aspacecephalopod

Chapter 4 is up now! Lots of new stuff being sent out and two new crews (plus the Dres crew is heading to Jool as well). This chapter was mostly doing stuff off-world, Jeb and Val got to fly a Tylo mission, which is super fun with little landers with really high TWR

Did the 'Leap of Laythe': Such a fun cliff!

Laythe for the oceans and terrain, Eve and Tylo for the ridiculous project lander designs.

Continued working on a Vall colony in a Kopernicus save-planning some OPM missions with KSC based on Laythe.

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Maybe try the "Get share links" (see photos) or manually BBCode type in the 'img' and '/img' in brackets? The forum "Insert image from URL" doesn't work with imgur usually. You want the option in the bottom left for BBCode/forums.

Chapter Three is up now! Quite a bit longer but it covers a lot of the exploration and landings I had planned.

Still working on Chapter 3, but a quick teaser of the eventual endgame for this mission. Same place, some time in the not-entirely-distant future...

That is pretty much required reading before going to Laythe! Also, This. I think the first base (not island) might be Jebediah (or Valentina) Outpost, good call. And a quick teaser of the big ship to be sent out at the next transfer window... extremely ugly but super tough. That's near the summit of the island the abandoned airfield is on, for an idea of landing capabilities I thought about going full VTOL but STOL seems like enough for this application (mining and converting ore, and flying back to fuel other ships).

Thanks! It was a big inspiration for sure. As for the home island, I haven't really decided yet-maybe after one of the initial 5 explorers? I'm open to other suggestions. Chapter 3 is almost done too. I have some fun stuff planned for 4 with the other moons, and then sending off some ISRU equipment...

Hi all, Just curious if anyone has run into this bug before-I have two of these planes landed on Laythe. I dropped them in and then completely ignored them after landing (my crew arrived 200d later to fly them). In that time they sat on the planet, the motors shifted position. On both planes the rear facing motors moved up slightly (symmetrically left-right) and front motors moved down slightly (symmetrical too). Curious if the fact that they are not on level ground could have an impact? Funny thing is I've left a similar version of the same plane (modified with float pods for water landings) on Kerbin floating in the bay for longer and this didn't happen there. It's probably worth noting that the motors are not mounted with 2X symmetry-it uses four unique motors/props for CW/CCW prop rotation. Photo below shows what's up pretty clearly-the planes still fly perfectly but want to make sure they aren't going to move around more over time or if anyone knows of a fix. Mods are fairly standard, and worth noting there are zero part mods on the plane (besides BG): Gameplay: Mechjeb, Trajectories, Parts: KAS, KIS There are KIS bases within 2.3km of the planes for what it's worth, was attempting to move a base with ground pylons and winches, no such luck. But that shouldn't have an impact on these decidedly non-KAS/KIS planes to my knowledge... Many thanks in advance and happy landings!

Quick post to share the next part of Laythe adventures got all the main hardware landed and in place! Project Atlantis Chapter 2: Arrival

Oh good to know then haha No worries! Was a really fun challenge, thanks for running it.

I somehow hadn't built a boat since pre 1.0 and relearning what floats well let to some odd design choices, as well as building around a landing pad Did get a proper landing with a VTOL though! Might have to land a rocket on it at some point.

Hi all, I've wanted to properly explore Laythe for a while having done just a few landings and takeoffs-Jool V way back in 0.23, and one or two smaller events but never anything past flags and footprints. The ability to build propeller planes in BG finally gave me reason to design some new vehicles and send a crew off for a semi-permanent settlement. Hence Project Atlantis! Major shout out to everyone who has done Laythe explorations before and posted reports here - Brotoro and Bsalis, this mission goes out to you two for incredibly skilled Laythe island surveys! I read lots of great mission reports when planning this out, thanks all. Hope everyone enjoys this little expedition of mine! I decided to break this mission into chapters since it's a fairly high picture and word count. Atlantis Chapter 1: Leaving Home Atlantis Chapter 2: Arrival Atlantis Chapter 3: Exploration Atlantis Chapter 4: Going off-world Atlantis Chapter 5: The Second Jool Fleet Atlantis Chapter 6: Reorganization (Last chapter) And here's a few highlight images with the mission wrapped up: First Tug arriving at Laythe. The most aircraft I've put in physics range at once-fun but laggy! Boats and planes. Some field engineering to move a rover around...

Thanks and thanks, glad you liked it! Forgot the pull the links with the img tags, working now.

https://imgur.com/xuh8HJ2 Put together a boat, proceeded to land an aircraft on it. Didn't get it up to speed to takeoff though... guess I'm going back to it with a Harrier VTOL simulacra later.

Hey all, I've been flying, crashing, and generally exploring the Kerbol system for a while (0.22, time flies!) and have really enjoyed seeing reports from everyone here of grand adventures. Just thought I'd share my first official mission report from my current main save which is stock-ish with an emphasis on larger long-term crewed missions (each kerbal on an interplanetary mission has hab space) and some worldbuilding. My creative writing is a bit rusty but hope it's an interesting read and feel free to share any feedback! This mission started after testing a ton of different Eve lander designs, and realizing it would be more fun to run a larger expedition around them. After mission start I figured out that Breaking Ground aircraft would make exploration a lot more fun... so ended up building a light RTG plane and Jeb and Val circumnavigated the planet with lots of stops along the way. KSP/Eve Exploration (Imgur)

So I realized after the fact that MechJeb is totally specified as not allowed-whoops! My bad, feel free to not include my entry or deduct as many points as you see fit. I didn't use it much, flew the ascent from Kerbin and Tylo landing full manual, but did use it for flight info, plotting the target landing site, and plotting/timing orbital maneuver burns. The ship is fully flyable without any mod assists though (and I had plenty of fuel reserve to do so). I landed near but not inside the Tylo cave, mostly for fun but guessing landing a few hundred meters away isn't officially at the cave. That said I thought I'd still share the mission despite my error-was super fun to run low mass as my main savegame right now is about to send three 350T ships off to Laythe. Really nice to be able to zip along with no lag Full mission here Lander design

Sounds great, thanks! I'll have something posted in the next few days hopefully.

Mind if I toss my hat into the ring @The Doodling Astronaut ? Was putting together some low mass kerballed Tylo landers, but think I can go a lot lighter with a probe! I did have one quick question, does the lander need to have enough dV to handle the entire landing or can the transfer stage be used for initial deorbit (basically, staging without a dedicated lander lower stage)?

I try to give them a bit of hab space for longer transfers (this Eve lander was part of a much bigger mission, and had enough hitchhikers on the main ship each kerbal had their own space), but have definitely been guilty of that in the past LOL. They are pretty tough and always seem so unfazed about spending years on orbit...

Haha well I did remove the RTG for actual flights, was just there to simulate the weight. The rest of what you said about the reentries, lakes of fuel, atmosphere and such is perfectly safe right? I do want to fly an Eve mission with capsules sometime, seems more proper. I had a capsule craft that could make orbit, landing balance with heat shields kept being tricky though.

This is hardly a perfect design but here's what I ended up with for a recent mission and it makes it to orbit with plenty of dV to spare: https://imgur.com/a/tm5i5gW I threw in a photo of the design before/after dropping the heat shields and fins/parachutes for descent. TWRs are in Kerbin (whoops!) but should still provide some reference. I took the easy route with a command chair (RTG is to simulate the weight of a Kerbal) but dV and TWR specs shouldn't change. For what it's worth I had more difficulty keeping the whole rig stable and safe on entry than designing the ascent stages-the atmosphere on Eve is tricky on atmospheric entry!

https://imgur.com/cK6wOhd Long time KSPer but first time poster so hopefully this works :-) From part of a larger Eve mission to circumnavigate and return: https://imgur.com/a/Q5Vh3bn