jimmymcgoochie

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:

Current mod list is below, I don't think I've added anything new recently but did a few updates when they came out. I don't have the craft files any more but from memory there was one EL smelter, one Sandcastle printing arm and I was getting ore and metal ore concentrations of around 3%. Metal and metal ore work in RR 1.33, but neither metal/metal ore or metals/metallic ore worked in RR 1.40.

You can't re-root in EVA construction mode. If only someone hadn't said "nah, we won't need docking ports on this one" a couple of episodes earlier...

That rocket is massively overbuilt for going to the Mun- you don't need two Mainsail-powered stages to get there unless your base is absolutely huge, plus the Mainsail is pretty inefficient in space and heavy to boot. Without seeing any pictures of the craft in question it's hard to give concrete advice, but I'm pretty sure that you don't need a Poodle to land your base on the Mun, and you definitely don't need two Mainsail-powered upper stages to get there. Reasons for difficulty controlling a vessel are usually one of: No power. This will not only disable the reaction wheels, but also disables probe cores and can result in a complete loss of control on an uncrewed vessel. Add power sources (solar panels, RTGs, fuel cells) and/or storage (batteries) to mitigate against this. No usable control point. Aside from a lack of power, probe cores will also stop working properly if they're in hibernation mode. Crew pods will only provide control when there's a Kerbal inside them to operate the controls. Make sure your probe cores aren't set to hibernation mode (hibernate in warp is fine and is a good idea to save power) and if crew are aboard, that at least one of them is in a command pod rather than a Hitchhiker or lab module. No signal to Kerbin, which prevents most manual controls with probes- SAS and full/zero throttle will still work unless you have 'require signal for control' switched on in the difficulty settings. Add more/larger antennae to mitigate against this (all antennae can co-operate to boost the total communications range on a vessel, apart from the Communotron 16S which doesn't), establish relay networks to cover blind spots when a direct signal to Kerbin is unavailable. If you're playing with CommNet switched off, you can ignore this point. Insufficient control authority, often because you're using a small reaction wheel (e.g. built into a probe core) to try and turn a large, heavy rocket. Add reaction wheels to improve control authority, RCS is an option but uses finite propellant whereas reaction wheels use electricity which can be generated for free, firing the engine at low throttle may also help thanks to engine gimbal but will also use fuel and alter your trajectory in a potentially undesirable way. No SAS, either because you're using the Stayputnik probe core that doesn't have it or because your crew aren't pilots, who are the only Kerbals who can use SAS. A scientist or engineer can still operate the controls, but it's a lot easier to fly with a pilot. Use a probe core with SAS built in to counter both problems (a probe core with SAS will still provide SAS when a non-pilot Kerbal is at the controls) and/or make sure a pilot is flying.

An NTR using water as its propellant would get worse ISP than a hydrolox chemical rocket (at best, ~410s ISP versus >450s that hydrolox engines can already achieve). Water also has the unfortunate tendency to dissociate into hydrogen and oxygen at very high temperatures, such as those found inside a nuclear reactor for an NTR; you really don't want hot oxygen inside a nuclear reactor, and you especially don't want hydrogen gas in there too! You'd still be better off using that nuclear reactor to power an electrolysis cell, then liquefy the hydrogen and oxygen produced, with the waste heat from the reactor used to melt the ice before it gets electrolysed. You could then use the liquid hydrogen in an NTR and enjoy the benefits of neutron moderation and cryogenic cooling that come with it- more hydrogen directly increases the fission rate, but also cools the reactor more- or with most of the oxygen in a hydrolox rocket, with the excess oxygen used to keep the crew alive. Most hydrolox rockets burn fuel-rich to help with cooling, increase ISP by lowering the average molecular mass of the exhaust gas and also because hot oxygen is really reactive and is just as bad for the inside of a rocket engine as it is for the inside of a nuclear reactor.

Some people here clearly haven't worked in software development, and as someone who does, it shows. The project I'm working on right now has been going for over three years now; initially everyone thought it would be a 6-9 month job, but then the realities of user needs, legal requirements and making the new system better than the one it was meant to be replacing, rather than just the same but different, set in hard. New people were brought into the team, some of whom did more harm than good and all of whom needed considerable time and a lot of help from existing team members to get up to speed, slowing the project down in the short term. Some people left and were replaced, slowing the project down again. Business requirements were changed repeatedly, at one point causing the team to spend the better part of a year developing a system to tie in with another team, only for said other team to be reprioritised onto something else and all our work ended up unused. And then 2020 happened, lockdowns started and suddenly everyone was trying to figure out how to work from home, trying to get hold of the right equipment along with hundreds of other employees and generally being disrupted from normal working. Two years later, we're still working from home and have been in the office a total of five times in that time for days full of planning meetings. The team grew, then split, then shrank, then merged again, then shrank some more; objectives kept changing, business requirements kept changing, budgets got cut, people got moved to other teams, contracts were cut, and all the while we kept on doing our best to meet all the deadlines (pretty successfully, I might add) even when the goalposts were actively moving. We're still nowhere near done on this first part of the project, still getting reprioritised to different parts of the system as the higher-ups change their priorities and have years left before anyone will even think about switching off the old system we're meant to be replacing, but that's nothing to do with not wanting to complete the project or doing a bad job. Look at KSP2 objectively: Take Two is a business, which wants to make money. Would they be funding years of KSP2 development if they thought it wasn't going to recoup those costs? Would they have hired all those people from Star Theory if they thought they were doing a bad job? Bringing Squad and modders like Nertea on board wouldn't have happened without someone pitching a business case to justify the costs involved either. Even now, nearly three years after the trailer first released (no doubt after a lot of development time had already gone in from Star Theory) they're still willing to fund the game's development for nearly a whole year before the projected release date, and most likely for a long time afterwards. Enough with all the doom and gloom! Look at all the feature videos, the show and tells and showcases that have been done over the last few years, then think that everything that's been shown so far was in a good enough state at that time that it could be shown publically- meaning there will undoubtedly be a lot more work in progress stuff that wasn't ready to be revealed but which will be to the same standards. Rushing a release never ended well- remember the Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco? After waiting for three years so far, surely you can manage a few more months?

Good news- save is not broken. Good-er news- Parallax! Blue Violin 2 launched about a minute too late for a direct rendezvous, mostly because I forgot the orbiting return probe was in a retrograde orbit and so misjudged the launch time. A couple of orbits later, it approached its target and- Hang on... WHERE'S THE DOCKING PORT GONE!? *one short burst of cheating later* Ah, there it is. The return craft took the sample and then headed for Earth at the next opportunity, leaving the lander in orbit to gather what science it can. Those craters are definitely a lot more pronounced now thanks to Parallax. A successful, profitable and scientifically valuable mission all around. The design has been demonstrated and more will be launched in the near future, at least until the crewed landings start- hopefully in 1966! A couple of months go by and science keeps coming in, giving more free KCT points and so more upgrades. A change to the Blue String rocket was tested, swapping out the solid boosters for a sixth RD-253 and stretching the tanks slightly (from the minimum possible within tooling limits to the maximum) which will reduce costs without impacting performance. The current design overburns the engines a bit, but this new one doesn't which should also reduce the chances and impacts of failures. It's almost a Proton first stage at this point, though no Proton ever used a huge hydrolox stage on top. This "Block 2" Blue String will be put into service for all future missions, except for Blue Violin 3 which was too close to completion and so went ahead with the old design. The launch went flawlessly- or so I thought... By the time it got to orbit, something was way off in the numbers. The RL-200 engine had suffered a performance loss, its ISP dropping by about half and taking the thrust and delta-V with it, ruining this mission's chances of success. By burning the rest of the second stage for what little it could muster, then the third stage, then some fuel from the lander itself and dumping the return stage after draining its tanks, Blue Violin 3 might be able to limp to the Moon's surface- and stay there. This failure isn't quite as bad as Blue Violin 1, but the RL-200 has caused problems on two of the last three Blue Violin missions despite its relatively high (claimed) reliability. I might switch to the J-2 if the numbers stack up in its favour. While that mission was en route to the Moon, Green Ilama 1 arrived at Venus. As expected, there was insufficient fuel to circularise into the low orbit required for scanning, with an apoapsis of just over 2Mm when the scanners can only manage 500km and 1000km at most, but it's not as bad as it could have been and the radar altimetry contract only requires 25% coverage, which this orbit should be able to achieve. One contract completed just by making orbit, with at least one more still to come. A future mission will still be needed to complete the other scans and to deploy a lander (and maybe even a rover?) to the surface, but the next transfer window is still a while away. Final scores: Green Jackfruit 1 is just the return craft part of the Blue Violin missions attached to the same rocket used by the Green Apple lunar relay mission; if Blue Violin 3 can land and return to orbit, it'll get launched to send the sample back, but if not then it might end up as a docking target for Yellow Glockenspiel 1's crewed lunar orbit flight. Coming soon: I should probably check the upcoming transfer windows and active missions, then design new vessels accordingly.

That docking port couldn’t be removed because after undocking it became the root part of the vessel and EVA construction can’t remove root parts.

I had a Jennie (male) and a Gerald (female) in separate saves, and a Herman Kerman that I rescued from being stranded in orbit.

Gilly’s gravity is so weak, anything can land on it. Ike is one of the smaller moons and while it has more gravity than Gilly, it’s still not much. Put some landing legs on the back of your mothership, surrounding the engines but positioned so they deploy further and you don’t bonk the engines on the ground. Alternatively, use some small vernier thrusters (e.g. Twitch) for the last stretch of landing if you want to do a belly landing design, the high gimbal will help to control a large vessel and you can tuck the mining gubbins inside a cargo bay. Upward-facing probe core recommended to make landings easier.

Kerbalism does tell you how long your battery will last even without a signal, just hover the mouse over the battery icon and it’ll give you the power status. And the first lander’s problem was nothing to do with MechJeb and everything to do with not switching on SAS. Re. the unbalanced probes, it’s probably engine variance that the RCS has to counteract since there’s no reaction wheel or engine gimbal to do so. (One more reason why ProbesPlus is a must for RP-1, it adds a 500N-class thruster with a scruple of degrees of gimbal that means you don’t need to use RCS during burns. It also has tiny reaction wheels for probes and tiny radiators that can dramatically reduce Cryo boiloff.)

Soundtrack Editor is probably the best mod I’ve ever used in KSP as it lets you add music into the in-game player. I’ve added a lot of music by Kevin MacLeod, who wrote some of the music for KSP’s soundtrack and has a mildly ridiculous amount of music available for free. There’s also a nice selection of music available via the Astronomer’s Visual Pack forum page called Astronomer’s Music Pack, which also has links to more sources. I’ve also added some music from other games, primarily Dyson Sphere Program. Sometimes I mute the game music and play music from something like Interstellar, First Man or Oblivion, or some of the less popular (but IMO more interesting) Planets by Holst.

Making History has Kerbal-y versions of the Apollo SM and engine (the 2.5m service bay and Wolfhound engine), while something like BDB or FASA will have more realistic versions. If you’re going down a more stock-ish route with Making History, the mod KeR-7 has a lot of Soviet stuff to build a more accurate R-7 rocket and also has service modules and other parts to make a Vostok or Soyuz when used with the KV-series pods from MH.

Some people will still have it because they haven't updated their mods- which can sometimes break saves, and if you're doing a video series you don't want to break anything at all. The express install is still the recommended way of doing it. The stock dV displays were often wildly inaccurate with RO rockets and MechJeb's delta-V window can be configured to show only the bare minimum of information you need (delta-V and TWR in vacuum and atmosphere and burn time for each stage) which doesn't take up much space at all.