. A whole week later it was finally ready- and the printer promptly dropped it on the ground, where it skidded downhill and got stuck in a small gully. Undeterred, Val waited until the sun had come up to recharge the plane's batteries before carefully driving the plane uphill to the small plateau that the rovers were parked on. She checked all around, chose to try and take off to the west since there was a sizeable hollow in the mountains that would give the plane the best chance of reaching flight speed before crashing, gunned the engines and- "Wow, this thing is slooooooooooow..." But despite the dreadful acceleration and the repeated skips across the terrain, somehow Val dragged the plane into the air! "It's a lot easier once it gets going, but I don't like the looks of those mountains." By adjusting the propeller pitch to maintain acceleration as the plane continued to gain speed, she kept climbing until the plane was safely clear of the lower-lying areas and could fly between the peaks, heading roughly westward along a natural valley. A much wider valley with flatter and lower terrain lay to the south, but getting to it would be difficult as the plane just couldn't go high enough to clear the top of the ridgeline. Eventually Val spotted a gap in the mountains and threaded the plane through it, just as the batteries were beginning to reach dangerously low levels. A safe landing on the valley floor ensued- and just in time, too! The eclipse blocked out both stars, yet something else in the sky still glowed brightly. Alas, the KSC was in the wrong place to try and look at this mysterious object and by the time Rhode had rotated around again it was too close to the binary stars to point a telescope in its direction. Continuing the flight a couple of hours later when the suns were directly overhead, Val pushed on further west, hunting down the location of a surface anomaly that one of the R&D interns had spotted in the orbital imaging data. The plane's onboard cameras captured some very nice images as it flew onwards at a pretty respectable 110m/s. And then the anomaly came into view... "It's..." "A LAUNCH SITE!?!?" A low pass over the site confirmed it: an almost perfect replica of the VAB, Spaceplane Hangar, runway and launchpad, plonked down on the surface of Lua. A Tracking Station sat off to one side, while several other buildings appeared either partially constructed or destroyed. Val wasted no time, pulling a slightly ridiculous turn (and discovering that under the right (or wrong?) circumstances, the Lua Glider could pull a Kobra with an angle of attack of over 90 degrees...) and landing on the runway to confirm that this was in fact a real thing on the surface, not some weird apparition or collective hallucination. Gene wasted no time, ordering the first available aircraft to be refitted for operating in space. Engineers went to work on the old Thunderhawk, giving it a comprehensive overhaul until it was almost unrecognisable: a pointier cockpit, air-breathing rocket engines to get into space, a four-chamber Corgi rocket engine on the back for orbital manoeuvring and sacrificing almost all payload capacity for a pressurised crew cabin and as many fuel tanks as they could cram into it. Which turned out to be too many fuel tanks, as Jeb and Val discovered in the simulator. Some of the tanks had to be underfilled or just not filled at all to make the plane not try to flip backwards at the slightest provocation. The flight crew had a good view of the mystery blue object during the ascent, but had more pressing things to worry about. After the transfer to Lua was completed, they realised that there was far too much liquid fuel and not enough oxidiser left, which would make things rather tricky when they got to Lua as the air-breathing engines would only work at very low altitudes. Dodging mountains in the dark with barely any thrust becomes a whole other level of terrifying when you're sitting in the cockpit, not safely back in Mission Control! Several attempts were made to fly to what many were now calling the LSC, but the plane's size and cantankerous handling combined with the thin air meant it was nearly impossible to line up with the runway and then try to slow down for a landing attempt. Missed approach followed missed approach until Jeb lost patience and decided to set the plane down by force if necessary, which at over 200m/s was probably not a good decision... Bumps and bruises all around, and the plane lost both wings and the rear fuel tank and engine attached to it, but somehow they were down on the ground and not smeared across it! They had to wait until sunrise, by which point the batteries had run out and the entire crew were freezing in the frigid temperatures on Lua's surface, which were recorded at 224K by the Thunderhawk Mk2's onboard sensors. Val was first to head outside just as one of the suns appeared from behind Rhode, sneaking out before Jeb or anyone else was awake. Finding the gravity to be very benign, even more so than the Mun's, she saw an opportunity to do something that every Kerbonaut had always wanted to: jetpack to the roof of the VAB! She then tried base-jumping off the roof with her parachute, but that didn't go so well... "Owwwww, my shins..." was all she could say. Bill and Bob were next to head outside, deploying the extensive selection of deployed science instruments to gather even more data about Lua. The readings from the weather station, combined with the data from the plane's environment sensors, suggested that there was insufficient oxygen in the rarefied air to breathe unaided; however it should be possible to use some kind of air pump to create a pressure suit and respirator rather than needing a full spacesuit, making working on the surface feasible. While Bill and Bob helped Val hobble back to the safety of the Thunderhawk's cockpit, the rest of the crew on board headed out to explore this mysterious facility. Inside they found a treasure-trove of parts and manufacturing equipment, along with a fully kitted out tracking station with dust covers over all the computers and the protective films still attached to the monitors. The place seemed to be brand new, yet there was no trace of whoever had built it. Even stranger, everything they found looked exactly like its counterpart in the KSC, right down to the squeaky hinge on the door to the VAB canteen and the vending machine in the Tracking Station that would occasionally give you your money back if you entered the right code on the keypad. Jeb spoke for everyone when he walked into a perfect replica of the Spaceplane Hangar briefing room and found the tell-tale marks on the whiteboard where he'd accidentally used a permanent marker and then tried to clean it off with monopropellant. "What IS this place!?"

I did a full Grand Tour of all the planets and moons (except Jool, obviously) in a single mission, with the added complication of Kerbalism which adds life support, part failures, crew health and stress, engine ignition and burn limits and more. Eve was the hardest landing and requires by far the largest and heaviest lander, however the most dangerous place to land was Vall- radiation levels on and around Vall are extremely high due to Jool’s powerful radiation belts, and while it’s even worse in orbit of Laythe the atmosphere absorbs most of it making the surface a lot less deadly. Out of all the stock planets and moons, Moho takes the most delta-V to get to and from, Tylo requires the most delta-V to land on, Eve requires the most delta-V to return to orbit (aerobraking and parachutes make the landing effectively free) and Eeloo was probably my least favourite; the only real reason why it’s not Dres is because I once did a daring single-orbit landing and return on Dres with a small lander while the mothership was whizzing by on an escape trajectory, which was required when I was critically low on fuel during my first Grand Tour attempt and was the last landing before returning to Kerbin at ludicrous speed having missed out Moho, Mun and Minmus entirely. I’ve also done crewed landings on the Moon, Mars and Phobos in RSS with RO and RP-1, which also includes an even more realistic Kerbalism configuration, and a crewed orbital mission to Venus in the same save. Across other saves, I’ve landed crews on most of the bodies in Beyond Home’ Tempus system and all the moons of Janus (Jool) plus Janus itself in Kerbol system, along with probes to some other planets and moons; visited Duna, Ike and some of Jool’s moons in JNSQ with a crewed missions; and landed probes on Iota and Ceti, the moons of Gael in Galileo’s Planet Pack. A simple but effective lander design is: Mk1 pod or lander can > FL-T400 fuel tank > Terrier engine, with some landing legs on the bottom of the tank. Flown properly, it’s enough to land on every airless body in the stock system bar Tylo and can even land on Duna with some parachutes to assist in the landing, or serve as the ascent stage of a two-stage Tylo lander or the upper stage of a lander for Eve and Laythe. Attach power generation and stir age, RCS, communication gear and/or science experiments as required and you’ve got a cheap, reliable design that can go just about anywhere.

The Mastodon engine is a little bit odd in KSP, it seems underpowered for its role as an F-1 analog and is inferior to the Mainsail in both total thrust and vacuum ISP, though it performs slightly better in atmosphere and is noticeably cheaper and a bit lighter too. The difference in thrust isn't that huge, so if your rocket can manage with a Mastodon rather than a Mainsail it's a good choice to save funds.

It's not Breaking Ground that's the problem- when there's an exception during loading, KSP displays the last thing that worked on-screen and BG is the last thing to be loaded before compiling and running the game. To know what's going on, we'll need the logs and a full mod list, instructions here: