jimmymcgoochie

Minor issue with the KeR-7 fin, the "black" texture option is actually orange.

To level up to level 3 all it takes is planting flags on the Mun and Minmus, so to get level 5 I’d imagine adding a few other planets and moons would do- Duna/Ike, Gilly and possibly Eeloo or Dres. If you want to just cheat them up to level 5, put them in a craft of some sort and then use the “set position” cheat to move them between worlds and plant flags on each; as long as they’re inside a crew pod or module they’ll have an infinite supply of flags. Or if you want to cheat them up to level 5 using save file editing, I think they need 64XP to reach level 5. Or you could just disable Kerbal experience altogether and everyone becomes level 5.

Good luck trying to sell the idea of “nuclear reactors in space”- besides the logistical challenge of launching it up there in the first place, refuelling/repairing and so on and getting the power down to the surface somehow, in the eyes of the public a space reactor is just waiting to either fall back down or explode, in either case contaminating half the planet in the process. Anyone heard of that Russian/Soviet nuclear satellite that fell out of orbit over Canada? Now imaging a full-scale nuclear power plant dropping out of the sky: most of the core would likely survive re-entry but if bits of it broke apart then it would scatter nuclear material all over the place; if it lands pretty much anywhere on land it’s basically a dirty bomb- a Chernobyl in the sky with the fallout spread much further- and would probably fall afoul of international treaties about not putting nuclear weapons in space. Not to mention the risks of a launch failure etc. Space is an inherently dangerous place no matter how many safeguards you put in place; nuclear reactors are inherently dangerous things no matter how many safeguards you put in place. Combining the two is a bad idea- to make the reactor space-proof you’d need huge micrometeor shields, multiple redundant cooling systems etc. which are all really heavy, making it much harder to launch. Launch them separately and you need a crew of EVA-trained nuclear technicians and engineers to build it all up in space, which isn’t currently feasible unless they used the ISS and good luck trying to approve that. The best place for a nuclear reactor would be inside a mountain or underground: much easier to contain any fallout, just seal the whole thing up and use air locks to get in and out; much harder for any nefarious actors to gain access to it and damage/destroy it; with the right design water flow can be engineered so that if the power fails the reactor doesn’t melt down and spent fuel doesn’t overheat; plus once all the fuel’s used up and it’s full of nuclear waste the whole structure can be sealed off to prevent the waste from escaping.

TEAM MEETING Boardroom. 2 o'clock sharp. Everyone is required. (That means you, Jeb!) Jeb: owowowowowowowowowow (Val and Jeb enter the room, Val dragging Jeb along by the ear) OK, OK, I'm here please let go... Gene: So now that we're all accounted for, here's the situation. Next slide please. Bob: Uh, Gene? That's not a slideshow, that's a window... Gene: As I was saying- the Munlander 2 mission may have been a success and we got some good publicity out of the whole "daring rescue" thing, but there are a lot of people asking why we deliberately sent Bill and Bob down to the Mun knowing they couldn't get back and had to rely on a rescue mission in the first place. And quite frankly, they're right- it was reckless, dangerous and we can't afford another mishap like that. Until we get some solid successes to reassure the public that we know what we're doing, no more crewed missions beyond low Kerbin orbit. Jeb: inarticulate whimpering noises Gene: Over to you, Wernher. Wernher: Thanks Gene. With the additional scientific data gathered by Bill and Bob on and around the Mun, we've developed a new generation of small, lightweight probes that we can send to other planets in groups to maximise the gains and at the same time form a preliminary communications system. We have two missions ready for construction: the first will send four small probes out to Dres- Jeb: Boo-ouch! My shin! *glowers at Val sitting opposite* Wernher: -with the aim of attempting multiple landings on both Dres and Minmus; the second uses a similar design but adds relay capabilities to the transfer stage and will be launched to Duna. It's not the ideal time to be launching to Duna, but the design has the delta-V for it and the low chance of failure is outweighed by the potentially large gains for success. We have to start investigating The Anomaly further afield than Kerbin's immediate vicinity and ground-based telescopes seem to suggest that Duna's moon Ike has either broken apart or disappeared entirely, which this mission can investigate in advance of a more sophisticated mission that will be better equipped as a result of the data we can get now. Gene: I'm not too fond of the idea of launching a "risky" mission, however the low cost of the probes and the potentially large gains make it worth doing. If we're going to find out what caused The Anomaly, we're going to need to take some risks. The cluster missions are a go. Bill, Bob, Linus, Wernher, Gus: ; Jeb: Dres Quartet, above, and Duna Quartet, below, launching to their respective planets destinations (Dres is NOT a planet!) Gene: The next item to discuss is the fate of those amphibious rovers we sent out across Kerbin. Linus, can you update us on their progress? Linus: Unfortunately the Amphibious Rovers haven't worked nearly as well as we'd hoped. There seems to be an issue with the autonomous control module that causes them to repeatedly stop and go into a safe mode; it's easy enough to reset them, but for that we need to connect them to the DSN and right now they're in remote areas of the oceans where communications are patchy at best. Gene: I thought you included the best relay dishes we had on those rovers. Linus: It's not the rovers that are the problem- they just can't "see" any of the ground stations where they are and there are no dedicated relays around Kerbin to connect to the DSN stations. We get occasional, sporadic connections when one of the Kerbin orbit probes with a relay dish happens to pass by overhead, but most of the time they're operating blind and so will keep stopping for long periods of time if there's a problem. Gene: Wernher, would a keostationary relay network around Kerbin be possible with the Mun in its current orbit? Wernher: It's, er, possible, but the margins around the Mun would be too close for comfort. It would be more practical to launch them into a higher orbit that avoids the Mun completely when it's passing through Kerbin's equatorial plane, providing better coverage of higher latitudes. Linus: We could re-use the probe design from the Dres and Duna Quartets, simplify it by removing the scientific instruments and launch three of them on a much smaller rocket, then use a resonant orbit to ensure they're evenly spaced in their orbit. Gene: Sounds like a good idea- do it. Gene: Next up, we've been contacted by no less than three aerospace companies who've been trying to launch their own space programs but keep stranding their crews in space. Val: We could send up that tourist shuttle with just a pilot on board and pick all three of them up in one go. Gene: Ah yes, I remember you doing that before. Very good- do it again. Val: ; Jeb: This mission was completely successful, absolutely no problems with the landing skids clipping through the ground resulting in many explosions as the whole shuttle was destroyed on landing, nope, no siree... Gene: Now we move on to this "SCAN" stuff. Bill, Bob? Bill: Yes, the planetary mapping folk. They want us to create maps of Kerbin in multiple wavelengths including radar, infrared and UV to get a better picture of what Kerbin actually looks like. Bob: If the technology works out around Kerbin we could use it around other planets and moons (and Dres...) to not only find the best landing sites and any unusual surface features, but also to look for any tell-tale traces of The Anomaly or what caused it. Bill: The scanners are rather bulky compared to our available probe cores and they use quite a lot of power, but the results will be worth it. It'll also give us an extra relay satellite in a polar orbit which should cover a few black spots in the relay network. We'd like to launch from Woomerang for two reasons- Kerbin's rotation is slower nearer the poles so it requires less effort to reach a polar orbit, plus the higher elevation will save some delta-V to make up for the increased fuel cost of launching into a polar orbit. Gene: Very good. Make it so. Gene: And now for the final item on the agenda- Linus? Linus: After the mishaps with the rovers on Kerbin and the Mun, we've designed a new and improved rover that should address the issues encountered by those earlier models. This new design uses rugged girders to protect the more delicate electronics, comes with powerful communications and reaction wheels and ample solar panels to allow fully autonomous exploration. We call it the "super-rover" and the same design should be usable on the Mun, Minmus and coughcoughnotarealplanetcoughcough Dres. Making three identical rovers should reduce the chances of any mistakes in the manufacturing process. Gene: I like the sound of that. Linus: ...hang on a minute- oh... Gene: What? Linus: Just a second- F9 Gene: *confused blinking* ...Sorry, did you say something, Linus? Linus: Nope. Nothing at all, everything is absolutely fine, the probe cores are definitely the right way up as they were the whole time, nothing to worry about. Gene: Huh. OK then... Bob: Uh, Linus? You seem to be a bit low on fuel there. Linus: Don't worry, this design features a novel landing system *KABOOM* Bob: How is "running out of fuel and smashing the transfer stage into the Mun" a novel landing system? Linus: It worked, didn't it? The rover is perfectly fine. Bob: Explosions aren't "perfectly fine"! Jeb: Did someone say explosions? Gene: Meeting adjourned. Wait, why can I smell burning? Jeb: Barbecue time! Wernher: You didn't take one of those "Poodle" engines and turn it upside down like the advertising blurb said, did you? Jeb: ... Wernher: ...you didn't, did you? Val: I saw a meme like this once...

Once you’ve done the five posts to get full access, you can add images to your signature like this: Click/tap the arrow to the right of your name in the top right of the screen; Select “Account Settings”; Pick “Signature” from the list on the left, then you can add images there as you would to a post- use the “insert image from URL” button and paste in the web link after uploading your pictures to a file sharing site. This is different to changing your profile picture which is displayed beside your name on every post you make, to change that you pick “Profile” from the drop-down menu in the top right then the photo button on the left to add a profile pic (or the cover photo button on the right for a cover photo).

If you mean the badges in forum signatures below someone’s post (like mine for example), it’s usually from doing forum challenges in the “challenges and mission ideas” section, the organiser often creates a badge of some sort to give to those who’ve done or won the challenge.

The idea seemed simple enough- launch the core of a space station into orbit, take the contract money, then use the station to do some science. Thus a new station was launched with loads of batteries, some reserve fuel and even some blinky lights to show where the doors and docking ports are. Unfortunately nobody bothered to look at the small print for the one crew experiment currently available, which says it needs four crew, about a whole hitchhiker's worth of internal space for each of those four crew, and six electric charge per second to run the experiment. Oops. That "station" might yet be useful for something, but until then it'll just sit in orbit as a gloriously overdesigned relay. Too late, the next X-20 shuttle was already built with a docking section to allow it to dock to the station. Instead of doing that, it took a tourist into space and rescued another stranded Kerbal: And this is why they call them the "Whoopstooshort Mountains": The shuttle landed safely under parachutes after turning back to avoid the mountains. Nobody was really paying attention at that point, too busy either trying to figure out why the Amphibious Rovers kept stopping and saying they were "out of fuel" when they're clearly not (OOC: Come on, Bon Voyage, it can't be that hard- AR1 is absolutely fine but all the others keep stopping every other day and have to be rebooted, which isn't easy when there's no signal due to a lack of relays in Kerbin orbit) or building Munlander 2 to take a crew of two to the Mun. Jeb was once again eager to get his boots on the Mun, but oddly enough when it reached the launchpad he was nowhere to be found and so Bill and Bob went up instead. And then just as they started the trans-Munar injection burn... The second stage engine blew up. With nearly 2km/s still left in the tanks that was a major blow for the mission- Bill and Bob would still make it to Munar orbit and most likely to the surface as well, but once landed they'd be stuck there. Fortunately for them there was a backup Munlander and an untested prototype Mun crew rover that could be launched in a hurry to salvage the mission: There was a little bit of a delay to the launches as the Dessert Launchsite moved around into the Mun's orbital plane, allowing a little relay to be stuck on the top of the second Munlander to be dropped off in orbit of the Mun. (This delay also meant Jeb and Val had a chance to try and sneak onto the second Munlander and steal a ride to the Mun, but they were discovered before the launch and unceremoniously removed from the capsule...) Once the relay was deployed, rover and lander made their descents. And once the return infrastructure was in place, Bill and Bob headed down to the surface too. They ended up running out of fuel about ten metres above the surface, showing just how much fuel they'd lost when the second stage engine failed. The deployed science site was deployed, the, er, "EVA science" was performed, and then the rover arrived in the nick of time to carry them to their new lander- but not before Bill had nicked some parts off their now defunct lander. There was just time for a single postcard shot of the lander with Kerbin right behind it: (That's going to sell a lot of postcards and fridge magnets - Mortimer) After launching near the Mun's apoapsis they came back to Kerbin, giving Bob a chance to grab some more "EVA science" along the way: And despite the lack of heatshields (because 1.875m heatshields are in a node that hasn't been researched yet) the re-entry went without incident, bringing Bill and Bob back home with a bounty of science data which will be put to good use in the near future. There's a lot of science still to be had on the Mun and loads more over at Dres and Minmus, which have only been visited once each- this would normally call for a fleet of rovers, except that many rovers have met untimely ends or had serious incidents with exploding wheels so the KSC team no longer trust them to work as intended once they arrive at their destinations. Perhaps a fleet of tiny probes would be a better option? Maybe even shooting interplanetary to somewhere like Eve or Duna? And how about a proper communications network around Kerbin?

Bill and Bob’s Excellent Misadventure- they were going to the Mun when the second stage engine failed, with nearly 2km/s of fuel still in it. The lander on top made it to orbit of the Mun with enough fuel to land but no fuel to return afterwards. Cue the launch of a hastily built rover and a second nearly identical lander to act as their return craft, a bumpy landing for Bill and Bob as they ran out of fuel about 10 metres above the surface, an anxious wait for the rover to turn up (they were getting low on life support and power) and then some gratuitous explosions as Bon Voyage destroyed most of its wheels on arrival (again). Despite the setbacks, the mission was still successful- Mun landing in a new biome (Midlands), deployed science site set up and some science was gathered during the drive to the second lander as well as on the trip back to Kerbin, and despite lacking any form of heatshield for the re-entry (I haven’t unlocked the 1.875m one yet) nothing exploded and they splashed down safely with enough science to unlock two 90 science nodes and just 4 short of a third. I’ll repeat this mission in future but with less explosions and hopefully landing somewhere other than the Southwest Crater which has had one probe, one lander and two crews in it already.

Venus’ atmosphere is almost entirely CO2 and it also has some water vapour clouds above the deadly acid soup of its lower atmosphere, so put some really big lighter than air balloons in there (CO2 is denser than normal air and hydrogen could be used since there’s no danger of explosions due to a lack of oxygen) with atmospheric harvesters to hoover up CO2 and H2O then turn them into usable resources like methane, hydrogen and oxygen which could then be launched to space. Getting the rockets back to one of the floating platforms might be a bit more difficult, but if you’re building large scale infrastructure in the Venusian atmosphere you have bigger challenges to solve first. Also, don’t fall off… Mars has a few resources that could be useful- a thin but usable CO2 atmosphere and water ice at least at the poles (and possibly under the ground elsewhere) again allow for some fuel production; there’s also all that rusty dust full of iron that could theoretically be turned into steel using carbon from the atmosphere, allowing more complex pieces of machinery or equipment to be made on the surface. The lower gravity and thinner atmosphere are good for launching to orbit too. If Phobos and/or Deimos have any water on/in them then they’d be even better places to set up shop due to the miniscule gravity and the fact that they’re both already orbiting Mars, so need much less fuel to reach low Mars orbit than launching from its surface. Titan is another obvious option- water and some hydrocarbons like methane and ethane are readily available on its surface, no need to even chill that methane down as it’s already a liquid. Lack of solar energy due to distance from the Sun and the thick atmosphere could be compensated for with nuclear power, either fission or (assuming the technology exists) fusion powered by gas harvesting from Saturn’s exosphere. Some form of SSTO aircraft would be the obvious choice of launch vehicle, taking advantage of the atmosphere rather than fighting against it; maybe an air-breathing nuclear engine would be the best option since that atmosphere is nitrogen and has next to no oxygen in it. For most small bodies beyond the asteroid belt including most of the gas giants’ moons, water ice is in abundant supply but solar power is not. Bring your own reactors and just melt down an entire moon then electrolyse it for hydrolox.

That’s a known issue with 1.12

Mini montage from my current career game, started when my graphics card broke. That’s no Mun… Well, actually it is the Mun- solar system rearrangement courtesy of Snarkiverse. Link to report

@The Dressian Exploder That's a deployable battery, from the Deployable Batteries mod . The mod's a bit old and hasn't been updated with the inventory changes in 1.12 (no part volume) but the parts still work fine and can still be deployed.

For over sixty days the Space Program has been exploring, investigating, pushing the frontiers of Kerbalkind's understanding of The Anomaly that reshaped their solar system. Well, today The Anomaly fought back: The loss of both Mun rovers hurt, they could easily have visited all the Mun's biomes and gathered a lot more science; maybe the next generation of rovers will have more luck? The rovers on Kerbin aren't doing much better- Amphibious Rover 3 lost some of its wheels followed by a high-speed crash when it tried to stop itself careering downhill, Amphibious Rover 2 keeps stopping because the autopilot module thinks it's out of fuel (it's still almost full, and the identical Amphibious Rover 1 has no such issues) and the pole-bound Kerbin Rover 1 is just really, really slow. The team sent out another Amphibious Rover from Woomerang, but modified with many more solar panels and some backup communications systems in case the main dish breaks, which will take up the lost rover's mission of visiting Crater Island. To make up for the losses and to boost morale at the KSC, the most significant mission to date was launched- CREWED MUN LANDING! Shortly after Val launched into orbit, Jeb was found in a store cupboard in the VAB with a splitting headache and smelling faintly of chloroform... The mission went exactly as planned, most of the time. And then the weirdness began... Val: Wheeeee! This low gravity is great fun! Gene: OK Val, we've done the publicity shots so you can pack up those lights again. Val: ...um, no. Gene: What do you mean, no? Val: I mean, I can't pick them up. They're too big and heavy. Gene: Val, they're two kilos each. Val: I know that, but... Linus: Hey Val, try again now? Val: ...nope. Linus: Really? Even with the mass/volume cheats switched on? Val: Say again? Linus: Er, I mean, um... Is that a Kraken? Val: KRAKEN!? I'm outta here! Despite the incident with the lights the mission was an outstanding success- much science was gathered, many funds were acquired from a variety of contracts and world-firsts rewards, and Val returned without any further incidents- even hopping out her pod to plant a flag once she'd returned to Kerbin's surface. A mission was being put together when an urgent call came in- someone had tried to do a Mun mission of their own but had managed to strand their intrepid Kerbonaut in orbit of the Mun. This was a perfect opportunity to test out a new upper-stage engine, complete a bunch of contracts and bolster the Space Program's reputation, so the existing design was modified to include RCS thrusters and launched at the next alignment with the Mun's inclined orbit. Actually rendezvousing with the stranded craft was tricky- they were in a near equatorial orbit whereas the rescue craft arrived in a highly inclined orbit due to the way the Mun orbits Kerbin. A series of course corrections were performed using the same RK-0109 second stage as for the Mun lander, then with a prototype "Hecate" cryogenic engine with a simply astounding ISP of 465s, making up for the low density of liquid hydrogen with sheer efficiency and low overall mass. The craft was fitted with strobe lights in case the rendezvous happened in the dark (as is right and proper), however it happened in daylight instead. Gene: Rendezvous coming up, stand by to cancel relative velocity at closest approach. Jeb: Roger that. Gene: What's our closest approach? *clang scraaaaaaaaaaape* Gene: Never mind... The collision was at a very slow speed so there was no real damage to either craft besides a bit of paint swapping; that being said, where did this big flange thing come from and should we be worried that it's not attached to anything any more? The return trajectory was downright weird- leaving the Mun at its apoapsis, the craft ended up in a retrograde orbit of Kerbin and spent most of the trip back down stuck in Kerbin's shadow, requiring a course correction radially to get light on the solar panels and avoid running out of power entirely. There was plenty of fuel left on that oh-so-efficient upper stage to make that burn and to brake before re-entry and the pod landed safely without any trouble. The craft wasn't intended to get any science, however an EVA report combined with the observations of that flange (how is that "science"? -Jeb) meant that it got a higher science return than some of the old Munshot landers. While that was going on, the other three rescued Kerbals headed out on a "team building exercise" as Gene put it, deploying a big cluster of deployed science equipment near the flagpole outside the Astronaut Complex. (How is golf "science"!? -Jeb) And finally, the Dres Relay arrived at nobody's favourite celestial body and captured into a high polar orbit where it will stay for a while and gather science. Orbital velocity up there is a mere 60m/s and there's several hundred left in the tanks so plenty of scope to change the orbit if the signal to other craft isn't strong enough at that range. With the recent influx of science the new Hitchhiker crew module is now available, along with a series of crew experiments that can be done in a variety of places. A space station might be a good idea, however it would still need to be powered by many small static solar panels and small batteries, connected up with the smallest docking ports and with limited signal bandwidth to the surface even using those HG-20 quad dishes. Better technologies require a lot of science and a very expensive R&D upgrade though, so it might be a case of making the best of what's available now. RCS systems are available now so at least docking is a possibility.

Yes- open Kerbin’s planetary config file in a text editor (something like Notepad++ or VSCode is recommended) and delete every instance of a City with a name of KSC_palm.

@JcoolTheShipbuildergive it a really common name like Steve, with the planet blurb explaining that it was originally discovered by someone called Steve but due to an admin error when submitting his discovery to whoever keeps the official records of planetary bodies, the planet got called Steve instead and the error was discovered too late to change it.

What exactly happens when you try to launch from the runway? (Screenshots would be useful) Are you trying to launch from the Spaceplane Hangar but you don’t get to the runway? That’s meant to happen- KCT makes building craft take time and the earliest planes usually take about 30-40 days to build, check the KCT window. Or is the issue that you’ve already built the plane but KCT won’t let you launch it from the runway? The best way to get help with RO/RP-1 is to ask on the RO/RP-1 discord, that’s where the mod developers and many experienced RP-1 players tend to gather and you're more likely to get the solution there than on the KSP forums.

@GuessingEveryDayMy story, my rules

@Souptime Character list (significant characters only): Tina- main character. Martin and Jeanette- Tina's parents; Sasha- Tina's little sister. Jeb/Bob/Bill/Val/Gene/Wernher/Gus/Mortimer/Walt/Linus- come directly from KSP with my own personal takes on their various characters; Val and Gene have been getting a lot of attention lately but I intend to give the others their own time in the limelight in due course. (Linus hasn't actually been in the story yet but will appear soon...) Nat(alia)- pilot with the Space Program, currently engaged to Val; some retconning going on involving her appearance in Chapter 1, more backstory to come that will reveal more about this. Miltrey, Gerzer, Billy-Bobrim- crew of the Dauntless, commanded by Val, all KIA when the shuttle was destroyed in orbit. Johnbro, Desdas- work for K.V. Roe, a major aerospace company; Thombert- test pilot for K.V. Roe and former flight instructor at the Space Program, currently MIA (though presumed dead) aboard Firebird. Philbo, Davlos, Wenlan- doctors at Northill Hospital where Val and Tina are taken following the EVA rescue and prototype shuttle crash/ditching that followed. Dilgas- current Governor of the Regionality of Estovus (broadly comparable to a President, though political machinations still to be revealed); generally horrible in every way as the last few chapters have revealed, now dead. (Disclaimer: any resemblance to real persons or events occurring since I created this character in ~October 2020 are entirely coincidence. Wow, did I pick the wrong time to be writing about politics or what? ); Romana- previous Governor and electoral rival to Dilgas, generally incompetent but politically well-connected, and also Not Dilgas. Megan- Tina's roommate and classmate at KSC; Nathanael, Gerald, Jennie- other classmates. Scott and Jim a.k.a. SKS and TheLayKerbonaut- make videos about space-related stuff and post them on the internet; loosely based on Scott Manley and Everyday Astronaut (I'll let you guess which is which ) but also a nod to @KSK and @Just Jimwhose KSP stories inspired me to start writing my own (and start merrily pilfering their ideas ). And some vehicles: Dynamic- Dynawing-class shuttle, crashed beside Tina in Chapter 1 (landed backwards by Jeb ). Dauntless- Dynawing-class shuttle, destroyed in orbit in Chapter 11. Vulture- K.V. Roe VTOL aircraft (based on the Mk4 mod by Nertea from which K.V. Roe itself is also taken), appears in Chapters 2-4. Firebird- K.V. Roe prototype spaceplane with air-breathing nuclear engine, not quite an SSTO but can reach near-orbital velocity, first appears in Chapter 12, scrambled with Thombert and Tina aboard to rescue Val after the Dauntless was destroyed but subsequently damaged in space before apparently burning up on re-entry. Azimuth- Subsonic VTOL flying hospital, looks like the mutant offspring of a Quinjet, the shuttle from Avatar and a widebody passenger airliner. Appears in Chapter 16 and will also be appearing in Chapter 17.

Ah. You've put mods in the Steam copy of KSP, haven't you? Bad idea. Steam breaks modded KSP on a very regular basis, the best thing to do is: Copy your save files (Right click KSP in Steam > local files > browse local files, then inside the KSP directory go to saves > [your save name] ) to the desktop for safekeeping. Completely uninstall all mods. Disable Steam cloud syncing for KSP (under General tab in the pop-up window that opened in step 1). Completely uninstall KSP via Steam, reinstall it, then verify file integrity to make sure that your fresh new install is correct. Run KSP and make sure it loads without mods. Copy the KSP directory in its entirety (the directory that opens when you 'browse local files' in step 1, go up one level and copy 'Kerbal Space Program') and paste that somewhere outside of the Steam folder tree- desktop would do, or an external drive, or just anywhere that Steam can't get to it. Install your mods on that new copy. The only downside to this is that the modded copy doesn't get updated when an update comes out, but that's also a good thing as it won't break your modded games. Since 1.12 is the last major release for KSP and only minor patches/fixes are expected, the game-breaking stuff is less relevant but Steam will still break stuff on its own so you're better off avoiding it; the very infrequent pain of updating a modded copy of KSP isn't nearly as bad as the frequent issues that come with putting mods in the Steam copy.

@obnox twin it'll be done when it's done. I'm not sticking to any kind of schedule, I write when I have the inclination, the ideas and the time- and a good chunk of the latter is going into playing KSP rather than writing about it, plus other games too. The best I can do is to say that the next chapter is Coming SoonTM

What just happened? Was it another Anomaly? Everything seems... brighter, sharper, more defined than before. Look at the ground! Look at the water! Look at, well, EVERYTHING! Some crazy rich guy turned up at KSC offering good money for the privilege of being made to black out from excessive G-forces. While the sanity of the idea was questionable, the KSC crew never knowingly turn down easy money and stuck this crazy tourist in a capsule on top of the biggest and most powerful SRB they had with the bare minimum of solid fuel. 15G or more for five seconds did the job! Seeing an opportunity, Bill, Bob and Wernher put their heads together and soon unveiled their new creation- a self-driving rover for the Mun, launched using another of those big SRBs but with full fuel and a more sensible thrust curve. Then they launched another, but then... Engine failure on the second stage when it ignited to circularise over Kerbin. While the rover isn't going to the Mun, the skycrane on top is more than capable of doing a powered landing on Kerbin- and is stupidly overpowered for the Mun. The replacement for that mission seemed to launch at exactly the right time, arriving at the Mun a whole day before the first one. The skycrane worked as intended, though it barely got above 5% throttle, and the rover landed safely on the Mun in a Highland Crater. Once the skycrane was jettisoned and the science had been gathered, the Bon Voyage module was switched on and programmed to take the rover to one of the Mun's largest craters to get more science. A day later, Mun Rover 1 joined its sibling on the Mun and went in search of science: With the Mun rovers done it looked like the KSC team were ready to move on to something new, but then Linus had a brilliant idea- why not send rovers around Kerbin? The first Kerbin rover rolled out from Woomerang shortly after, its mission- go to the northern ice shelf via as many icy biomes as possible and get science. It also has a big relay antenna and might be useful as a signal booster for craft in low polar orbits, though that remains to be seen. Positively giddy at being listened to, Linus threw an even more outlandish suggestion out there- what if we made a rover that can go on water too! And that's exactly what they did: Three Amphibious Rovers were built in total, one dispatched from Woomerang to drive to the ocean then sail itself to Crater Island and two sent from the partly subsided Cove launch site, discovered by Jeb on his first plane flight, which went in opposite directions: one headed south-east towards Kerbin's second continent to try and find the semi-mythical "badlands" where no Kerb dare tread, while the other headed south-west to explore some islands in the southern hemisphere and eventually reach the south pole. The loss of Sunshot 2 after its crash-landing on Dres was still weighing on Wernher's mind- if only they'd had a better signal, they could have gotten much more data out of the stricken probe before its batteries died. Working long into the night and then into the next morning, he finally revealed his idea to the rest of the KSC crew, whose reaction was... lukewarm at best. Most of that was just because he said "Dres" though, the idea itself was sound plus they got to see one of those new-fangled hydrogen-burning engines in action: The Dres Relay was duly dispatched to everyone's least-favourite planetary body where it will take up a high polar orbit, gather some SITE data and hopefully boost the signal transmission rates for future missions to Minmus. (Fine, and to Dres too...) And then, just when they thought they'd seen every contract offer out there, some rather sheepish looking corporate reps turned up with a rather embarrassing coincidence- three private companies had tried to launch Kerbals into space, but all three had failed and there were now three Kerbals stuck in low Kerbin orbit with no way to get back. The heads of the KSC departments got together to discuss, The deal was simple- rescue them and they'll join the Space Program, free of charge; in fact the companies they previously worked for were offering pretty significant financial rewards for rescuing them. CFO (sole accountant) Mortimer was immediately onboard with that and managed to talk Head of Facilities (chief janitor and maintenance man) Gus into it when he pointed out that the money saved would mean they could upgrade the VAB; VP Public Relations (a.k.a. three-time Kerbin's Most Soporific Voice winner) Walt saw the reputation benefits of rescuing the stricken Kerbals (though by this point he was really regretting losing that bet with Morty during the "first orbit" party since he now had to do all the press conferences wearing a full hazmat suit for the rest of the year); Acting Head of Science (because Wernher was Head of Design in these meetings and the others felt that giving him two roles- and two votes- was a bit unfair) Linus didn't contribute much, he would much rather be in Mission Control keeping watch over his fleet of rovers, despite the fact that they were fully autonomous; and Head of Design Wernher was too busy demolishing the tray of pastries in the middle of the table to make any meaningful contribution, besides suggesting they use the Tourist Shuttle and rescue all three stranded Kerbals in one go (through a massive spray of pastry crumbs). With that decided, the Tourist Shuttle was duly wheeled out and despite the reservations of many, Jeb was chosen to pilot it. They weren't sure how Jeb would react to being back in space following the flight of Endurance 1, but aside from the occasional eye twitch or spontaneous giggling fit he seemed to be back to normal; or something vaguely resembling normal at any rate. There was a brief panic in Mission Control when Jeb suddenly popped the hatch and went out on an EVA, but all they heard over the radio was "WHEEEEEEEE!" as he jetted around for a few minutes then returned. One by one the stranded Kerbals were rescued, the task using up all the fuel in the shuttle's upper stage and a sizeable portion of its onboard RCS too. When they were all aboard Jeb deorbited the shuttle and soon realised that the weak RCS thrusters weren't slowing them down nearly quickly enough to try and land at the KSC. Sure enough, they overshot by a much higher margin than Val ever did (which she was happy to remind him of at any available opportunity, in much the same way that he had reminded her of her two failed orbital flights while he made it on his first try) and splashed down into the ocean some distance away. Recovery teams were scrambled to pick them up, however a passing merchant freighter saw them splash down and quickly came over, fished them out of the ocean with an onboard crane and took them to the nearest port- after the entire crew posed with the shuttle and its crew of spacekerbs, obviously! The money from the rescue missions was enough to upgrade the VAB at last, meaning much bigger and better rockets can now be assembled and launched to more far-flung destinations. At long last, Kerbalkind can discover exactly what happened to their solar system during The Anomaly and where all the various planetary bodies ended up. Besides the Mun, Minmus and Dres it's not clear what happened to everything else; most of the planets seem to be in the same places, more or less, but the moons are anyone's guess.

Loads of contracts that would suit a crewed Mun landing… ”Let’s go to Duna, or fly around Kerbin in a plane.”

These newfangled solar panels require some experimentation. Deploy the probes! Back to fuel cells for a materials bay probe to grab that data from space high over Kerbin- it requires 2EC per second which is the equivalent of about 14 solar panels, or one fuel cell and a couple of little tanks of hydrogen/oxygen since it'll be in space for an hour at most. That brought back enough science to research something new. New engines? New plane-related stuff? New probes? New experiments? Nah, in the end they went for fuel tanks, then created this thing: Not the prettiest rocket ever- in fact it's mildly absurd- but methalox is lighter than conventional LF/Ox so gets good delta-V without making it too heavy to get off the pad. The first stage had a probe core on it to do a propulsive landing (said StageRecovery) and then the upper stage put the probe above into orbit around the Mun, for science! This one is solar powered and used 10 of those little panels (out of a total of 30 parts!) to feed the power-hungry materials bays. Getting to the Mun was pretty easy, but capturing into orbit required a lot more fuel than expected, partly because the probe was launched into an equatorial Kerbin orbit instead of matching the Mun's inclination. Returning from the Mun at apoapsis is a lot easier, just leaving its SOI retrograde to its orbit around Kerbin puts you on a suborbital trajectory; wait until the Mun has moved away before trying to fix that or you'll end up falling back into the Mun's gravity and getting flung off in a strange direction or crashing into it. With those samples returned, the team realised that materials bay samples had been acquired from everywhere in Kerbin's SOI, apart from Kerbin's upper atmosphere. This was quickly fixed with a pair of probes to skim through the rarefied air over 60km up and gather those samples before returning. And finally- FINALLY!!!- it was time for Jeb to come home after 30 long, long days in orbit. His behaviour was rather... erratic. Unclear if he was kissing the ground or eating it, all the recovery crews know is that by the time they got there, all the grass in a hundred metre radius had withered and the smell was unbelievable. With the benefit of hindsight, maybe including some kind of tank to hold the, er, waste products, would have been advisable... Shortly after that Sunshot 2 arrived at Dres, completely overshot its course correction burn and ended up having to use Minmus for a gravity assist to capture into a retrograde orbit. It seems the automatic alarm system in Mission Control didn't go off properly in time for the burn, resulting in the probe having less fuel than planned. The landing attempt went ahead anyway but disaster struck- the probe ran out of fuel and hit the ground at about 35m/s, smashing the engine and fuel tank and sending it tumbling away downhill. Everything looked OK until the second impact, which ripped off one of the two HG-5 dishes and also destroyed the fuel cell and with it the probe's only source of power. The probe stopped on the surface with no further damage and collected its data, but without the fuel cell the batteries wouldn't last long and with only one dish data transmission rates were painfully slow. Most of the data was still waiting to be sent when the power ran out, marking an inauspicious end to the first Dres landing. But then again Dres did steal Minmus so it was hardly surprising that it didn't play fair. Substantial financial rewards for reaching Dres and landing on it, as well as the flyby of Minmus and a variety of contracts, are almost enough to upgrade the VAB and escape the 30 part limit bring in a bigger workforce and better cranes to make the rockets even bigger. At this point Bob stormed into Mission Control, stole Gene's master launch key and refused to give it back unless he was sent to orbit on the very next launch. Two tourists turned up at around the same time looking for their own orbital experience, so Val took the Tourist Shuttle out for another flight. The ascent was completely fine, Bob got his orbital flight at last and Val's re-entry profile was perfect, skimming through the atmosphere and controlling their descent rate nicely. She overshot a bit though, but had ample speed and altitude to turn around and approach from the east. At Bob's insistence, the Tourist Shuttle had been fitted with a parachute for emergency landings; seems only fair that they tested it while he was on board. Unfortunately it didn't go entirely according to plan, providing insufficient drag to slow the shuttle down entirely and resulting in a hard landing when the landing gear phased through the ground collapsed due to the high vertical speed and the tail fins broke off on impact. No sooner had the parachute crumpled to the ground, Bob burst out of the rear hatch, bolted across the KSC complex and locked himself in his office in the R&D department where he's been ever since. It's rather unlikely that he'll ever go to space again so we may need to hire some more scientists for future missions... The VAB upgrade is top priority, however it might have to be put on hold to upgrade the Astronaut Complex instead- that upgrade would allow EVA training so Kerbals could do EVAs in flight, as well as plant flags.

I rarely (if ever) look at IVAs and in some cases (mods with high detail interiors) I just delete them entirely to save RAM. KSP2 performance improvements aside, I don’t see interiors as being worth the extra hardware demand, but then again I’m a habitual third person camera user on pretty much every game involving vehicles as it’s so much easier to see what you’re doing that way. Maybe a separate slider to control the interior texture resolution so those who want the high detail interiors can have it and those who don’t can turn them down?

Are your five stranded on the surface of the Mun or in orbit? If in orbit then things are a bit easier and just building something efficient is good enough. Engines like the Terrier (1.25m), Cheetah (1.875m, Making History DLC) and Poodle (2.5m) are the best options as they provide high ISP, with each step up in size coming with twice the thrust and twice the mass, more or less, so it’s pretty easy to scale up. I would stick a Mk1-3 pod (3 crew) under a passenger cabin (2 crew) to hold the five of them- Hitchhikers are sensitive to heat much more than crew pods and the crew pods are better protected and more stable during re-entry- with a probe core inside a service bay on top so it’s controllable with nobody aboard, then a heatshield with 20% ablator (or even less if you have the re-entry heating set below 100%) and then your upper stage powered by either a Terrier or two or a Poodle (or Cheetah if you have MH). It doesn’t take a huge amount of fuel to get good range out of them and by using a powerful first stage engine combined with some chunky boosters you should have oodles of delta-V to get to the Mun, meet up with the crew and then bring them back. For a crew stuck on the surface things are a bit more difficult- the increased delta-V needed is a factor but you also need a high enough TWR to land (this isn’t too difficult for the Mun) and to land vaguely near them. You might find it easier to send out a small rover that can carry crew so that if your landing is a bit inaccurate you don’t have to walk them all the way over individually. The alternative method is to just use external seats to carry the crew, making the whole thing much lighter but also increasing the risk of accidentally cooking your crew on re-entry. Putting the seats inside a service bay should protect them and making everything smaller and lighter will also make it easier. The NERV has the best ISP of any rocket engine in KSP, but it’s also heavy and you can only use a specific set of fuel tanks as it uses just liquid fuel. For anything below about 4500m/s, the Terrier is the better option due to its vastly lower weight, not to mention cost. The MH Wolfhound is the best bipropellant engine in KSP in terms of ISP and one of the best vacuum engines in terms of thrust, but it’s pretty heavy for the thrust you get out of it compared to the Poodle; use with caution. The Rhino is massive and while its ISP is respectable and its thrust is the highest of any single engine in space (a whopping 2MN!) it’s just too big to be used for something like this.