jimmymcgoochie

Set them to "Available" to get them back in the roster. Put them in a pod. Cheat the pod to beside the existing mission, transfer them over via EVA. Return the pod to the launchpad or delete it.

Gene: At this point I'm almost afraid to ask, but- what exactly is "Dres Express Leftovers" and why is it floating in low orbit of Kerbin right now? Wernher: Uh... Bill: Er... Bobak: Um... Mortimer: Some kind of refuel and resupply thing, it was the first payload launched on the Kronus spaceplane. Gene: How do you know that!? Mortimer: It's on my spreadsheet, like everything else around here- including industrial quantities of coffee, half a tone of kale seeds and a truly frightening quantity of cream cheese. Sanlan: What? I'm making cheesecakes and selling them in the gift shop. Gene: Right, well now that I know what the Dres Express Leftovers is, who's going to tell me what we're going to do with it? Bob: Looks like there's still a lot of fuel and stuff left in the tanks, we could top up the Dres Express' tanks like before Bill and I went out there. Bill: Then we can deorbit it and watch the pretty explosions. Mortimer: *harrumph* Bill: I mean, we can deorbit it and recover it to get some of the original costs back. Bobak: I'm not entirely sure how or why, but that Mohoshot 1 probe just pinged us saying it had arrived at Moho. We've got a tenuous data signal but it should be giving us real-time information instead of relying on the most basic telemetry like we got from the Eve mission. Gene: I thought that probe was weeks away? Wernher: Who made that thing? There's far too much fuel in it, the engines won't be able to handle that sort of burn time. Bob (from Mun Station): See, I told you! Bill: Woah, woah- you told me!? Gene: Did that speck just move? Gene: It did! That's a moon! Linus: That's no moon... Gene: I can't tell if you're contradicting me, making a reference, or both. Bobak: Adjusting trajectory to allow a flyby of the target object. Whatever it is, we'll get a good close look at it on the way past. Bill: Why, that's Gilly! Wernher: Are you sure it's not Pol or Bop? Bill: It's too small to be Bop and too beige to be Pol, but just the right size to be Gilly according to this pre-Anomaly data. Gene: I've been meaning to ask- where did you get that data? I thought all records from the Anomaly had been lost? Bill: You remember how Bob and I went driving around on the Mun a while back? Gene: Unfortunately, yes. Walt: I try very hard not to... Bill: Well we found something out there, half buried in dust. We nearly ran over it, but it looked shiny in the headlights so we stopped. It was the wreckage of a pre-Anomaly satellite, pretty badly mangled and dead for decades by the time we got to it, but we managed to pull some data off its hard drive and got a pretty intact map of how the Kerbol system used to look before the Anomaly occurred. We've compared that data to everything our missions have recorded and so far they've matched almost perfectly- except for where things are, obviously. Bobak: Mohoshot 1 reports it's entered Gilly's sphere of- oh, it just left again. Bill: Wow, that was fast even for Gilly! Bobak: Not even seven seconds in total- even that ten second LITE experiment didn't manage to finish recording its data. Wernher: That's as good as you're going to get until Mohoshot 2 gets there and manages to slow down into orbit. Bill: Might as well burn the rest of that fuel, at least until the engine fails. Looks like we're not going to match Moho's orbit particularly closely so it won't get another encounter. Wernher: But we got a good amount of data, found out where Gilly is and got valuable data for the Mohoshot 2 to work with. I'd call that a success. Linus: Drive! Drive my pretties! Wernher: What's he up to now? Bill: Moving the rover fleet to get more seismic data, probably. But now that you've reminded me- we can move the SAR scanner from Dres to Minmus and move the Minmus super-scanner to a lower orbit to get more BEEP science. *a little while later* Wernher: I've been reading the specifications for that Sentinel infrared telescope and it looks like we can run an ultra-long duration experiment with it in high Kerbin orbit. Gene: I sense there's a "but" coming... Wernher: But, at the rate the data is generated it'll take twenty five years to complete on a single craft. Gene: 25 years!? Wernher: And it'll generate data five times faster than our current fastest antenna can transmit. Gene: Somehow I doubt a probe would last over a century in space. Wernher: But you forget- we don't need to just use one probe! Mortimer: Oh dear... Wernher: I call it the Sen-ten-el. Bobak: That's a terrible name. Wernher: It's ten Sentinels stuck together, what else was I supposed to call it? Each one will move itself to a high orbit over Kerbin and scan the skies as a constellation; they've been programmed to shut down the telescope when their data storages fill up to try and avoid saturating the drives. Gene: I hope this is worth the fuss. Mortimer: So do I. *in the KSC gift shop* Sanlan: Special offer, buy one slice of Mun Cheesecake and get a second slice 25% off! Random tourist: It's very... grey. And lumpy. Sanlan: Yeah, just like the Mun. Tourist: ... Sanlan: I'll even throw in a tub of Minmus ice cream. Tourist: Is that glowing? Sanlan: It's meant to do that! Tourist *slowly backs away* I'm just going to, uh, take a look around. *runs* Sanlan: Maybe I could make some creme brulee with one of those tiny little rocket engines and sell that too?

@Lewietry angling your fins slightly to generate a spin around the roll axis. Spin stabilisation works well for unguided rockets and keeps them pointing (more or less) in the right direction (most of the time!), and was used extensively in real life for sounding rockets and unguided upper stages from the earliest satellites right up to the present day. Just don’t spin too fast or the fins tend to get ripped off, which ends badly.

Everything in that statement is fundamentally not a torch drive. Unless you have some secret insider information from the KSP2 team, which I highly doubt, what you’re describing is woefully underpowered and orders of magnitude below what a true torch drive would be capable of. A booster engine producing 1.5MN with an ISP of 650 to 700 seconds is little more than an oversized NTR- in fact there are some engines in Kerbal Atomics that outperform it, using high-heat fission reactors and liquid hydrogen as propellant. What would be the point in spending all that time and effort setting up a metallic hydrogen production system just to waste it on that sort of dismal performance throwing stuff into orbit? A torch drive needs to produce high levels of thrust for days with a fairly high TWR and a usable payload fraction too, so needs an extremely high ISP to reduce the fuel mass it’s lugging around with it; metallic hydrogen is extremely dense and can cram a lot of fuel into a small space, perfect for a long-burning torch drive making interplanetary journeys in a few days via semi-brachistochrone trajectories. (See The Expanse which does a pretty good job of showing how torch ships would work, even if the physics of their torch drives is a bit handwave-y.) Besides all that, metallic Hydrogen is endgame tech, long after launching from Kerbin has ceased to be relevant as anything you need, you’d make in a colony somewhere instead. Flinging resources from planet to planet with next-day delivery is exactly what a torch drive is for, not launching stuff up to low orbit from the surface of a planet; accelerating at 2g for a few days, not a few minutes.

On the topic of “crazy OP interstellar drives”, what do you think the whole metallic hydrogen thing is for? The Daedalus drive (shown in the original trailer for KSP2) has a theoretical ISP in the region of a million seconds using conventional D-He3 fusion and could probably be improved further by using the more exotic propellant/reactant options like antimatter or metallic hydrogen that KSP2 will feature. In the case of Project Daedalus itself, the end goal was visiting Barnard’s Star ~6 light years away within 50 years, reaching 0.12c in the process and then scattering nuclear-powered ion probes at any planets or interesting features detected at a closer distance. I’d imagine such a system would be entirely feasible within KSP2 and would serve the purpose of scouting out a new star system while the much larger crewed interstellar ship is built back in the Kerbol system.

Attach your boosters nearer the top, that way the decoupler force pushes the tops away and they’ll tend to separate more cleanly. As for Jool- you’ll need more than those puny static solar panels to go out there! Those things will barely be enough at Duna, especially with a power-hungry relay dish as your only antenna.

Gene: Sorry, Herman, were you saying something? Herman: ...nope. Not me. Nothing at all. Gene: Huh. OK then, time to suit up. Herman: What? Gene: Crew rotation on the Mun Station, they're getting a higher radiation dose than we'd like and both you and Jerdous haven't been beyond LKO yet. Bill: Wait wait! We're launching this rocket first! Gene: Launching a rocket? Why? We have the two Kronus spaceplanes to do all that. Bill: Yeah, but this is just a small probe, it'll be cheaper with a rocket. Probably. Mortimer: Are you sure about that? Bill: ...yes? Bill: OK, so it wasn't cheaper. Mortimer: Bill: But at least now we know! Besides, the contract money will more than make up the difference. Gene: Commander Bob, report crew status. Bob: Crew are present and correct, Gene. Ready to go to the Mun. Gene: You are go for, er launch? Mortimer: And some chumps think that thing is "their station". Bob: Shouldn't take more than a day to get out there. *less than a day later* Bob: See, I told you. Commencing docking procedures. Hey Val, get that propulsion system out of the way of my docking port. Val: Why not just wait until we leave then use the same port? Bob: Because I know you'll just stuff your capsule full of all the good snacks and be gone before we can do anything about it. Val: Would I do that? Bob: Val: Yeah, I probably would, to be fair. Val: Might as well launch that thing at the surface for that seismometer doodah. Fire in the hole! Gene: Bad news, Mun Station- the deployed science site didn't have power so it didn't get any readings from that. Bob: What?! But we put batteries down so it would work in the dark! Gene: Well, it looks like they didn't work. Sanlan: I checked all those batteries myself- they should've worked just fine. *sulk* Val: Oh well. Anyways, see you later Bob! Kerbin, here we come! Gene: Taking the scenic route, are we? Val: Might as well, we've got oodles of fuel to burn and this'll make a nice line of fridge magnets and bookmarks at the gift shop. ETA for re-entry, about 5 hours. *about 5 hours later* Val: See, told you. Might as well use the remaining fuel to slow down before *fzzt* dang it! Engine pooped out. Bobak: Probably because you overburned it during re-entry heating. Val: Whatever, I'm keeping it. We can still land at a safe speed, we're not too far from KSC and I'm sure Morty will appreciate the extra funds we get by recovering it over just making a nice big hole in the ground instead. Mortimer: Indeed. Val: Ta-da, safely landed with the booster and everything. That wasn't so bad, now was it? Everyone else in the pod: LAND! Solid land! *rub their faces in the grass* Val: What a bunch of weirdos. Gus: Right, which one of you miscreants put a truck through Wernher's office window? 'Fess up now and I'll only dock you two weeks' wages instead of four. Gene: I thought Wernher's office was on the third floor? Gus: It is. Gene: ... Wernher: *runs into the room*AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! *trips and faceplants* Gene: Woah, woah, calm down, Wernher! Wernher: Fluorine peroxide! Azidoazide azide! *grabs Gene's waistcoat lapels* Chlorine trifluoride! Gus: That stuff sounds nasty. Wernher: PENTABORANE! *faints* Gene: Better get him to the sick bay. He's probably just overstressed from working too hard- in fact, I'd wager you all are. Hey Morty, what's the petty cash looking like? Mortimer: One condition- don't let Linus bring his homebrew this time, that stuff could strip paint at twenty paces. Jeb: I'll get the barbecue! Gene: Jeb, not the rocket engine again! Please?

No problem, take your time and do what you can when you can.

@jinnantonix can you post the times that you completed each objective? @Spaceman.Spiff Going to have to give you the "first launch" at the same time as crossing 70km as that's the first UT time stamp in your screenshots- maybe try using Historian to make it easier for me to track this stuff and/or include the times at the end of each post? Unless you have another screenshot with the UT time in it? @minerbat and everyone else- times for first orbits must include the time it takes to complete one full orbit- with a screenshot at the start and end of that orbit and the orbital period visible in at least one of them, or a video that includes that. Putting all the times into my patented scoreboard.xls tracking system, I have first launch and first to reach space times for everyone except @Lewie so far and a few orbits/returns too. Can everyone please include the times that they completed each objective at the end of their posts, it makes it much easier for me to track everyone's progress!

@minerbat Re. delta-V map, look it up yourself or find out by trial and error.

Independence Day (2)- massive alien spaceship that’s nearly as wide as the Earth but is a flat disc manages to create a gravitational anomaly that picks up Kuaua Lumpur and Dubai (or at least the Petronius Towers and Burj Khalifa) and drops them on London, despite clearly landing in the northern hemisphere and never going close to either Kuala Lumpur and Dubai and if it had enough gravity to pick those buildings up the whole Earth would have turned inside out by that point. 2012- Relies entirely on a debunked theory of the Earth’s structure then shoehorns it into plate tectonics despite the two being fundamentallyincompatible, and also magic neutrinos heat up the Earth’s core so massive chunks of land just collapse into massive hollows under the bedrock. Day after tomorrow- within 48 hours of the Gulf Stream being blocked the entire northern hemisphere is frozen over (but the Southern Hemisphere is untouched?). Based on that record, aliens yeeting the Moon down under the Earth’s Roche limit is only marginally more nonsensical.

So, cheating the contract complete instead of actually doing it?

Of course it’s a space HARBOUR- it’s where space SHIPS come to DOCK!

Planes on Duna? With a measly 6kPa at “sea level” (so considerably less on the hills) and low gravity, Duna is far better suited to pure rockets- there’s not enough atmosphere to support a plane at low speeds and it would be considerably easier to just do it all with rockets. Now Eve, on the other hand, is exactly where you’d want to use planes- thick atmosphere that makes rockets drastically less effective and high gravity for said rockets to fight against makes a plane much more viable both for point to point transport and for hauling stuff to orbit and back; I’d imagine the high-gravity Ovin would be a similar story. Having arrestors and catapults on the ground might work for a fighter jet, and maybe even for a larger plane like an E-2 or an S-3, but you’d need a really massive catapult to throw a fully laden cargo spaceplane up to flight speed and an equally large arrestor system to catch it on the way down, possibly full of cargo then too. Honestly, at this stage I’m not sure if we’d be flying all these missions by hand or just letting the colony automation do it in the background, as by the time you’ve built a big arrestor and catapult system you’ve probably got a pretty big colony beside it. As an aside, apart from air-breathing jets and rockets there are other means of propulsion in an atmosphere, even one with no oxygen in it- electric propellers would be a pretty low-tech solution, though obviously using a fusion reactor for power would mean bigger and better props, but more exotic propulsion systems are also feasible- nuclear ramjets like Project Pluto, for example, which have been demonstrated successfully on Earth (static fired only, for obvious reasons!)- or nuclear pulse drives (Orion) which would produce a lot more bang for their, er, bang(?) with an atmosphere to amplify the shockwaves, though probably best not to use those right on top of your launchpad.

Terraforming? Do you mean that in the simple “making this hilly bit of land level to have a nice flat surface to build on” meaning, or the vastly more complex “turning Duna’s global climactic, atmospheric and biospheric conditions into something resembling Kerbin’s” meaning? The former would be a nice thing to have and could help with building bases and colonies in places with rough or awkward terrain; the latter is wildly out of scope for a “building and flying rockets” game even with the much grander vision of KSP2 and just won’t happen.

Use mirror symmetry rather than axial symmetry, add two pairs at the angles you want. That will work better for an aircraft-like vessel such as an X-wing replica which has a defined “top” and “bottom” as you’ll be able to adjust the controls on the top and bottom wings in pairs rather than having them all do the same thing as you’d get with axial symmetry and removing some parts, plus any cosmetic differences between the upper and lower wings would be easier to replicate; you’d also avoid the weirdness of having parts snap to the new symmetry number after removing some parts from symmetry (e.g. putting parts on with 6-fold symmetry then removing 2, if you try to move the remaining parts they’ll automatically snap to 4-fold (90 degree) symmetry instead of holding the 60/120 degree spacing they had before).

Putting in strobe effects is A BAD IDEA, please stop- they make it hard to watch even without the danger of giving someone an epileptic seizure. On an unrelated note- why put a Bobcat on your second stage in Episode 1 and a Swivel in Episode 2, when there are better upper stage engines available for both size brackets?

As a rule, assume the HG-5 will be useless as a relay beyond LKO and you’ll be fine. The RA-2 is several hundred times more powerful for not much increase in cost and weight- which when you consider the cost of multiple HG-5s is actually a significant discount for both- and is well worth the effort of unlocking before building a Mun relay network. You’ll need to time your probe missions so they arrive at the Mun when the KSC is facing it to have control for landings until then though.

I can barely hear the voiceover over the noise of the engines in that Coniston 3 flight, might need to tweak your sound mix for future flights with that one.

Went over to look at a bit of local scenery, with the help of some deployable lights. I forgot how huge those things were compared to Kerbals.

Bill: Dres Lander to Mission Control, touchdown beside the two rovers. Ready to begin EVA construction. Gene: Copy that, proceed as planned. Linus: Don't break my rover! Bill: Seriously, Linus, chill. This one's a doddle compared to Minmus, no need to take any wheels off or anything- just take one docking port, stick it on the back and tow this rover around as a trailer on that one. Assuming the stupid rover autopilot thingy stops playing up, that is- maybe if I stick it on the lander and then back like last time? Bill: Yup, worked just like last time. EVA construction complete, heading back to the Dres Express. Someone move that rover away from the lander or it'll get hosed by the rocket exhaust. Linus: Course plotted to the nearby Ridges. Wow, this thing is fast! Nearly triple the speed compared to the little wheels. Bill: See? Nothing to worry about. Bill: Docking complete. Bobak: I've run the numbers and you have plenty of fuel left over- in fact you can fill up the lander's tanks completely and still have enough left to get home in two weeks with enough of a margin to meet up with your return pod and a safety margin on top of that. Bob: Nice- pumping the fuel now. Might as well top everything else up while we're here, we can always fill the Dres Express up again around Kerbin. Gene: Roger that. Give yourself half an orbit to get clear of the lander and then head on home. Bob: Will do. *plane noises* Gene: Why does nobody ever tell me they're going to launch a mission before launching it!? I'm the FLIGHT DIRECTOR, for crying out loud! Wernher: Actually, I did tell you. Yesterday, in fact. Gene: Really? I don't remember that... Wernher: Well, I did. But since you're clearly going senile, I'll tell you again- it's an Eve scanning probe with a couple of relays bolted to the sides. Mortimer: Looks expensive. Wernher: Two contracts' worth of advance money covered most of it, and the payouts once we finish the scans are well worth the effort. Plus we can send it to Ike later and double the money. Mortimer: See, now you're speaking my language! Wernher: And once we have all those detailed maps, we can pick the best landing spots for the future crewed expedition. Mortimer: The. What? Bobak: The last of the part grabber probes just lobbed the girder structure they all launched on into the atmosphere and is now on course to pick up that other stranded Kerbal in LKO. Sanlan: *from the desk in the corner* slow down slowdownSLOWDOWN! *crunch* Sanlan: oops... Wernher: OK, that's it- the next version of that grabber probe is getting much bigger reverse thrusters so we don't keep crashing them into stuff. Sanlan: Bringing it down now, should land nice and close to the KSC this- Sanlan: Aww, come on! *** Bill: Hello, Kerbin, we're baaaaack! Bob: Looks like we're off on our inclination to get back to the KSC, but we'll land pretty close. Send the boats out towards the Island Airfield. Mortimer: Right, now that you two are back, how about building some deathtrap contraption to knock a couple of tourists out from G-forces? Preferably one that comes back to the launchpad to save funds on the recovery. Bob: Easy peasy- smallish pod, big engine, shoot it straight up and- oh... Mortimer: Which part of "back to the launchpad" wasn't clear to you? Bob: Whatever, I'm more interested in this anyway. *plane noises* Gene: What is it this time? Bill: Calibrating the Kronus Mk2 for a passenger run to orbit and back. Payload capacity won't be great, but we'll have up to sixteen seats to play with per flight if this works. Bob: We're also testing using Swivels on the outer engines instead of Reliants to give it a bit more control and marginally better vacuum ISP, though it's a bit heavier and has less thrust. Shouldn't matter too much with this payload though, it's lighter than the 30 tons this model can manage. Walt: Is that nuclear engine meant to be glowing red-hot like that? Bill: There's a nuclear reactor in it, of course it's going to get a bit hot. Bob: Crossing the Whoopstooshort Mountains now, carrying a bit more speed than usual because we went a bit higher than usual. And then reality seemed to unravel slightly. Several versions of the same events played out at once. In one version, the plane pulled up too sharply, flipped out and tumbled to the ground, raining debris and nuclear material across the hills west of the KSC. In another, it flipped backwards but recovered using copious amounts of afterburner, only to disintegrate as soon as the wheels touched the ground. In another, it just seemed to implode, parts flying in all directions and raining down like confetti. But in one, the plane flew down to the runway with no explosions and no drama except for flying a bit too close to the control tower and giving a hapless technician the fright of his life. Mortimer: What's the cost per ton on that? Bob: We're not interested in that. Mortimer: Well, I am! Bob: It's not designed to carry a lot of weight- it's for passengers. Mortimer: And why would we be sending sixteen people to space in one go!? Bob: I dunno, crewing up an interplanetary ship or something? Mortimer: *trying to imagine the cost of an interplanetary ship with living space for sixteen Kerbals* I don't... feel so good... Herman: So is nobody going to comment on that weird multiverse thing that just happened with that plane? Everyone: *blank stares* Herman: You know, how it took like nine attempts to get it to land without backflipping or exploding or turning itself inside out? Everyone: *blank stares* Jeb: Psst, new guy! Herman: Huh? Jeb: Come on, before they wake up. Herman: What's going on!? Jeb: It's easier if I show you.

There's a mod for that in KSP. I don't like the idea of silent engines though- while it might be "unrealistic", it also helps you to know that they're actually working and it would be too quiet otherwise.

Logs? Excessively low FPS is often caused by severe exception spam which slows the game to a crawl but doesn’t usually cause it to crash- the logs will show if that’s the case. Back up your saves (copy the folders inside KSP/saves to your desktop) then completely uninstall and reinstall the game and see if that helps.

What exactly are you launching to dock together?

No point hiding the existing (and unchanged) Kerbol system, stars are easy to see but planets etc. around them are not- spotting a planet transiting across even a fairly nearby star is like spotting a grain of sand moving in front of a car headlight from miles away, and that assumes they line up perfectly so we can see them. Detecting exoplanets should take quite a bit of effort, probably some dedicated space telescope type thing and a sufficiently long time that you can build up the infrastructure and technology to actually go there once they’re detected.